Tag: program management

Critical Lesson: Hit the Wall!

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Hit-The-Wall-T

One of the most critical lessons I learned as a kid was from the swim team.  The first time that I ever raced the 50 meter butterfly was a very interesting experience for me.  The butterfly or fly (for short) is probably the most grueling stroke to race in swimming (at least for me).  It takes a lot more strength and more importantly endurance.  So imagine this.  I get up on the stand. Gun goes off. I launch off the stand into the water. By the time I hit the first wall and turn around I have a massive lead on everyone.  I’m clearly winning this race.  I’ve got this in the bag.

But then it happens.  Three strokes from the end, I completely run out of gas.  I’m so tired I can’t get my arms out of the water.  I barely coast to the end.

I don’t think I finished last.  Tell you the truth I can’t even remember how I placed in that race.  All I know is that I had nothing left and couldn’t finish the race.  Nothing.  Empty. Big failure!

Let me tell you the worst part of that experience though.  I wasn’t prepared for the race.  I had never raced before and I hadn’t thought through what a butterfly race was.  I didn’t know what I was in for.  I didn’t realize how long it would last.  I had no clue what it would take to swim all out for 50 meters!  I was not prepared!  I was not determined!

Well the story doesn’t end there (thank goodness or this would be a horrible story).  That was the first race of the season.  After that all I did was think about or swim the fly.  I had the speed.  But I didn’t have a strategy or the endurance to make it happen.

Long story short, here is how the State Swim meet went down at the end of the summer.(In between there were lots of other races, camping, early morning practices, more practices, swim meet dances, some good summer fun, even some kissing and even more swimming and practices, did I mention tons of fly?!?!?!)  I now had a strategy.  In the qualifier round I was going to go at a good pace and not burn myself out.  I wanted to be strong for the next day after I qualified for finals.  Not the best strategy in the world.  I barely qualified.  I was the second slowest and had one of the outside lanes for finals the next day.

Finals.  New strategy.  Go as fast as I can, the entire race and hit the wall.  No matter what it takes.  Hit the wall as hard as I could.  The first time I raced I didn’t have that attitude.  I didn’t think I had it in me to go all out for 50 meters.  But I had now been training all summer long.  I knew I had the endurance to go all out for 50 meters.  So I had the preparation and the winning strategy.

What happened?  Well I learned an important life lesson.  Understand the game you are playing (or the project or business you are working on)!  Train hard! Practice hard!  Eat it! Breathe it! Sleep it! And make sure you go as hard as you can until you hit the final wall!

Oh yea, I got first place and also broke the Montana state record for the 50 Butterfly that summer!

Hit the Wall!

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.)