by Caroline Leach | Jun 13, 2015 | Corporate Communications, Leadership, Learning, Social Media
Speaking at the Intranet Global Forum this week at USC made me reflect on new ways to work.
At Toby Ward‘s invitation, I joined a variety of speakers including digital luminaries Shel Holtz, Dion Hinchcliffe and Aadam Zaidi.
The focus? The future of corporate intranets, spotlighting the design, governance and management of enterprise and social intranets.
My talk was a DIRECTV case study, looking at how we’re changing the way work gets done in our connected enterprise.
Today it’s more collaborative, productive and innovative. And tomorrow it should become even more so, as technologies and cultures evolve.
It started four years ago when my Communications team began working with the I.T. team to explore technologies for social collaboration.
We began with a vision – to make it easy for employees to connect, collaborate, access and share information with each other and partners, leading to greater engagement and productivity, along with better decision-making and increased innovation.
Our work was informed in part by the McKinsey & Company study, The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies.
Across four sectors studied, it reported that social technologies improving productivity could potentially contribute up to $1.3 trillion in value. And two-thirds of this amount lay in improving collaboration and communication within and across enterprises.
Those are hefty numbers. And big potential to achieve.
We embarked on our journey with a group headed by Michael Ambrozewicz on my team, and later joined by Thyda Nhek and Mani Escobar.
We have a great technical partnership with I.T. strategy leader Frank Palase and his team, along with insight from various consulting partners.
Together we could put a social collaboration platform in place, but how could we encourage people to use it? How could we achieve its full value?
We had to make it part of how people did their daily work. Not a separate site that people would visit and engage with when they had time.
It had to be a way to get important work done every day. It had to foster new ways of working, with employees creating content to share in places where teams collaborate in real time.
Senior leader involvement is a key way of doing that. If leaders are active in a social intranet, then employees will join the dialogue and the action.
In our beta phase, I launched a communications leadership blog. My purpose was to encourage the beta participants to experiment and learn. And I’d learn enough about blogging from first-hand experience so I could advise our C-suite leaders on launching and growing their own blogs.
In the next year’s annual leadership meeting, we wove social collaboration into the program.
- Our CEO talked about its importance in the context of our overall business strategy.
- Michael and Thyda manned kiosks and helped leaders set up their profile pages and get started with initial actions, like following colleagues and bookmarking key content.
- Each day I blogged for all employees about what was happening at the meeting. Our CIO jumped in with blog posts and perspectives of his own.
Blogging for me created a “flow state” experience, where time drifts away and I’m completely engaged in the art and craft of thinking and writing. It’s one of the things I wrote about in my very first post.
And it’s one of the reasons I launched this second blog, Leading Communications, earlier this year. I wanted to continue learning, sharing knowledge and engaging in dialogue.
What are we doing with our social intranet today?
First, we’re providing company news and information in real time, that employees can like, share, comment on and add their own perspectives.
Second, key teams are regularly collaborating on projects and keeping their colleagues up to date on emerging industry trends, new technologies and consumer insights.
Third, major work locations and teams use spaces to engage colleagues with relevant information and project-based resources.
And where are we going tomorrow?
First, our social intranet will sustain and build on organizational knowledge. Information is increasingly less likely to be buried in individuals’ email accounts, and more likely to be available for colleagues to access and build upon.
Second, our word-based content is becoming more visual, with photos and videos increasing in importance compared with text. People can process visual information much faster, not to mention that it’s more engaging.
And in our rapidly changing world, that provides tremendous upside. Step by step, we can all make that trillion-dollar value creation a reality.
by Caroline Leach | Jun 4, 2015 | Corporate Communications, Leadership, Learning
Visiting one of DIRECTV’s Denver offices this week, I felt a special energy.
People were upbeat and friendly. A hum of activity filled the halls. Lively conversations spilled out of the elevators.
A lobby sign reminded employees they’ve made the company a Denver Post top workplace for three years in a row.
(Kudos are in order here for Denver-based communications leader Anthony Martini, HR leader Carlos Botero and all of the leaders and employees at our Denver sites.)
It was not unlike the company’s many other locations, where people are highly engaged in entertaining the future by delivering the best video experience in the world.
What makes a top workplace?
While there are many models and methodologies for identifying top workplaces, for me there are three things. They all need to be present for an engaging and energizing employee experience.
Purpose. What is the company’s vision? How is it changing the world? And how are employees part of something much bigger than themselves as individuals?
A compelling and inspiring purpose motivates people to pour their heart and soul into their work. It drives discretionary effort, where employees put in significant amounts of effort above and beyond what their jobs require.
