Name: From Storm to Strategy: Building Communication Excellence for 2025
Uploaded: 2025-03-11T17:16:05.061Z
Duration: 1 h 1 min 32 s
Description: From Storm to Strategy: Building Communication Excellence for 2025

Transcript for "From Storm to Strategy: Building Communication Excellence for 2025": Hello, everyone. You are here for, our webinar from storm to strategy, building communication excellence, and we are so happy you're here. This is the part where I usually say, oh, let's wait a minute for people to join us. But, you know, honestly, we have a lot to get to today, and we want to make sure that we, see all of your comments, your questions, and reserve time at the end to, maybe work through some of your scenarios too. So let's just go ahead and jump right in. First of all, my name is Kyla Turner. I am a strategy adviser here at Firstup, and I am joined by my good friend, Jason Anthoine, who love to have you back again. Your voice is always one of the best for internal comp. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. I'm glad to be back. I'm really excited about this, topic in in particular. I am too. So really quickly about our backgrounds. Really, Jason, I think you and I do similar things. We we have a let's we'll say a highly seasoned careers, several I don't even wanna think about how many years of experience there are between both of us, through corporate communications, internal comms, several different industries. I know in my background, there's airline transportation, retail, supply chain logistics. There's some health insurance in there. You have manufacturing and several others. So Yeah. Yeah. Manufacturing, health care, financial services, technology. At one time, I worked for the nation's largest funeral home chain. So they just have a lot of different industries. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. So we are here today, to really go through, from our perspective and from what we are seeing through several studies, including one of our own that we did in in part one of this webinar, what communicators are facing and what we can focus on as we go through this year, which already looks like a big year of transition, maybe a little bit of upheaval as well. So if you are joining us from, our first webinar so this is actually the second of two. So thank you so much. If you saw the first one, this is where we outlaid the perfect storm. We shared the results of a Firstup communication study published in late January that focused on the challenges of reaching nondest or frontline employees, really all of your employees. And our host then, about a month ago, dug into the reasons why these employees are still not getting the information they need, and they're still feeling heavily disconnected from the flow of your company information. And the study showed three overarching issues that really contributed to this feeling that our employees are facing this perfect storm, and there you see them. Technology is accelerating at unprecedented speed. The workforce is reaching an emotional breaking point because of the the absolute noise and overwhelm of all the information they're consuming, and current communication strategies are still not reaching everyone. I'm gonna add still in there because I think this is something that we face all the time. Definitely. And I love that, you know, you talked earlier about, you know, how many decades we have between us. These three things are also the three things that were true five years ago, ten years ago, fifteen. It doesn't matter what the technology is. It's, it's breaking at an unprecedented speed, and the other two things are are typically true as well. They're certainly true now, and that's what we're gonna spend, you know, the rest of our time together talking about is what we can do to help. Yeah. And this is you know, because I really started looking at studies that were conducted late last year and, early this year, ours wasn't the only one. So we know that these three elements are top of mind for chief communications officers or your highest ranking strategic comms leader. But there were several other studies that came out around the same time, including one from Gartner that said these are the top three trends coming into 2025 that they really feel should be priority for your CCO and for your comms team. And this is what that looks like. So top three trends for CCOs from Gartner, growing business led communications. How and I think that one's really important. Jason, we're gonna come back to this one quite a bit. Yeah. Uh-huh. I'd love to see that one in there in the number one spot. Number one spot. Yeah. It's where it needs to be. Yeah. Agree. Also, very important this year, how AI contributes to business success. That is understanding, how that contributes not only for us, but also, of course, for your employees and making that very clear. And then navigating again, speaking to the perfect storm, navigating that information overload. And I just had to pull out this stat from Gartner because this one nearly blew me out of my chair talking about the overload of information and what your employees are dealing with. Employees now spend more than 40% of their day consuming information. Think about that. All your employees Wow. With almost 30% reporting feeling overloaded by the sheer amount of it. And this is what's killing me. This comes at an estimated cost of 4,600,000.0 per week for every 10,000 employees. Per week. That is astounding. Yeah. Astounding. And if you don't have 10,000 employees, then you can do the math. You have 5,000, then, you know, it's 2,000,000. Whatever it is, it's still a big number. You know? It doesn't matter how many employees you have. Agree. Agree. So all of this is coming together. You know, there was another excellent survey from Paige. It was conducted late last year that includes all of these plus two pieces that you might be thinking that we're missing, which are, how are businesses handling DEI and maybe rolling back or scaling back on some of that, those initiatives. How is that being communicated? And, also, they really trust, touched on trust and that there is declining trust because of all of these things. So, I'm gonna stop there and ask. This is this is gonna be a really grassroots, nonformal poll, no buttons to push. I'd love to see everyone is, showing where they're joining us from, so thank you for putting that in the chat. I'm gonna see now if we can change, gears and say, what what would you add to these lists that we're talking about from Gartner, from Paige, from our own perfect storm? What is top of mind as one of the challenges that we're facing specifically this year? What is number one on your list? Go ahead and throw that into the chat. That's how we'll do this poll, and we'll see what's on your mind as well. I can think of one. I think there's a big one that we're not talking about yet. