Flickr Site

So I have created my Flickr Site for Classroom to Cubicle.

I went around our campus and took pictures of classroom applications. Although much of it is protected and intellectual capital, the overall outcome I found to be true is that it takes a mix of ICTs to make a workplace successful and no two places are the same. Maybe there isnt a recipe for successful communication?

Here is the link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/classroomcubicle/

we the people.

From all the Zoho research and posting, I found that social media is not only social but really belonging to the people. Companies that are implmenting social media techniques and platforms are doing so for promotion or for empowerment. I read an article about President Obama's media campaign and while we can say that he was everywhere and too visible, his goal was to connect with the people. I think it's interesting that all these businesses, people, organizations equate connection with social media. Perhaps thats so because of how it's established or how it's driven. Twitter cannot be updated without someone going in and writing a tweet. If it's not, it just sits there and is a reminder of its outdated stale presence. That's where I find social media to be the real and telling- the time stamp, the last time your profile was updated, your last login. Websites can conceal that and emails can be set up to be sent at a certain time.

Maybe companies are gravitating to social media because it stands for that unique combination and has an ingredient that some technologies are missing. People implementation and people adoption. Recent research shows that more Boomers are reading blogs and writing blogs then Gen Ys- even if it is to catch up or become more familar with these tools- it shows that they certainly arent going anywhere and that social media is the ICT with the human touch.

Are your office communications making A list?

Classroom:

Our class discussion last week revolved around Chapter 6 of our text book. We discussed accessbility of technology communications: the user friendliness involved in implementing and the its expanding use. If something is easy to use, going to make my job easier, and just relieve stress in my life, then I'll use without a peep regarding change. It brings me back to my point from a previous blog. Why should we reward employees for giving them a tool that makes their lives subsequently easier? I probably wont ever agree with our last guest speaker who really drove that point home. "Reward employees" for using new technologies. As an employee it's my job to not only know new technologies but assist with their implementation at our workplace. Where's my reward? Knowledge is. But I digress.

We discussed the theory of social presence. I thought of mediums being ranked and rated like celebrities on a red carpet. So this is what I walked away with from that discussion: the richer the media experience, the more personal situation. So is there more social presence with a blog entry vs. a newsletter brochure? Your channel decides your choice of media? leading to what is lean media vs. what is rich media? (i'll devle into this more in another entry)

Cubicle:

When I think of rich vs. lean media, which I will address at a later point, the first thing that comes to mind is how it affects the end user. But really though if you take a step back, maybe it's the entire process which makes it rich, makes it lean? Social media has the perception that it's rich because it's new, it's trendy, it's as our professor would note, from the ground up. I found this graphic, speaks to how many touch points social media hits. It's pretty impressive.

But there is a counterpoint to this thought that a blog entry is much more rich and personal than a brochure (which I stand behind my enewsletter which I create every week-newsletter just sounds traditionalist and not cutting edge but it can be!) If someone else is writing your entry or tweeting for you, doesnt that take away from the social presence? the richness? I know a CIO who has a twitter and simply does not update it. He may be writes a list of his tweets, provides an outline but the act of using this "bottom up" created tool is not his. Does that take away? I think on some level it does and it leads me to be more inclined to stand by the idea that the richness or the presence of a social media may all be in the process. Like Bob Anderson said, it's a cookbook process, take all the steps and you will have a successful implementation.

Small input ... big reaction?

Classroom

A guest speaker visited our class week to discuss the technology adoption process he has experienced during his career. He talked about the organizational alignment and the big picture versus the nuts and bolts of the adoption process.

According to his experiences, he believes that 70- 80 % of technology adoptions that are well thought out and have a strong implementation succeed, while the other 20 – 30% fail due to time, pressure, and for the love of having a solution.

What is the challenge with adoption? It’s having to get people to use the technology, therefore you have a strategy and you have tactics to achieve success adoption processes.

Successful adoption must have a small input with a big reaction, but then I wonder what if it’s a big input and big reaction? Employees as a general assumption are resistant to change, but this of course is based on the culture from they inhabit. But because of this resistance and or this assumed resistance leaders need to spend time, attention and communication efforts to assist with the adoption – “people pay attention to what bosses pay attention to.”

So according to our speaker, a successful implementation happens when all marketing rules apply; when a campaign can be executed and then training can be involved if necessary.



