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There's no easily defined cure for this type of ailment because it deals more with interpersonal dynamics, politics, or personal issues more than anything. Unfortunately, psychological intranet ailments are much more difficult to cure than physical intranet ailments. But there are many things that can be done to ease these ailments and get the intranet teams working smoothly again:

Implement job rotation: Most people will get bored doing the same thing day in and day out, eventually leading to a lack of enthusiasm and shoddy workmanship. To combat this, implement an intranet job rotation program that will give team members some variety, insights on what other members do, and a better feel for the intranet operation as a whole.

Hold regular governance meetings: This is perhaps the best way to keep an intranet governing body in good health. It's a forum for intranet team members from all disciplines to bring up any issues concerning their section of the intranet and their immediate users. Set up a formal agenda for every meeting and allocate equal time to every intranet leader.

Get intranet leaders involved with conflict resolution: When it comes to anything dealing with interpersonal dynamics there's going to be conflict. There's no avoiding it. The key is to not allow these conflicts to boil over and negatively affect other intranet teams or the system itself. It will be of great help for intranet leaders to act as peacekeepers (see my article on conflict resolution for more on this) in these types of situations. Don't ignore the problem and hope it goes away.

Intranet test: A quick weekly review of new content added and/or archived during that week. A more thorough monthly review of content movement during that month.

Symptoms: New content isn't being added, and older content isn't filed away or archived, with the same frequency, quantity, and quality as it used to.

Causative factors: Unhappy, overworked, resentful, or apathetic content managers.

Rx: Above all else, an intranet's content needs to be kept fresh. Content is the lifeblood of an intranet. If it goes bad, the entire system dies. It's a simple formula: Healthy content owners = healthy content = healthy intranet.

Content managers -- those tasked with ensuring content health on a daily basis -- are as vital to an intranet as the technology that serves up the content. Without them, an intranet will be little more than a technological toy, an empty shell with little substance. So it's no surprise that having the right teams will have a very big impact on the health of an intranet.

Those who are under too much stress and are overworked might view intranet content management as an auxiliary duty. They convince themselves and their colleagues that they'll get around to it "later" -- and we all know that "later" never comes because they'll always have something else to do. Those who do have the time, but are uninterested in their role as content manager, will either not bother with the task or will do a very sloppy and lackluster job. In both cases, it's going to be extremely difficult for the person who will eventually have to clean up this mess.

As described in my article, "Keeping Your Content Owners ... Content," you can promote healthy content owners by ensuring that those working on an intranet actually want to be there (as opposed to being drafted against their will), and are provided with all the necessary training and tools required for them to do their job.

To be continued ...

Next month, I'll continue to explore some of the dangerous system-threating ailments that can affect an intranet's lifespan.

Paul Chin (www.paulchinonline.com) is a freelance writer and journalist. He has previously worked in the aerospace and competitive intelligence industries as a software developer and intranet specialist. He currently writes on a wide range of IT topics, including systems development and security, digital communications and media, content management and web design.

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