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And the the other thing that's interesting on this on this Gartner stat is employees are spending 43% of their day consuming information. Now, of course, that's not all not all, you know, our communications, obviously. But at some type of communication, that's almost half their day. So if they're consuming information almost half their day, then they're only, quote, working the other half of the day. So, I mean, you can see the effects of these things, not just overload by all this information, but it's showing up on, you know, quarterly results and bottom lines and turnover and every other thing that all your organizations are measuring. It's true. Absolutely. And I'm seeing I'm seeing a lot of it looks I'm I'm looking at the chat and seeing that the overarching theme here is change. Uh-huh. Yeah. Change too many channels, too much overload still, just the fast pace of changing from topic to topic. I'm seeing a lot of change management. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of that. A lot of lot about channels. Good bit about trust, which always comes up hand in hand with change. Several comments around DEI and regardless of what mandates might be, how do we still do it, in a way that, celebrates, everyone who works there? Deskless workforce. Wow. Yeah. That's that's always a huge one. Agreed. So, yes, love keep keep pouring these in. This is great. This is exactly what we wanna talk about because all of these, everything that you're putting into the chat, everything that we've gone over, you know, and especially even with outside forces and the amount of change from day to day that's really looking us in the face, it's all getting stormier. We talk about the perfect storm. I think now we are in even stormier weather. I know. And what's interesting to me is, you know, we cited those three surveys. I think all three of them were conducted either the end of last year or the very beginning, of this year. And here it is only, you know, a couple of months later, and it feels like all all of those things are now bolded, underlined, and, like, 70 type. Like, whatever whatever however people responded originally now, it's like they're yelling about it at this point. Yeah? Yeah. It's a lot. And so as I as I went through and researched all this, went through all the studies, went through ours and looked at it, of course, this is what I'm thinking is there's so much that was, put on the shoulders of our CTOs. And I thought, well, how are CCOs responding, and what are they saying? As they as they prepared to lead into this year, which we all knew would be different from any other year, what was their thought going into it, and what is their perspective on getting their teams through this? And overwhelmingly, I saw the same the exact same answer from all CCOs in every interview that I looked through it, everything that I watched. The the thought was the same, and that is focus on what we can control and narrow our scope to do fewer things and do them better. So we're not talking about simply subtracting the amount of work we're doing, although we've we've talked a lot about volume, but focusing on the right things. And that's the building those stronger business outcomes that we all know comms can produce and pushing back on the things that we have done for a while or we've we've set up something and we're still trying to see it through that aren't really laddering up to the top strategic priorities. Yeah. And, you know, one of the things that comes along with change, especially for us, because we're always on the whip end of it, it feels like, it's just feeling like things are out of control. We're out of control. Like, we don't have any control anymore. And one one of the easiest ways to combat that feeling is to narrow down everything that you're trying to control. Some things you can never control, so don't don't spend any time on those. But on the things that you you do have some control over, how can you narrow, your span of control and really, you know, focus on doing fewer things and doing those better? Just that by itself will will, will have a huge feeling of relief, around all the things, that you're responsible for, but then really focusing on the ones that make the biggest impact, and that will give you a a feeling of of having a a bit more control in a situation that feels totally out of control right now. I agree. And if we think, you know, this is what we're gonna be focusing on today, is doing the right things that are drive your business, lessening the amount of overwhelm, and the noise competing for your employees' attention. I feel like if we're focusing on the right things, then that's gonna help us prioritize the right things for our employees. I this is this has become my mantra. It's it's Brene Brown. This this now follows me through everything I do, and that is clear is kind. And so the clearer we can make things for everyone, our comms teams, for our frontline employees, that is the best thing we can do for them, especially when you saw there's that emotional, breaking point that everyone's in. Everyone just feels overloaded. There's too many channels. There are too many comms. How can we narrow it down to do less that leaves us some space so that we can react to whatever's coming, you know, in the coming year, but also just helps us I think that's what's gonna combat the noise. That's what's really going to focus people's attention, helping people prioritize. That's one of the best exercises I can do when we feel overwhelmed is what's priority here and what can we jettison and put aside. And what does that look like? How can we do that in a way that we can get our organization behind us in doing it? I think we all have that on our list. How do we stop doing the things we know to stop doing? But there's a little bit of uncertainty and fear there of, can we really stop doing it? And I think this is the time that we have to. I think that we're in these unprecedented times. Think about COVID not that long ago and how because of those unprecedented times, we were able to overturn the way we did things, overturn rules that had been set in place and processes that had been driving the way we did things. We overturned them in an instance, and we started doing communications differently. But