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I work with many organizations with SharePoint intranet sites that are simply a MESS!   Yes, that's you and your intranet!   Admit it -- your intranet sites look like they were built in 1999 with big fonts, bigger graphics, static and outdated links & content, and absolutely no organization of the information and navigation presented to the end user.  

Over the last decade perhaps small enhancements or attempts at redesign evolved your intranet incrementally.  You now have some level of standards and branding at a global level. Perhaps your organization has finally consolidated and standardized on SharePoint and are even thinking about upgrading to 2010 in the next year or two.  You’re also focused on the latest buzz words like "social" and "collaboration" – baking them into your overall strategy.   However, down in the trenches you still have sites for functional areas or business units or regions that remain an unorganized mess of stale information. 

I bet dozens of so-called team sites have also popped up with the intent of providing a better place for your organization to manage and update important content that really should be out on the intranet site for everyone to consume.  However, those team sites also added to the mess.  There’s even morenoise and confusion by limiting access and navigation to information with redundant content and links. 

We call this information overload and have all read the stats on the hidden costs and wasted productivity because knowledge workers spend too much time looking for information.   With the amount of digital information continuing to increase beyond expectations, it's now even more difficult to search, browse, filter, and find the information than it was a decade ago.  The year 2010 is coming to an end with over a decade of internet evolution and you ask yourself “Am I more productive today than I was 10 years ago?”   

So what’s your New Year’s Resolution for 2011 to clean up this information mess?  In next week’s post, I’ll discuss 3 keys that will help you clean up the mess so you can incorporate them into your New Year’s Resolution...stay tuned...