The clash of cultures. How is the intranet developing in Russia?

Western experience suggests that the development of intranets goes through socialization and further to the digital workplace. And which way are we going?

The global boom of social corporate applications fell at the beginning of the tenth years and gradually reached the level of maturity. From the point of view of a person as a participant of communications, his communication field has expanded from a small circle of close colleagues to almost the entire organization and its partners.

Now news feeds are full of the term digital workplace - a new strategic vector of development. Movement to a digital workplace is an attempt to bring as close as possible to a person all the necessary tools for work: information, processes, communications, applications. Thus, new communication channels are added to the human communication field: digital applications, bots, widgets, filter results, queries, and other information that helps optimize employee performance (“smart things”). Conceptually, the development path of intranets can be represented as follows.
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Fig.1. Intranet Transformation

With a delay of several years, Russian companies and corporations have tried and continue to try to go this way - towards socialization, active exchange of ideas, open communications. But, frankly, a great success in this direction has not yet been achieved. Does this mean that we incorrectly apply the “best Western practices”? No, but that means we go our own way. What exactly is it, I will explain at the end, and now I will make the necessary excursion into the field of cultural differences.

We have already defined that the intranet portal is an online platform for the work of an intracorporate productive community. This is a necessary, but not the most necessary component of the community. Two others - people and tasks - as practice shows more important. In the end, the community can live without an online site. Therefore, it is most important to understand what tasks people set for themselves and how they are used to communicating.

What is the difference between Western culture and ours? There is an answer to this question, it is concluded in the book " The Clash of Cultures " by Richard Lewis, who conducted a thorough analysis of many world cultures.


So among the variety there are three main types of crops - monoactive, polyactive and reactive.

The main value in monoactive culture is to achieve a result. Therefore, it is necessary to act effectively and according to the schedule - one thing at a certain point in time, after which it is necessary to proceed to the next task. People belonging to this culture are calm and rational, they systematically plan their future, draw up a schedule and carefully organize their activities. The level of trust in such a culture is about the same and quite high. Typical representatives of monoactive culture: USA, UK, Germany.

For a representative of a reactive culture, the main value is harmony and "saving face". Representatives of this culture organize their activities depending on the circumstances and always fulfill their obligations. Therefore, decisions are made for a long time, but unanimously. There is a high level of mutual trust within the cultural cluster, and low relative to all other representatives. Typical examples: Japan, China and Korea.

In a polyactive culture, the main value is the relationship between people, not the achievement of results. People from polyactive cultures are sociable, talkative and do not make schedules. For a unit of time, a representative of such a culture can do several things at once, the main thing is that relations should not suffer. In such a culture, great importance is attached to the hierarchy, which creates comfortable conditions for interaction and proper construction of communication, and transparency is not a value. So, we - the Russians (as well as the Italians, Arabs and peoples of Latin America) - are mostly carriers of a polyactive culture.

What is important in the context of this article is that in a polyactive culture there is a high level of trust in a narrow circle (family, close colleagues) and rather low in society in general. When I meet friends and comrades, I will pour out my whole soul, and on all the others I will “look at the wolf” (Fig. 2).



Fig.2. Level of trust in monoactive and polyactive cultures.

For this reason, corporate social communications aimed at broadcasting communications are not well perceived in our environment. We ourselves are not ready to write for everyone, but we consider writers to be upstarts. A good exception is retail chains, where the majority of employees are salespeople, and the role itself requires them to be active and visible.

And for the same reason, one of the most acute problems in corporate communications is the relationship between divisions / departments. Inside the divisions, the communications are excellent and everyone knows everyone, and there is a complete lack of understanding between departments.

Is it worth fighting with this problem? If necessary, it is worth it. And in this case, the intranet portal or corporate social network will become one of the supporting tools that help to improve communication. The main tools will be the change management process.

But maybe it is worth using the strengths of our culture - the ability to trust in a narrow environment? In this case, the intranet portal, without losing the opportunities for mass communications, should be directed to the implementation of tasks or processes for small teams. For example, work on a project, support service, questions and answers, various types of applications, small group meetings, personalized data from corporate applications, and so on.


And most importantly, without focusing on socialization, likes and ratings. This will not take most of the staff out of the comfort zone. But those who need it will be able to use the tools of social communications.

Our experience says that this is the direction that is actively developing in Russian businesses. In the Western interpretation, this is called the digital workplace (digital workplace), and in the Russian interpretation I often hear the name of the employee’s personal account . His task is to bring corporate applications, work communications and personal information closer to one click away. Thus, the employee continues to work with a narrow comfortable circle of close colleagues and familiar applications. And only then, as they engage in online broadcast communications, employees can master the tools of socialization. Thus, we get such a green area for the development of Russian intranets.



Fig. 3. Development of intranets in Russia

In our opinion, such a development strategy lies much closer to our culture, as well as to such concepts as efficiency and productivity. And business leaders love them.