since then, we might have built back some of those structures, too many channels, too much information. And I think now we're we're facing a similar time where we really need to, go back go back to the basics and go back to our foundation foundational piece. Yeah. It it's it's funny that you mentioned that about, COVID. I believe I've read this morning that today, actually today, marks the five year anniversary from when, you know, most global health organizations declared, you know, the pandemic and a lot of the, you know, rules kinda came into place. It's for most of us, it feels like yesterday. Other for other people, it feels like fifteen years ago. But I think your analogy is spot on there, Kyla, in that, you know, we are now entering a a different phase of something that is also kind of unprecedented. And just like we adjusted, during the pandemic, we can also adjust during these times as well by, you know, narrowing our focus and making that narrowed focus even stronger. We did it before. We can do it again. Yeah. I agree. So let's do that. Let's do that for the rest of the time we have together. We are going to go through some workshop. I think that's everyone's question. You know, where do we start? What do we do first? I think we know what we need to do and how do we do it. And I'm just gonna say to tackle those big boulders, those are the important things, you have to eliminate some of the rocks that are in your way. This is this goes to comms transformation one zero one. This is the time that we have to transform. Let's dig in and do it. And I think you have a a great lens to really get us started on focusing on what matters. Yeah. So, throughout the rest of of this conversation, I'll probably say things like big c communications versus little c communications. Big c are the kinds of things that we do, out of, internal comms function, and the little c communications are all the other communications that happen across the organization, formal, informal, everything else, that we, do not do ourselves. Mhmm. So when I say those things, that's what I mean. And so when we talk about big rocks, that's big c to me. You know? Those those are really important for the organization. And when we think about the types of things that are important to the organization, especially now especially now that they have also narrowed their focus, around the things that matter more, doesn't mean other things don't matter. It just means that there are now some things that matter more. And it's typically these three things. Are the things that we're doing, do they generate revenue? Are they helping us control cost, or do they mitigate risk? Is it one of these things? Is it a combination of two or three of these things? But this is the focus, of every business, typically, at any time, but certainly right now. And that's why it's important for us to also think about things in in these three areas because this is about as narrow a focus as an executive team can have about how to continue operating the business. And it really falls into these three areas. And if that's how they're thinking and that's how they're operating, then we need to be doing the same thing. And so we're gonna talk, a good bit about how we incorporate these things going forward. I do wanna give a little shout out to my friend, Sonia Fiorenza, who, really sort of described these three things, so pointedly, in this way. And I think what we'll see is that with all this change and, frankly, disruption that's going on right now, you know, we can use all kind of words like unprecedented or unusual or, you know, all those types of things. It it it creates ripples across an entire organization. And, you know, if if we feel like we're overwhelmed, if our employees feel like we're overwhelmed, well, guess who are also employees? Our leaders. They are also feeling overwhelmed. So, somebody told me a long time ago, if if people feel like that they're drowning, that is not the time to teach them how to swim. But but what we need to do in that moment is to help them. And so if we want to help our organizations and we want to help our employees, then these are the three things, these are the three life preservers we can throw at the organization, at our leaders, at our employees to help them. I agree. And I think it really frames it up for what we're trying to do is focus more on those business led conversations. So that if you do get any pushback from people in your organization saying, but we have to do this and we have to do this, these three things really give you that that piece to look back on and say, our job is to support the business, support our our strategic initiatives, and so we really have to look at this lens. Do do the requests that are coming in, do the new projects that are coming in, do the new changes really fall under these of generating revenue, decreasing costs, or mitigating risk. And that really gives you a license to say if it doesn't fall under these three things, then it's really not a priority for now. And we can't add this to, you know, our list of what we're gonna do for this year. We have to filter it down by these, and we can go forward as using these as justification for what we work on in the future. Yeah. And, also, through that other lens I talked about, big c versus little c, just because we decide from a big c perspective that this is not a priority for us doesn't mean that it's not a priority for somebody. That's fine. If you wanna go off and do that on your own, mister or miss leader, feel free to. We can tell you how. We can, you know, help you be better at it. That doesn't mean we have any time to actually do it for you. But if it's important to you but it doesn't make the criteria for it to be important to us, then knock yourself out. Go do it. I'm sure the reason it's important is because you know your employees in a way that we don't. So, you know, you're you're all free to do that from a little c perspective, but our focus is around the big c stuff, primarily driven whether it it addresses any of these three things. Agree. 