Cubicle
Our speaker stressed rewards for employees adopting and behaving in the work space with the new technology – however if you provided a rewards for every technology implemented or even any new technology aren’t you encouraging another type of behavior? While we should reward employees, we should not reward them for making their job better, for changing their process. My philosophy with new technology and its adoption in my own working experience is that if the communication is transparent on why there is a change and I can see the benefits then I am open to change.

I thought about adoption processes- I don’t think there is a specific win but there have been specific losses. A rushed process; non-transparent communication plan and little or no training have been the attributions that have affected the adoption of technologies in my work experience. But a well thought out, meticulous, logical planned process could still have a minimal effect. So is implementing a new communication technology like going fishing. You go the right place, you use the right bait, still but still the fish wont bite?

What's brand got to do with it?

Classroom

All my fellow students are associated with a company’s brand. Whether it be the color red or even me with a yellow tag and Tiger Woods. In recent discussions, it seems the this aspect of the company’s culture has been the elephant in the room. So does it always mean that a well-branded company or a culture that is well-branded, has a higher change acceptance rate? According to our speakers, adoption is about campaigning and about marketing as well a laundry list of other tactics and strategies.

Cubicle

Because I have more questions than answers from any classroom readings or materials that may have revolved around this subject, I take a step and back and think about my past career experience. Between the two large companies for which I have been employed, I have experienced positive marketing- positive in that it is successful and relatable and – absentee marketing- no concept of workforce or workload just branded logos and branded text.

So between these two some of my questions are answered. Yes it does seem to be more “accepted” for employees of well-branded companies to accept and inherit changes in technologies and hear and see communications accompanying them. However that can also provide a wedge in the union of workforce meets adoption in that these employees are strongly married to the culture and any change may or may not be cause them to rebel against it and stick with the normal, the already accepted.

At the not so branded company where I existed – I found that marketing attempts were merely ploys to gain the trust of the employee- to rescue them from disengagement and to bring them to a land of a busy worker is a happy worker. Well busy workers we were- but happy was not the case. Every change attempted to be implemented and rather any communication occurring was often scoffed and sarcastically taken by the culture or maybe a lack of culture. I hate to end this blog entry with yet another question but can you have a culture existing of people/employees that don’t want to be in a culture?

Twittering at work....

A cool article- social media at work!

