A fox in the hen house: on being careful about who you ask for help

You can't build intranets or manage an organisation's digital workplace on your own. You need help and advice, but be careful about who you ask for help. Some analogies to start:

• If you've got a problem with your car, you take it to a mechanic, but if you want to know the best place to go on holiday the mechanic isn't the best person to ask.
• If you want to buy a new car, the car salesman is definitely going to have opinions about what your best option is, but you are going to take that advice with a pinch of salt.

We very often confuse those that provide a solution, to those that can advise on that solution. In the intranet and digital workplace field, there is an ongoing (and perfectly natural) move towards productisation. What we maybe would have collected a few requirements for and maybe built ourselves, or gone to people who would build it for us, is now encapsulated in a bunch of products, well-honed from customer experience. It is fairly natural to assume that the requirements captured in these products will suit our problem so let's one-two-skip-a-few steps and hurry to product selection.

This is also tending to go further. Asking software companies to do some associated tasks for our chosen product to speed things along. This might include:

• Carrying out research and discovery
• Writing a strategy
• Implementing governance
• Creating a business case

Now let's go back to our car analogies.

Our mechanic is facing a problem that is outside his domain of experience. They might give it the old college try, but they are just giving you their opinion as a non-specialist. That's on you for choosing someone who is available to help for what they aren't best at.

Our car salesman, that's different - that's a clear conflict of interest. They know which the good cars are and which are the duds. They shift wrecks and peaches—week in, week out—but you buy a car only every couple of years. This is known as the Principal-Agent problem. Can you trust someone that you are paying (or going to pay) to act in your interest, or theirs? Also (if I assume that the reader is an employee of an organisation) you are also bound by the Principal-Agent problem. Are you choosing a certain product because it makes sense for your organisation, or because you want the name of a product on your CV?

Companies that provide enterprise software are going to be disinclined to give it to you straight:

• Problems that are out there, that can't be solved by their software might be downplayed
• Problems that can be solved by their software might be overplayed
• Alternative solutions to problems covered or partially covered by their software may be ignored
• Complications that might affect the project plan aren’t raised
• Maybe they'll be adept at getting you to launch day, but not much interested in helping you build success after that

So, might I suggest, when you are considering your next course of action and what is a wise way forward, to diversify your supplier mix. Independent advice is out there and able to give you the unvarnished truth rather than box-ticking flannel. I might bring up that that's what I do and what Spark Trajectory does. And you would be well within your rights to echo Mandy Rice-Davies' summary of self interest in the wake of the Profumo affair, "Well he would, wouldn't he?"

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