100%. And so the rest of this webinar, we we wanted it to be a little workshoppy feeling. Normally, this is where Jason and I would get out our spreadsheets or our docs, and we'd say, okay. Let's start brainstorming, and let's share this, and let's move these things around and help you form priorities. With our webinar software, we can't do that and go back and forth. Mhmm. But what we're gonna do is share some example sheets, and you'll see these are pretty foundational. They are just there to get you started. If you want to follow along with us, in the docs tab in your, your setup for this webinar, you'll see, a document called Kyla example sheets. What you'll find are some very, foundational tables where you can follow along. And if you want to start listing out what we're talking about for yourselves, you'll see these are populated with some examples. I'm just going to speak to them on a slide. Here we go. We're gonna start with the boulders, those big prep business priorities. If you want to download that and follow along, great. If you want to write it on a sheet of paper, great. Here's what we're thinking is that this gives you a good starting point so that you can whether you are the leader of your team, if you are a contributor of your team, which I also oh, I think is a leader as well, is to take these back to your team and really realign on these priorities. Because, again, the the most important pieces that you can filter down to in your work, taken out and put into practice for your employees, this is what's really going to help reach them with what they need to know and help lessen their overwhelm. So first things first, we're gonna tackle the big boulders. And as you see in my screen up here, I have listed out some examples of fictional company, fictional priorities, but I'm sure you've all been through this exercise probably pretty recently at the end of last year. Maybe you're working on it. It is still first quarter. So you have probably presented your your organization's main goals, your top priorities, business initiatives for 2025. And, hopefully, there are probably about three to, let's say, five of these that are overarching. This is what the company as a whole needs to focus on. And so you'll see my examples here, fictional examples again, but increased commercial revenue. That could be one that we're seeing across the board through many industries, and you see a couple of sub items there. New maybe you have a new product, new service, new market segments that you really need to grow that revenue. In this in this example, grow loyalty program, integrate AI, that's the third one. I kept that one intentionally vague. I feel like AI is a priority for every business. And what does that look like for every different business? Probably a lot lots of subcategories under that one. And then I put a couple of people focused ones because I feel like these are always important as well. In this example, maybe it is a return to office mandate. You have some requirements. People are now returning more so where they might have been working remotely or or hybrid. You know, what is the type of what is your initiative that is top of mind for your employees that there might be some pushback against or some change, a little resistance to change. And then, of course, I always I I align with this one because I feel like this is always top of mind is, strengthening the culture, that kind of one team culture across your business. Yeah. And as you said, a lot of these typically end up being the things that are right out of your strategic priorities for the year. You know, you might have three. You might have five. You know, some organizations have more than that. But what they all what those priorities all have in common is that, in almost every single case, they ladder up to the three things we talked about before around revenue and cost, and risk. And so as you as you're looking at whatever those priorities are, and then trying to rank them, in your organization, perhaps increasing revenue is the most important thing. In someone else's organization, perhaps mitigating risk is the most important thing. So what this is is an exercise for you and your own organization to determine, you know, of those three things, which one, if possible, is the most important? And then how do we line up all of our strategic initiatives under those three buckets so we'll know, alright, if we need to spend a whole lot of time around mitigating risk, then that leaves us, only, a certain balance of time that we're gonna spend around increasing revenue and decreasing cost. Another organization might be the exact opposite, But it helps, to think about it that way because then you can start prioritizing and force ranking things, which then gives you yet another sort of, as I like to say, an old monopoly get out of jail free card when somebody comes and asks you to do something. You can say, hey. Doesn't mean it's not important. Here's where we're focused. If it doesn't align to this, we're not gonna be able to, use our resources on that. But here's a way for you to do that yourself, Because, you know, if it's a priority to you, it doesn't mean it is to the rest of the organization, but here's a way that you that you can get that done yourself. While we continue to sort of stay focused on, you know, these boulders, these big big rocks, and all the big c communications, that go around them. Yeah. And, Jason, don't you think also all of these are important. If you've got five initiatives for your organization this year, they're all important. They're all strategic. You're you're going to put them through this different lens, as you said, of, you know, are they focused more on growing revenue? Are they focused more on cutting cost or risk? And what's most important to your organization? But I'm gonna take I'll make a bet that out of the let's say you have five or six. Out of these, there's usually one, maybe two that really truly is the most important priority for your organization in this year or, let's say, the first half of the year or the second half of the year. And I think that's where we can even filter more of, you know, you're going to be supporting all of these. And, hopefully, you're putting programs in place to cover, you know, employee sentiment, to address change, and to address culture. But let's say your number one priority for your business is to grow your revenue. Revenues have been stagnant. How can you align your employees to grow revenue? And I think that's where we can really even hone in to, you know, what's the one thing that's gonna move the needle for the business. I will tell you at Firstup, we have five OKRs for 2025, and every single one of us know which one is the most important. And I think that that's a huge win that comms teams can do is, as you're saying, force rank these and then time them out. You know, I did that here where I said, okay. In this in this example, revenue is the highest priority. So let's say increasing commercial revenue, that's number one. So let's tackle that in the first half, and then let's add on in this example, like, the growing loyalty program second