Management March 8, 2009, 8:16PM EST text size: TT
When Skittles Met Twitter
A bold social media marketing experiment on the Mars brand's home page prompted a lively debate at the fourth annual Social Media Conference
By Kerry Capell
On Mar. 2, Skittles, the colorful candy brand owned by Mars, transformed its home page into an online portal featuring a live Twitter feed alongside Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube content.
Instead of the usual corporate propaganda, the home page and "chatter" section became the brand's Twitter page, the video media and images pages became the brand's YouTube page and Flickr stream, respectively. Meanwhile, the "friends" section morphed into a Skittles Facebook fan page. According to Andy Hobsbawm, European chairman of online ad firm agency.com , which came up with the idea, the site received so many hits the first day it brought down Twitter.
But just two days after its launch, Skittles was forced to rethink its social media strategy after users deluged the site with inane and often profane "tweets," the messages sent by Twitter users. The Twitter feed, once prominently displayed as the home page, is now harder to find—just a small link in the corner of the screen.
Social media still stump the experts
Is this a bold experiment in the potential of social media or evidence that allowing consumers, not brands, to control content is fraught with reputational risk? The jury is still out but the question was at the center of a lively debate at the fourth annual Social Media Conference held in London on Mar. 2. Much of the discussion centered on the growing popularity of Twitter as a marketing tool. While other social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, were mentioned, the one noticeable omission from the discussion was Second Life, hailed as the next big thing two years ago.
Indeed, there was no consensus on which of the social media tools were likely to remain important—or how companies should use them. Despite the fact that many businesses are using social media, plenty are still uncomfortable with the loss of total control other their marketing messages.
"Smart companies are grappling with how to engage and influence the discussion, but many are scared of doing so for fear it will open up the floodgates," says Niall Cook, Hill & Knowlton's worldwide director of marketing technology.
More than 1,000 companies are social
Still, businesses know that they need to tap the power of social media. British companies such as mobile-phone retailer Carphone Warehouse (CPW.L) and Virgin Media (VMED.O)—a provider of broadband, digital TV, mobile, and phone services—use micro-blogging site Twitter to answer customer service queries, as does Comcast. Computer maker Dell (DELL) offers its followers on Twitter special discounts while footwear retailer Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh's tweets have achieved near cult-like status with more than 130,000 followers. Nokia (NOK) used networking site Linkedin to help market its 5300 phones to professionals, the product's targeted customer base.
Others such as Swedish clothing retailer H&M HMB.ST, Victoria's Secret, and Reebok are using Facebook. And according to social technology entrepreneur Peter Kim, the list is growing longer each day. His Wiki lists more than 1,000 companies using social media.
It's easy to see why. Take video-sharing Web site YouTube. The four-year-old site boasts 350 million unique viewers each month and is now the second-largest search engine on the web after Google (GOOG), according to Benjamin Faes, head of YouTube for Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. He points to a recent study YouTube did with General Motors (GM) that found that the use of YouTube has given the brand a cooler edge with consumers. Faes, perhaps not surprisingly, believes that online video is becoming the media mode of choice because consumers prefer visual storytelling to written text.
Philips: Too much static on Twitter
A new study from San Francisco marketing firm Netpop Research reveals a shift in consumer Internet usage from entertainment toward communication that's being driven by social media and networking sites. According to Netpop, 105 million Americans use social media sites, spurring a 93% increase in social networking since 2006. Increasingly, consumers are using these sites to comment—sometimes positively and frequently negatively—about brand experiences, products, and services.
That means companies need to find new ways to engage customers via social networking, attendees at the Social Media Influence confab agreed. But participants were divided about the best way to do it. According to Hubert Grealish, senior product marketing manager for Philips consumer and lifestyle unit, Twitter is "an inaccurate information medium." He believes that for major corporations such as Philips (PHG), the big issue is quality control. With potentially thousands of users tweeting real time, he says, companies will find it difficult to quickly and accurately respond to users.
"Twitter is useful for feedback but we'd need a small army of people to jump on every comment or complaint," he says. Instead, Grealish thinks it's better for companies to internalize the insights they glean from social media and use them to make any changes needed to improve products or services.
Assessing a campaign's effectiveness
Many companies see social media as a relatively inexpensive new marketing tool. Companies can reach new consumers and build brand loyalty at a fraction of the price of a traditional TV or print ad campaign, says Matthew Yeomans, managing director of social media agency Radar DDB. Many traditional ad agencies attending the conference reported a growing interest among their corporate customers in developing social media marketing campaigns. "A lot of our clients see social media as an opportunity to spread their message more cost-effectively," says Lucy Jameson, the London-based executive strategy director for ad agency DDB.
But if companies are going to invest in building a social media presence they need to be able to better measure the effectiveness of such campaigns. Many of those attending the social media conference complained that the tools currently available to measure the return on investment from social media aren't very sophisticated. Kris Hoet, marketing manager for Europe, the Middle East, and Asia for Microsoft's (MSFT) MSN online services group, says blog monitoring technology is "rudimentary and not that useful." Guilluame du Gardier, new media director for chocolate maker Ferrero France, complained about the challenge of having—and measuring—a conversation with his 11 million consumers.
Meet the Chief Community Officer
Successfully tapping into the power of social media may require companies to change their corporate culture, says Lee Bryan, co-founder of social computing consultancy Headshift. "You can't just throw tweets at users. Companies need to create an internal organization," he says.
DDB Worldwide President and CEO Chuck Brymer agrees. In his recently published book, The Nature of Marketing, he suggests that the time has come for companies and agencies to appoint a Chief Community Officer, or CCO, whose role would be to "oversee the relationship between brands and their communities, not just in the narrow confines of how a consumer interacts with a product at point of purchase but also in how consumers interact with each other."
With social media constantly evolving, it will be some time before companies figure out how to fully exploit its potential. Early adopters such as Guy Stephens, knowledge engineer for Carphone Warehouse, describe it as just another tool that a brand might use to engage with customers. "Understanding what motivates your customer and trying to meet that need is still key, regardless of whether you use Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, or pick up the phone," he blogs.

Discussion Board 6

When classroom meets cubicle....

Bob's Anderson was insightful and effective, even when I with Best Buy every day. It is not every day that we are able to experience the client discuss openly the failures and successes of his career.

I found his discussion to be interesting, but I valued his analogy for deploying processes by coining it "cookbook process." Whether it is a new technology, a new process, or a new communication, it is essential for implementers to test and follow the process before implementing in the new environment. Too many changes in the environment can cause chaos and confusion- however if you follow the cookbook process to assure that it is a successful implementation.

