Email is dying on the vine. I don’t know that it will ever go away, but it is on it’s way out. I’m sure some people said the same thing about fax machines a few years back, but look at how they still linger around. As social media becomes more and more ingrained in our society, our communication is becoming more social as well.
Today I’m going to explore some corporate communication concepts and scenarios that I’ve experienced. As more and other forms of communication arise, we need to know how to incorporate them into our businesses. Remember, speed and agility are good thing in business and technology can help us improve in both of those areas.
An Intranet
Towards the end of 2012, I recognized the need for improved communication within the furniture company and I made a push to set up an intranet. No I didn’t spell that wrong, an intranet is an internal system of communication that is not shared with the outside world. Scot Berkun does a great job in The Year Without Pants
One of the great leaders in the organization, Dennis Reed, and I came up with a google site that housed stock photos, pricing documents, and availability reports that could be accessed anytime. These were normally items I would have to send out to people via email, but that was taking up too much time and it seemed wasteful to me. Instead of one person distributing 1 document to 50+ emails, why not put that single document in the same place every day and update it as soon as it was ready? Hence, the ABG intranet was born.
Now I didn’t expect this to catch on like wild-fire, I knew it would take six months to a year for everyone to fully grasp the concept. But if the company as a whole could embrace technology, we would have had a huge upper hand within the industry. There are multi-million dollar companies that operate off of pen, paper, & a single fax machine in the furniture industry. Imagine if technology was embraced and what that could do for the business???
GetLua
In the beginning of 2013 we met with a company called Lua about using their technology to improve our communication. Lua provides users the ability to call and direct message (their form of email) people in their own private network through a mobile app. The key to their software was accountability, everyone can always see if & when you open your messages, ensuring that everyone is on top of their work at all times.
We had just expanded from one location to three in Charleston and it was my duty to make the three stores cohesive in all ways. One of our biggest challenges in that scenario was logistics. We were dealing with physical products, not something that is email-able. The products need to go from the main warehouse to the ancillary stores, from store to consumers, and occasionally from store-to-store.
We met with Lua to improve our delivery system, and determine if they were a good fit for us. If they were, we would consider using them with the entire company to replace the afore described intranet. In this particular scenario, it could have been a good fit had our system been further developed.
When we met with the guys from Lua, our system was still maturing and we hadn’t seen what sort of snags would actually come up. Ultimately, we weren’t in a position to purchase their technology at that time. Even though it wasn’t a huge investment, it would have raised the cost of the delivery system and we didn’t have a budget set out for it.
The biggest “win” for me was that we were actively looking to replace the ABG intranet, which was soon to run out of capacity and needed an aesthetic facelift in the worst way. It was a step in the right direction, even though we did not use it, we were seeing what was available in the world.
Google Hangouts
The intranet was simple in the beginning, an MVP if you will, but it did everything we needed and more. I saw this as an eventual place where personal success stories would be shared as well as tactics and forums for discussion/help.
People did not catch on to it like that, and it’s quite possible that I did not do my job as a leader to promote it that way. When I recognized this fact, I came to the conclusion that cohesiveness needed to happen in some other way. Enter the Google Hangout.
I talked about Google Hangouts (think Google’s version of Skype) when I spoke of Epic Day, but this was actually my first interaction with them. I began using Google Hangouts each week to talk about marketing & recruiting tactics. I held them at the same time each week and anyone that could join me that was interested, I was showing up no matter what.
It was around this time that the deterioration of my opinion was sinking in and my departure was just around the corner. I never finished my work improving the corporate communication at the furniture company, but I knew (& still do) that store to store communication is the key to the growth of that business. It can’t come from one source, the lines of communication have to be open across the board if real growth is going to take hold.
Conclusion
If you see an opportunity for improved communication, implement it. Don’t wait, don’t second guess yourself, do it and see the magic unfold. By the time you weigh the pros and cons, you will be left in the dust by your competitors.
I outlined some of the lessons I learned from Epic Day earlier this year and one was our need for more communication despite g-chats, hangouts, emails, and monthly get-togethers. If we had better communication, Trav and I both agreed we could have ended up somewhere completely different than we did. I can only watch from a distance with the furniture company, but I sure hope they embrace technology to improve their corporate communication.
Where is your opportunity?
What sort of technology does you company use to communicate?
How can you leverage technology to improve communication within your organization?
—
Chat with me on Twitter or leave me a comment below, I’d love to hear where your company can improve their corporate communication concepts!
Have a great weekend!
