Month: May 2015

A Pretty, New Intranet Will Fix All Your Communication Issues (Not!)

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Is a solid enterprise communications strategy a pretty new intranet site?  Would our employees feel the love if we sent out a monthly newsletter?  If the CEO tweeted, would everyone completely understand the vision?  These seem like silly questions but I hear people offer them up as solutions all the time. So how do you build a solid communications program?

My last organization had serious communication issues (just like nearly every other org out there).  Our department had over 600 people – not too large but not too small either. We had many different divisions that were very siloed in everything that we did. We used SharePoint as our intranet site to share documents, news and policy info.  We didn’t have a dedicated person assigned to manage the intranet.  And if you asked our employees what they thought of leadership’s ability to communicate they would have laughed!  Let’s face it, communication just wasn’t a priority and our intranet was faded and ugly!

Through some employee feedback it was determined that we needed to redo our intranet.  The employees wanted a site that was much more like a blog or a cool website.  I was the CIO and so the request ended up coming to my group.  I told them that we can definitely build a cool new intranet site but first I needed to see the plan that would keep the site fresh, add content regularly and get feedback from our users to ensure that we were heading in the right direction.  I told them that a new intranet site won’t do those things by itself and before I pull resources to build this site, we needed to have a good plan. (By the way, this response didn’t go over well and I ended up having to put the program together myself.)

How do you build a sustainable and innovative communication program?  How do you consistently communicate relevant, fresh, interesting, educational and concise content? How do you impact your organization, increase alignment and accelerate transformation with better communication?  How do you encourage employees to participate, increase collaboration, expand thought leadership and be more engaged and innovative?

Too good to be true?  That’s a lot to accomplish.  I’m not saying this program was perfect but it was pretty awesome!

To detail this all out, I plan to write multiple articles.  The topics will include: Keys to Success, Program Governance, Measuring Objectives, Content Creation and Executing the Plan.

I’m passionate about strong program management, organizational alignment, communications, content development, technology platforms and accelerating transformation.  This should be a great series of articles!  Please comment and share your great (or bad) experiences with internal communication programs.  Let me know your horror stories and killer solutions.  I will incorporate your ideas and questions in my future articles.

(*note: I’m brand new to this blogging thing and am following the Blogging 101: Zero to Hero approach from WordPress. This is my fourth article, part of Day Nine: Inspire Yourself.)

Dear Disruptive Force

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Subject: Become a Disruptive Force

Dear CEO,

As you know we are going through very innovative and disruptive times.  New technologies and ways to use technologies are being invented every day.  I’m sure you feel the pressure from within your organization, from your board and from your customers that you must accelerate change and your organization’s ability to adapt.  I also have no doubt that you personally know someone who runs an organization that has suffered a major security incident in the past two years as well.  This is definitely a rock and a hard place situation.

At my last organization we were in that exact situation.  We had years of neglected systems and employees.  Here’s what we did.  We realized that there wasn’t a magic wand or a bucket of money that would fix our problems instantly.  We knew that we needed a phased approach.  The approach had to be aligned to the key transformation objectives for the entire organization and this approach had to realistically balance Run The Business (RTB), Change The Business (CTB) and Grow The Business (GTB).  Taking this approach, you end up with a nice roadmap matrix that can be used to clearly communicate with all of your stakeholders, help level set expectations and take a little stress off you.

I know you were wishing that I was going to tell you about some really cool new technology or system that you could buy and it would instantly fix all of these big challenges.  The problem with technology (and a lot of tech vendors) is that it will only do what you tell it to do.  Without a clear vision it’s just a really fancy paper weight.

Now that you know what percent of your resources (people, dollars, etc.) you can dedicate to changing your business (the CTB portion) you are ready to become a disruptive force!  Now you are ready to make new industries and there has never been a better time to do it!

Start with your customers.  Find out what they want.  Listen to them. Work with them.  Validate what you thought you heard and then work with them some more.  Now compare your customer’s expectations to your industry and then compare to new business models.  True innovation starts here.

Take baby steps and achieve quick wins!  You will also need to partner those quick wins with core underlying capabilities that allow you to automate and scale your business. With the technologies and capabilities that we have today it is possible to do just about anything.  We shouldn’t be asking “can we do this?” We should be asking “should we do this?” or “is there a better way to do this?”

There are some very disruptive technology trends that you should be taking advantage of too (as long as they align to your customer’s expectations and new business models).  Cloud, big data, security, responsive apps, APIs, integration platforms are just a few.  These technologies combined with new business models are completely game changing.

You are not alone in this.  There are champions all over that want to help you in your journey.  Seek them out.  Empower them to make mistakes.  Give them the freedom to make your org a disruptive force.

My partners and I recently founded Zuggand (zuggand.com) to help organizations develop integrated digital strategies so you can thrive in today’s unprecedented world of business velocity and agility. I’m currently looking for a few key executives to work directly with to create Enterprise Digital Transformation.  I can provide you with my detailed experience and my references are top notch.  I’m interested in only working with people that are looking to seriously shake things up and achieve big outcomes.  If this is of interest or if you’d like to discuss please let me know.

Sincerely,

Aaron V Sandeen
co-founder, Zuggand
LinkedIn (please contact me via LinkedIn)

(*note: I’m following the Blogging 101: Zero to Hero approach to blogging from WordPress.  This article is the challenge for Day 6: Write to Your Dream Reader – so if you know any kick ass executives looking to become a disruptive force, please pass this along! I have a few in mind!)

Startup – action, motion or direction?

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startup
1. the action or process of setting something in motion.
2. a newly established business.

Combining the two definitions you get – the action of setting a new business in motion! I started this blog to help me communicate the journey of our new business venture Zuggand. In this article I’d like to look at the other two other very critical words in the definition: Action and Motion!

Action! You have to get the ball moving.  There is a ton of work that goes into just creating the new business. Licensing, tax id, name of the company (ohh my goodness, there is another post for you), bank accounts, business cards, website, office space, accountants, attorneys, and the list goes on and on and on.  And with all this work you haven’t even moved the business off of the starting line. (Picture in your head a big ball representing your business, still sitting on the start line.  People running all around it trying to get it all ready and you still haven’t even moved an inch.)  All of this action is critical and is required over the course of this race, but it really hasn’t added any value (or dollars) to your bottom line.

But before you all get behind your ball and start pushing, do you know for certain that you are pointing in the right direction?  Do you know for sure that you are even on the right race track?  Are you positive beyond a doubt that you are in the correct game?  Those are huge questions!  Questions that you shouldn’t take lightly.  What if you push your ball and it rolls down a big hill and then you find out that it was the wrong direction?  Will you have enough energy and resources to get it back up to the starting point?

I’m attempting to make the point that direction is just as important as action or motion.  Maybe it is even more important (that’s a strong hint that it is more important).  Take the time and figure out what game you are playing and how you are going to play the game.  The best thing about this is that you get to make up your own rules and as long as someone finds value in what you are doing you could play a brand new game and be the first piece on the board and get a massive head start.  Doesn’t that sound so much better than being a one in a million.

But why isn’t “in the right direction” part of the definition?  Maybe that is why so many startups struggle.

Motion, oh yea, that is critical too.  Don’t spend too much time asking all these questions or you could starve.  Sooner than later you have to get all of your resources behind your ball and get that sucker moving!  So to answer my own question you need all three: action, motion and direction! (see I changed the rules to my own question) Updated startup definition: the action of setting a new business in motion in a specific direction.