half. And really focusing in to say, you know, what space can you make so you could make this a huge campaign? And I think a lot of times, we have communicators that are like, yeah, but growing revenue, you know, not everyone's in sales, not everyone's in marketing. How does that touch everyone? How can we really, illustrate that everyone's job ladders up to this? And I always say this is a great time when communicators can be educators where it's more than just informing your employees, hey. This is an important initiative. This is what we're focused on, and this is why, and then just leaving it at that. But instead, I think there's a lot that we can do that moves the needle if we're improving business acumen. And we're saying, this is the most important and here's how it affects you and here's how it affects the cycle of our business. And I think that's a huge win that then you could take, you know, to your executive team and say, this is how we want to really align everyone's you know, filter out the noise and align everyone to what the most important thing is. In this case, it's it's growing revenue. So I think there's a lot that we could do there even to filter these and determine what's the highest highest priority that's really gonna make a difference for your company this year and what do people need to focus on. And you could do that in a variety of ways. I know we we all have lots of, good examples for this. I can say at Luvs, when I was at Luvs, we had one where, you know, everyone thinks of growing revenue. That that's our retail locations. If you've ever been to a Luvs, we have brick and mortar. They are selling gas. They are selling things. Yes. That's that's operationally how the revenue comes in. But what a lot of people even within our own company didn't know that there was a piece, you know, the wholesale, the buying the fuel arm, you know, within different headquarters down in Houston, and there were a lot of initiatives around that team one year. And so we did a whole campaign where we really focused on what does this team do, and how does their success truly affect everyone else in the entire company. And we kind of walked through this very visual example of it starts here, they have to maintain this level of standard, and then the next team takes it, and then you have to perform at this level. And it really connected the dots between what people were doing and what your role is in the organization. And I think something like that can be key. Absolutely. That what a great example that that is. You know, there's always in most organizations, there's some sort of hidden part, for the rest of the organization that is responsible for generating revenue. For example, I have a client, that's a grocery store chain. And so we've all been to a grocery store. We know how inflation has adjusted those prices. So there's just a lot of price pressure on the sort of retail grocery store side of their business. But they have a whole other side of their business, that wholesales, what you need to run a hospital cafeteria or your restaurant or, you know, some sort of, you know, food operation at a university. So all of that sort of wholesale side actually has more margin, maybe less revenue, but more margin than the retail grocery store side. So if if in that organization, what they're trying to do is really increase revenue on the retail grocery side, that's gonna be difficult because of all the price pressures and, you know, some of the lingering in place questions that that we have. That's a lot easier to do on the wholesale side. You know, if it's already a higher margin kind of business and it makes a little bit more money than the the retail grocery side, then what can we do to get more customers in that area? How can we sort of change the understanding across the organization about how key that thing is, to helping us meet our numbers when the whole rest of our business is, you know, almost sort of handcuffed, where we are right now? Yeah. Absolutely. So, yes, I know that the it's first quarter, again, you have probably looked at your key business priorities. I'm going to challenge all of you to do that again. Put them under this lens, see how you can filter even more, and develop, an even stronger campaign around the thing the one thing, maybe the two things that matter most. And we would And another thing real quick is, you know, a lot of times, even though we're in in in in in the situation that we're in, leaders are always reluctant to do something that feels kinda risky and is gonna impact the entire organization. Like, it's already a house of cards right now. We don't want you to, like, jiggling around these things so the whole thing might fall apart. So I'm a huge fan of pilot programs. So let's pretend for a minute. You work in a retail organization, that has, brick and mortar stores across The US, and you have four regions. Pick one region. Usually, you're the one that's not performing the best. Pick that one region. Do a specialized internal communications campaign where the leaders of that region talk about the importance of customer service and customer experience and who our competitors are and what they're doing that's unique and different and how we need to respond to that. Do a specialized internal communications campaign for that one region for one quarter, and then look at the results. Have did you impact same store sales? Did you impact, you know, customer experience surveys and and people like, shopping there more than they used to? Like, look at all those things and see what kind of difference you made in a very risk free sort of limited way that doesn't make everybody else nervous. And then prove it out and say, alright. In this region, we're able to do this and have this much of a difference in those KPIs that we are measuring that are important. All we have to do now is take the same thing and do it in the other three regions. Then you're much more likely to get that approved because now all the risk is gone, and you did it, you know, in a very sort of safe way, to prove your point. It's the best way to test, and it gives you those those data driven results. No. That's that's amazing. And that's that's how we should do it. And okay. Let's let's see let's see the next thing now. Let's go to the second second tab. So I wanna make sure we get through all the tabs in our worksheet. And this is, eliminating the rocks or or, as you say, little c communications. How do we, free up space on our plates so that we can be more strategic? And my my key here, you see the spreadsheet and, again, very foundational. Just start