Anderson stressed that the process affects the bottom line of the organization – from its financials to its employee engagement, more so the support of vendors and the importantly the internal support structure and executive support is essential.

Anderson revealed successes and failures in his discussion, however a good testing process and following the cookbook and having the key ingredients makes a successful adoption and implementation.


I thought more about my recent post to the discussion board- if you followed the cookbook process (the joys of implementing technology into the workforce) - for implementing communications- would the process seem as seamless?

Not all cultures are receptive and open to change and especially change in how they receive communications - so it is as easy as checking something off a list? We can control the implementation of technology- to an extent- watching the environment, anticipating the process problems, preparing the team for the changes- but communications is much harder to anticipate. It thrives from the its recepients so if the recepients reject it, it's much more difficult to "fix" than technological climate changes.

Distance makes the heart grow fonder?

Classroom

Thursday’s class allowed for us to research and examine the crisis communication involved in a pandemic flu. We discussed possible solutions, planning and best and worst case scenarios, but ultimately decided that regardless of how the information is disseminated to the campus, it has to be timely, accurate, credible information tailored to the specific audience.

Regardless of the scenario, of the atmosphere, in these cases, isn’t that information tailored successfully and delivered successfully because there is someone or in some cases something that is trained to handle crisis communications—trained in that it’s reliable, and dependable.

We resolved as a class that any planning should be organized in buckets- technology, organizational and ethical processes- all of which have the same goal in mind. It’s about change management because even through the process planning, it’s about the people and having people trained and prepared to handle this situation with or without technology.

Among the discussion about pandemic communication planning, we discuss distance learning and telecommuting and the accessibility of the intended audience. Is distance learning a model we should leverage for pandemic communication planning?

Cubicle:

I began to think if we had a crisis communication plan in place. I assume that I would be the party that would be trained to handle and distribute these communications. I know that a phone tree does exist and in fact that is how we would disperse critical emergency information. It seems like it makes communication even more delicate. I am charged with sending messages from the internal email mailbox- if a system outage occurs- I am contacted and I distribute to the 3000 employees.

We need to work on our crisis communication or even our support system for internal communication. But besides this – how would my client site handle a pandemic communication? Employees already complain about too many emails sent- I believe that it may be highly likely that if someone received an email from the internal mailbox- that some resources would probably delete it.

Distance learning is similar to “telecommuting” – it seems there is a stigma surrounding both. If you are not in the classroom, you are not learning. If you are not on the work site, you are not working. Disregarding those stigmas and ignoring the network issues that may occur (ie site access), you could really leverage these aspects for crisis communication/ even crisis situations.

Mission, Vision & Values of..... second life?

Classroom:

Last class we spent some time watching a documentary on the "game" Second Life, which is invading more than the virtual game space, as we learned that more and more businesses and corporations are leveraging this virtual world. While it was interesting to see this well developed clever world, it didnt seem like something you could just decide to do some day. It is thorough, and complex but in a way that challenges our society and is an opportunity for people to be explorative and imaginative and none of that is bad, right?

I found an interesting youtube clip - second life introduction. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b72CvvMuD6Q- and discusses busines exploration and it is much more brief than Thursday's video.

Among the avatars and the islands, there was an important message portrayed in this video. One of the gamers talked at length about the shape of Second Life, the collaboration involved and the mission of the tasks involved in the collaboration. For instance, when building on property, there needs to be collaboration and a mission.

Cubicle:

Whenever I think mission, vision, values- I think about every employer I have had. Ithink about what it means to have a company's mission statement. In the business in which work, we tend to "align" with our client's values, vision, mission. Thinking about further, does that mean that by aligning to another company's mission statement, do we forget our own. Right now I can tell you my client's mission statement, but honestly I had to research my own. I know we teach our employees the core values, which revolve around emerging leadership and stewardship of our own people.

Official Company Definition: To help our clients become high-performance businesses and governments.

Now that I have researched and found my mission statement, you can apply these ideas from Second Life to the implementation to ICTs. Prior to implementing a communication vehicle, it is key to established its mission. We have several mediums which overlap in messaging but the mission of each seems to vary enough to justify their existence. Maybe what matters just as much as mission is the delivery and the frequency- maybe it's the entire communication package which affects its success and its failure.

Right now I'm processing how I can in fact find out not the mission of my newly redesigned enewsletter but how to gauge its success and its relevancy to our audiences.