Many companies today report low levels of engaged employees. That’s why I’m especially proud of my colleagues at DIRECTV, whose high engagement and strong financial performance put in the company in Towers Watson‘s high performing companies norm.
Leaders play a critical role. They’re the ones who articulate the purpose and communicate every day in their words and actions how their teams further that purpose. One of their most important roles is also to express a genuine interest in employees and inspire them to deliver their best efforts.
Communication is the catalyst. It gets back to the tree-falling-in-the-forest question in my first post. Without effective communication, a compelling purpose is nearly nonexistent.
“Start with why,” Simon Sinek said in a TED talk with 22 million views, How Great Leaders Inspire Action.
People. We spend most of our days with our work colleagues. Talented and positive people make the workplace come alive.
It starts with having a compelling employer brand, articulating the promise of the employee experience your company offers. That branding brings top talent on board, and ongoing development keeps everyone growing and stretching.
Add to that an inclusive work environment that values everyone’s ideas and insights. This leads to a constant stream of innovation, not to mention better decision making and happier employees who enjoy coming to work each day.
Possibilities. Limitless potential encourages people to keep stretching and growing — to learn and develop themselves as they contribute to the success of their organizations and their teams.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone is on track to climb what used to be known as a corporate ladder. It does mean that people have an opportunity to build valuable skills and experiences, that they’ll put to use at their current organization or another one.
LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman and colleagues call these “tours of duty” in The Alliance. In this framework, “Employees invest in the company’s adaptability, and the company invests in employees’ employability.
This creates multiple possibilities for the future, strengthening both people and organizations in the process.
A top workplace isn’t about free food, yoga classes, pet care or a myriad of other perks.
While those are nice and most people wouldn’t refuse them if offered, those are extrinsic rewards. This makes them more ephemeral and less powerful than intrinsic rewards, where the enjoyment of the work itself is the reward.
Enjoyment and inner fulfillment come from a strong purpose, great people and limitless possibilities. These are a lot less expensive than 24/7 meal service. And much more sustainable and satisfying to boot.
by Caroline Leach | May 17, 2015 | Leadership, Learning, Work/Life
If you think you can’t do something, ask “why not?”
Probe a little further and dig a little deeper before you write off a potential solution or a course of action.
Two graduation events in the last week week made me think about this.
Our Comms team celebrated the USC graduation of Jamie Zamora, a terrific intern who will join us full time on our Corporate Citizenship team led by Tina Morefield.
Jamie’s colleagues Brooke Hanson and Brynne Dunn asked our whole team to share their words of advice for Jamie. A few of the themes? Build a network, take time for yourself and enjoy the journey.
The whole world is before you, with problems to solve. And you can be part of the solution, starting with the questions you ask.
Some of these themes were echoed in the UC Berkeley commencement I attended this weekend to see my nephew Kodiak Spydell receive his degree in architecture.
And for all of the challenges in the world today, I was encouraged and inspired by this group of students now entering the work world.
Enthusiasm and idealism were tempered by the sober realities we all face — environmental concerns, increasing inequality and economic instability, to name a few.
The “a-ha” moment for me was the extent to which each person can be part of the solution.
No degree is required. Just one simple question can unlock ideas and solutions, no matter who are you.
Instead of thinking “that would never work” or “they won’t let us,” try asking “why not?” instead.
What are all of the possible solutions? What would need to happen to make one or more of them work? And how can you take the first step?
Why not try one of them? What’s the worst that could happen? And what’s the upside if something works?
This kind of thinking struck me in Marc Benioff‘s commencement address at Cal.
As a pioneer of cloud computing and the CEO of Salesforce.com, Benioff has built “the fastest growing top ten software company in the world and the largest customer relationship management company.”
Deeply troubled by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Indiana that could have allowed discrimination against the LGBT community, he spoke out.
In doing so, he galvanized the support of fellow tech leaders and took steps in his own business to make it clear that the threat to civil rights carried consequences.
This had strong echoes of a TEDx Manhattan Beach speaker, David Hochman, whom I mentioned in my first post. He shared his life’s mantra: Why not me? Why not now?
This kind of thinking was evident in Marc Benioff’s actions.
And it came full circle in a story my dad told about his days as an engineering and business student at Berkeley in the tumultuous 60s.
A final exam in a course asked only one question — “why?”
Almost all of the students began writing furiously, filling page after page with lengthy responses.
Except for one student (no, not my dad), who aced the test with a two-word response — “why not?”
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