listing out all of the things that you do, that you your commitments, your cadence, what are you doing that that is taking up your time weekly, monthly, quarterly? Which ones are the most important that need to stay with comms and with your strategic acumen, and what needs to be moved out. And what I say is, what can you automate and what can you delegate? So automating it, making it easy for others. I see a couple of, questions that have come in. Like, does anyone have a toolkit or guidelines you can give leaders to manage little c comms like these? And what I say is, you know, again, make it as easy as possible. You know, if you have a template, if you have an org announcement that goes out every quarter or as needed, what is that template? You know, if if your HR team is the one who knows of those promotions or or moves within your organization and you, comms, are handling that, give it back to HR. I mean, that's the people who own that information and have it, if they have a template and a process and something they can do that is quick and easy, I think that is key. Help them automate it. I see another question come in here, like, what role do you see AI playing? I think this is where AI can really help you out is if you don't have a template or a process, what a great prompt or query that you could put into AI and say, you know, we need a cadence for sending out this kind of comm. What do we need to do? And then you've just developed a playbook in an instant to hand that off to the people who actually own it. Yeah. And and and you could go one step further with that AI example. You know, show HR that the way to get this written by AI is to take things from this person's LinkedIn page and also from their, resume, load those into AI and have AI write the, the announcement, using, you know, their own data, their own facts, their own background. That'd be another way to sort of automate that thing. And I think also an example, especially in this day and age, is who in the organization cares the most about that org announcement? That person. Right? That person is the one who cares the most for everybody else. It's just a routine thing. But for that person, the spotlight is being, you know, shown on them. Fantastic. Have them write it. Hey. I'm Jason. I'm new here. Here's, what I do. Here's how you'll work with me going forward. These are some things that I have done in my past that I think will be helpful. Yeah. I look forward to meeting everybody. Like, this is their time to shine, and who better to write that than than the actual person. I love that. That could work for me. Anybody else about That could work for someone who's taking over a new team or a new role. I love it because, Jason, I think I told you this. We do this at Firstup. You know, we have we have an internal comms platform. So that's one of the things that when you join our team, you learn the software and then we say, now write your own introduction. Make it fun. Upload a video or some photos. Tell us about yourself. And that's kind of the first piece that people do when they join first step. So I think that's huge. You know, that's a good creative way to turn something on its head, give something a fresh new look, and also move it off of your plate because it's those things that are keeping you from fulfilling your strategic destiny, I think. And it's also a way to to, remind everybody in the organization that communications is a leadership responsibility and not just a department down the hall. So if you are a leader in this organization, we expect you to be able to write a paragraph or two about who the hell you are. Right? That's not a that's not a hard ask at all. So, you know, it just it reminds people that, okay, if I'm gonna be working here, then I'm gonna have to be responsible for some of my communications, especially the little c stuff. And that just reinforces it right out of the gate. They, you know, day one. Hey. Great. We're glad you're here. Write your announcement. We'll push the button. Agree. Yeah. So that that's the second thing. Download the spreadsheet if you want. I have drop downs there for, you know, can you decentralize this? What will people need? Can you use AI to make it simpler? And let's keep going. Because now let's we've we've talked about, okay, putting on our own oxygen mask. Let's let's clean up some of our systems. Do that first so that you're making space and you're doing it in a strategic way, and then you have to take it to your employees. You have to take it to your front lines. And, Jason, you have some good thoughts on what you do first and then and then how you follow that up. Absolutely. So, you know, if you're on the Firstup platform, then you're used to looking at all, you know, analytics coming out of that platform. If you're not, whatever platform you're on, you're getting some analytics even if they're just the most basic things. But whatever you're getting, is what you've got, and it's all very useful. So the first exercise is to is to get that stuff. And then the second exercise is to lay literally lay those sort of analytics and metrics on top of what the organization is trying to accomplish. So your five strategic priorities, the the, revenues, cost, and mitigate risk sort of lens that you're looking through. Lay over what your metrics are from all of your communications channels, big, you know, big c or little c, what whatever you have the most of that you're following. Lay that over these, strategic priorities for the organization so that you can now begin to say, alright. Not not only did are we measuring all of our outputs, you know, likes and shares and eyeballs and butts and seats at town halls, We have to measure all that to know if any of our communications are any good. But nobody down the hall cares about that stuff. All they care is what the people think, feel, say, or do as a result of those outputs, so they're just worried about the outcomes. This is a way for us to show how we are driving those outcomes. So if we are pulling our metrics and then overlaying them on top of the dashboards and the KPIs that the business is looking at, now we are saying, you know, there's both causation and correlation here that we can claim credit for. Some stuff that we did, and we moved the needle, and it was only because we did this stuff. Other things I know everybody on here is saying it right now in their head. We don't have control over all that stuff. No. We have influence over it, though, and so that's correlation. So if you and HR and the safety team all partnered on a safety thing and you had, you know, lower lost