Maybe I should experiment my mediums on Second Life- where all my explorative and creative communication tools can be implemented in a click!

feedback non-loop

Classroom:

Kathryn posed an interesting question for our class discussion board.

How/when is ICT interfering with our face to face connections? What are the negative or positive effects of this?

Our discussions around culture and signs seems to run parallel to these questions. We discussed in class the adoption process of ICTs, particularly the role of management and the culture's adoption readiness. For example, does there seem to be a "me too" (bandwagon) culture or is there a hesistation to change to accept new technologies? Culture can perpetuate face to face connections whether it be with the extreme " no email fridays" or simply with managers encouraging face to face weekly check-ins. Cutlure creates connections via mission, vision, values and/or the workforce that comprises the culture.

Cubicle:

Thinking about ICTs and culture- I think about feedback loops. Regardless of what the survey concerns, ie leadership or a recent event, it seems to a congruent theme that surveys are not widely accepted nor considered to be effective, particularly those existing online. To mimic the trend of social media's from the bottom to the top communication, surveys are the easy way to receive feedback, but there is nothing easy about getting someone to take a survey. At a previous employer, one of my clients gave incentives for surveys. "Take this survey and we will give you $10. "Take this survey and you could win an ipod." Even with these incentives, the participation still does not equal to what would be considered "effective feedback." Even thinking about my health plan, I coudl take a survey that took me minutes and I save 25 dollars on my health plan - I cannot imagine how someone wouldnt take it.

It is in this instance that I too believed that ICTs hinder connections. At an community town hall meeting in November, we used a paper survey and received double what we recently received from a January event. The same amount of participants; the similar content; nothing exceptionally variable occurred between the two meetings- yet by merely counting the number of survey participants, it seems that people feel safer with paper than on the internet.

Perhaps there is a fear using electronic survey will incriminate them and paper is non-traceable- however, with this notion perpetuating in my work culture- we will never have a loop of feedback.

End All Be Email.

Classroom:

A few weeks ago I posted an article on our class discussion board regarding no email Fridays. This notion that management eliminated the use of email on one day shocked me! I went through the discussions regarding that post and thought more about the idea of elimination emails or even elimination meetings on Fridays, as one classmate suggested.

Here is the article for reference: http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=2939232

I guess what startled me most about this article was not that 2 million emails were sent a day but that the workplace was seemingly improved by this elimination. The articles relays that "workplace relationships were improved." My surprise dervies from how such a tool that seems to solve our communication problems, alleviates some personal engagement ones.

I sat today and pondered what my work place, what my work day would be like without email. While I find it to be a resourceful tool and effective, I also find it to be our crutch. Why pick up the phone and call someone when I can shoot them a quick note? Why go walk over to someone's desk when I can stay in my own? It's not lazinesss that hinders social workplace interactions. I believe it's convenience that does. Email is convenient because it's immediate as a phone call and we are able to have doucmentation of that outreach. And that's what we really need, right? Documentation, documentation, documentation.

What we have learned in the classroom is that communication technologies can negatively affect an environment. We have also learned that communication technologies are tricky to implement and to be adopted by the workforce.

Cubicle: While email is adopted by my workforce, I do in fact believe it is too heavily relied upon. There are times when it is necessary but on the opposite of that, there are times when it is not. We discussed our communications vehicles and discussed eliminating the e-newsletter which is produced and distributed weekly. Before redesigning and investing in what we saw to be a "dying cow" we tested its absence in the workforce and not only is there a need for a weekly communication- ie to deliver account events, happenings, news, etc, but there was a notice of its absence. Upon the relaunch of the new e-newsletter, we received some positive feedback, receiving any at all to me is great! But it seems that this vehicle which is not new in theory or practice, brought new and refreshing content. My point here is that email sends to be the end and be all of communication in the workplace, but I really am interested to see what happens when we start to eliminate it to improve the workplace and furthermore what the next end all and be all communication technology may be?

What is social media?

Cubicle:

While sitting at my desk today, typing away on our weekly newsletter to be distributed shortly, a visiting consultant pops her head over and asks me. "What do you call things like Twitter, Facebook, etc. Interactive media? Networking tools?"


"Social Media" - I answered her, confident in my response.


"Is that the technical term?" she asked me.



In fact it is. So I looked up what social media. According to my favorite wiki, Social media are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and "building" of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences. Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM).

The above picture I found to be clever. Get your twit on. I laughed out loud.


I digress. I continued to research and although I practice social media- I wanted to assure that I was preaching was in fact the whole truth and nothing but.

