The "Build It and They Will Come" Fallacy of Modern Intranets
- Michael Fürer
- 2 days ago
- 1 min read
They aren’t resisting change. They’re just ignoring you.
You spent six months on the RFP. You burned a hole in the IT budget. You finally hit publish on that shiny new intranet.
And then? Crickets.
Your employees aren't slow to adapt. They aren't resistant to change. They are simply drowning. While leadership is celebrating a seamless launch, your employees are still emailing attachments, hunting for PDFs in buried folders, and taping physical sticky notes to $800 curved monitors just to remember how to do their jobs.
The hard truth is that building it does not mean they will come. Technology is rarely the reason digital workplaces fail.
They fail because ownership is a mess. IT owns the pipes and Comms owns the water, but nobody owns the actual drink. They fail because engagement is a myth. You cannot force a new platform on a workforce that only has a 21 percent baseline engagement. And they fail because digital friction is real. Every new tool you add without a behavioral strategy is just more noise for an already overwhelmed human.
At GEODESIC AG, we’ve seen the 'Build It and They Will Come' fallacy play out in some of the world's biggest firms. It’s time to stop blaming the software and start fixing the behavior.
Read the full breakdown on why your platform is stalling, and how to pivot before the Digital Ghost Town becomes permanent