time accidents, as a result, you can claim credit for that. Did you are you solely responsible? No. You're partly responsible. But then you now you've got a way to start quantifying the things that you're doing in in the comms world with what really matters, over on in the, quote, business world, by matching it up with the KPIs that the business itself is already monitored. Absolutely. I have nothing to add on that one because, I mean, we talk about this I'll go back a slide. We talk about this all the time. If you've ever come into Firstup, as a customer or talked with any of us, we always say, great. You have this new platform that's gonna enable you to reach your employees and to do it in a way where we can automate it, personalize all the rest. But But we always start with a strategy, and we start we talk about, you know, what is your business? What is your highest priority? I mean, we're really just following the the same formula we do with our with implementing our platform, and that is what are you measuring and what metrics matter the most. And that's what the slide is trying to show. Again, just an example there, you know, the the operational reporting for sales. But you have these operational pieces, that that all of your leaders are looking at. The the performance of your organization is measured on. And then just as Jason is saying, if you see in the pink there, that's just a screenshot of of first up is then how do you make those those stretches between what you're doing in comms and, you know, what location is most, is most engaged with your content, whether that's your intranet or most email opens or in your platform, who's the most engaged? Because I know we've seen it at Firstup looking at our own data that the more engaged someone is with your comms, the better their performance results. And, absolutely, we should take credit for that because it's proven time and time again. Exactly. And one of the things I hear the most, working, with folks like y'all is, yeah, we we certainly agree in in the importance of of measurement, but we don't ever have time for that or, more importantly, the money to do it. Well, the good thing about thinking about it this way is is you don't have to go out and measure anything new. The only measures that matter the most to the people down the hall are already being measured. So you just take what they are measuring, the KPIs, the OKRs, you know, whatever dashboard they're looking at, that is now the way you measure. You don't have to go out and get a bunch of money and do a bunch of other kind of measurement for this type of thing. You can just use what's already being used in in the organization and then overlay how your comms are helping to drive those things that they're already measuring and they're already looking at. And if it's not important to them, then it's not on that dashboard, which means it's also not important to you. And people will go, but it's important to me. Maybe it is, and that's little c. Go knock yourself out. Yeah. Their measurement the business measurements are our measurements. I agree. That's that's all you need right there. Yeah. Simplify. That's that's what that that's what that is. Right. And then the other thing here around, you know, we're talking about taking it to the front lines. Literally, go out to the front lines. I don't you know, if you're in a hospital, you know, go out onto the nurses' floor. You know, if you work in manufacturing, go out and sit in the break room. Talk with people at lunch and on breaks. You know? You've got people spread out all over. Go out where they are. I can't imagine marketing never really talking to anybody who might be a customer. I can't imagine doing internal comms without talking to your employees all the time. I'm not saying go out and spend $40,000 in some kind of survey and a bunch of focus groups that take forever. I'm saying you and your team get out there and talk to people. And if you literally can't get out there because of budget constraints, you can call, you can email, you know people out there, they can ask these kinds of questions. What you're trying to do is find out anecdotally and sort of from a qualitative perspective, how any of the things you're doing are making a difference for these people. So, for example, if you've got a roving Salesforce and they're so busy, you know, setting up their meetings and talking with customers and prospects, and they don't have time to even, you know, look at your your, Firstup app or email, all your big c coms, great. Maybe maybe a solution for them would be a podcast so they can listen while they drive or they're on a plane or whatever it is they're doing. Then you start that. Then you go and ask them, hey. You know, we started this podcast because we thought y'all might love it. Do you or not? And then you can find out exactly from the people that you're trying to reach whether they love it or not. And then when you take your your results and you overlay them on top of, of the dashboard and people go, well, I don't is that really true? Like, I don't know if that's true. Not only is it true by these numbers because, you know, we can't argue with facts. These are numbers. But, anecdotally, I've talked with 17 different sales leaders across The US, and every single one of them said, we would never know what was going on if it wasn't for this podcast. Thank you so much for for releasing that. Like, sometimes those types of things are even more powerful than these numbers that we can that we can overlay on these on these charts and graphs. But it's really important because it allows you to make adjustments real time for whatever those channels might be, and and it also gives you a lot of good ammunition to say, hey. We've been doing this newsletter the same way for at least seventeen years. Do you like it? No. We'd no. I don't know anybody around here who even reads it. Okay. Great. I don't have to do that anymore. You didn't even have to justify. Your the people you were sending it to had justifying it. Yeah. Agree. And and, you know, this is this is the last tab on our on our set of worksheets here, and I think it's one of the most important. I'm I'm always surprised when I when I start working with a team who may sit in the corporate office, you know, or comms team. And and I talk about, you know, what's important operationally, what do your people need, you know, specific to their roles? Because we all know they need enterprise comms and they need those more localized comms about what they need to be doing. And I'm surprised when a comms team says, oh, we don't know. You