It is vast and somewhat scary the endless tools and the power of social media. See what I mean by these startling facts: (like 60% of All AMERICANS use social media)

http://thefuturebuzz.com/2009/01/12/social-media-web-20-internet-numbers-stats/

So of all my research in my effort to describe what is social media- I found this. Social Media in Plain English. By the people for the people. http://www.commoncraft.com/socialmedia

It's a great clever video and by far my favorite interpretation of this phenom called social media.

You Push...I pull....

Using another ICT to define the Technology Push – Market Pull Strategy discussed a few class sessions ago. Wikipedia defines it as:
The business terms push and pull originated in the logistic and supply chain management[2], but are also widely used in marketing.[3][4]
A push-pull-system in business describes the move of a product or information between two subjects. On markets the consumers usually "pulls" the goods or information they demand for their needs, while the offerers or suppliers "pushes" them toward the consumers. In logistic chains or supply chains the stages are operating normally both in push- and pull-manner.[5] The interface between push-based stages and pull-based stages are called push-pull boundary or decoupling point.[5]
Because I am a visual leaner, there is a diagram, courtesy or Wikipedia.



At first thought when I think about a strategy that pushes and pulls I think about a grade school bully, taking lunches and pushing children in the dirt. Isn’t that what we sometimes imply anyways? The consumer is bullied into pulling goods towards them, while the suppliers are seen as “door to door salesman” pushing the consumers towards the lure of a new product, a solution to all the workforce problems.

In our class discussion, we examined which aspect pushed and which aspect pulled. Is new technology introduced because there is a need or is new technology introduced because consumers crave it? We discussed the highlights of this strategy along with the negative effects of implementing pushed technology.

Cubicle Experience

From a bird eye view I have experienced both push and pull of the discussed strategy. I have been a part of the workforce that must change its process in order accommodate a new time entry system or a new system to expedite the proposal submitting process.

Regardless of experience in this push pull strategy, I have found without support and proper implementation it is costly and frustrating.

Currently, my work revolves around internal communication. With that said, communicating to employees can be daunting- they are already swamped with emails and visit enough websites that communicating to them must be effective for both recipient and sender. So in order to do that and appeal to short attention span mentality, we decided to use video messaging, however, with the consumer pull of having a video camera, there lacked a part of the process. There was no pull- because of the restraints we exist in- we are operating and selling a medium with ineffective software.

For as negative as the notion of push pull tends to imply, it seems that one needs to exist to propel technology into the workforce.

Why? Why? Why? Why?

Classroom:
For a great summary of our in class discussion visit http://dabidnesscom.blogspot.com/. Professor O'Donnell's blog our class discussions.

Last Thursday our class discussion centered around the Ishikawa diagram (fishbone). Invented in the 1930's by Toyota Found Kiichiro Toyada’s father Sakichi, the 5 Whys strategy involves looking at any problem and asking, why?” and “what caused this problem?” Five Whys offers simplicity, effectiveness, comprehensiveness, flexibility, engaging, and inexpensive methodology to pragmatically finding a solution.

Cubicle: Applying the 5 Why’s to Email Communication

Situation: Because our workforce is located directly on a client site, we have all been provided with client email addresses, to book conference rooms and other on site access needs. Resources are often missing emails because Internal Communications is sending to corporate email, per email guidance. However because we are not reaching our full audience we are having to send duplicates emails may times, increasing chance of error and increasing time cost.

Why are we not reaching all resources via email?
Even though we are a Global account, we are still not reaching all resources via email. Resources are checking either corporate or client email and not on consistent basis.

Why are they not checking them consistently?
Depending on the employee’s workforce, the laptop will be imaged to meet client software or corporate software. Many on site resources have client imaged laptops therefore making client email more convenient.

Why is it more convenient?
Having email available once you turn on your laptop vs having to go to an external site. This extra steps hinders resources from checking corporate or client email depending on the image.

Why don’t we specify distribution lists based on preferred email?
Because the Account is constantly changing, it is much more difficult to actively manage the 4000 person distribution list based on personal preference. Active rosters populate distribution lists, twice a week.

Why don’t you create another vehicle to distribute information?
Email is essential to the Account, because of the Global presence, however, our internal extranet can be leverage more effectively to serve as a central communication tool. It is accessible at any location with a log in and password.

ONE Solution: One solution to the difficulties surround email communication is to leverage the internal portal page and maintain and update to keep as informational and effective as possible.