know, that's that's up to someone else. I think, yes, there there's a case for little c comms should be handled by local leaders and by SMEs, subject matter experts, but I do think you have to know what's important. You do have to have those contacts. I think have make sure that you know what's important to your frontline employees. Go spend some time go spend some time with their leaders. I think your your operations leaders, your shift leads, your regional managers, your, nursing directors, those are key. And I know everyone on this call knows this, but, I mean, that's where you find the backing for the strategic, you know, new ways of doing comms just as you were saying. And it doesn't have to be a fancy podcast. I we do we do a recording for our employees. It's weekly, and, you know, all of our employees are pretty connected. And, it is just one of our internal comms, specialists just speaking into, like, an audio, like, on Zoom. And then she uploads the audio and puts it into our platform, and people can just listen to it while they're doing other work. It's fantastic. I mean, it can be as simple as that of, you know, what do your employees want and what helps them? That's right. If we go all the way back to that first stat at the very beginning, that 43% of of people's time is now being spent consuming information. People aren't reading a 50 slides at a time. People aren't reading big books and, you know, white papers and all kind of articles. They're looking at stuff, you know, two, three minutes at a time, next thing. One minute, one minute and a half at a time, next thing. And you add all that up, it's 43% of the day. And so none of this has to be complicated. In fact, the more simple, the better because people can get what they need and get on with their day. Agree. So we have, oh, let's say a little less than fifteen minutes, but we would love to take your questions. Any specific scenarios, any challenges that you're up against that we could help work out for you, that we could help determine, you know, where should you start with this, feel free to add these to the q and a. I think we've got some. If you add them to chat, I think they'll be moved over to our q and a, and let us know if something that you're facing. If we didn't cover it, we would love the opportunity to cover it. I think we looked at, you know, how can we use AI more. We talked about, have AI help you make templates and help you make it easier on others to do their own little c comms. I I say a big thing is just get out of their way. I know we're all very focused on, comm standards and brand standards and the way we say things, and I think that's very important, that governance on your enterprise comms. But I think it's much less important for the more targeted your audiences get. You know, if it's a shift lead talking to their teams, let them communicate in whatever way that they want to. They don't you don't have to gatekeep that newsletter or approve it. Let them take it and run with it, especially if you're providing them, you know, a good template and a good quick start guide. I think that's key too. It's just letting go of some of the things we've always thought our role is. We have to help make everything consistent all the way across the board, but I think the way business is working today, like, we can't touch everything, so don't touch the things that make that are the most important and the most strategic in your enterprise comms, and that's what your role is, and then give everyone else a good support. That's right. I mean, we we can we can have the the biggest impact when we spend the most time on the big c communications. Does not mean the little c communications are not important. It does mean that we're not responsible for all of them. We are responsible for helping to make sure that they happen, but that doesn't mean we have to do them all. And so that means also, you know, feeling comfortable and letting go of things that feel almost frightening like, well, they might send out something and it could be wrong. Or I've I've seen stuff that they've sent out before and they use Oxford Commons instead of AP style. And I've we can't have that around here. Like, all that kind of stuff, you can't you have to let go of. You know? They're gonna communicate it, and whatever it is they're communicating is important, and they're gonna do it their way. And you know what? That's good enough. We're gonna do it our way when we're doing the big c stuff. And if they say something that messes things up or, oh, we need to you know, that's not quite right or causes a kerfuffle. Okay. Well, we'll help you clean it up. You know, we'll help you figure out how not to do that next time. But you're still gonna be doing it yourself next time, as it is. So, I think we just have to help them be comfortable in, in those types of situations, especially I see this a lot too with, like, town hall meetings or they're having shift change meetings or team huddles or things like that. And it's some sort of a big announcement, and we're like, okay. Well, we're gonna send all these leaders, talking points, which is helpful. We should do that. But you you know what they need more than content? Confidence. They need the confidence to be able to do that. Yeah. They don't know how to stand around and have a conversation, probably, and they certainly don't know how to do it the way we would likely do it. They don't have to do it the way we would likely do it. So you if you're in a certain size organization, maybe you have, you know, learning and development function, and there's all kind of training in there, including some comms training. It's never specific enough for the situations that actually happen in reality at your organization. So great. If that's true, let's hold a series of three, you know, thirty minute trainings on how to do team huddles, how to do shift change meetings, how to answer hard questions. You know, they don't have to be long and complicated and a bunch of slides. What you're doing is helping them have the confidence to do the things that you're already asking them to do that they're always reluctant to do because they're scared to death because they don't know how. So if we could spend, you know, thirty, forty five minutes helping them know how, alright. Check. Now they now now now that excuse is gone. Now they can go out and do it, and we can feel comfortable about them doing it. Agree. And that and we do have a couple of questions coming in. I think that speaks to there's a question about how you create large amounts of content that's personalized to different employee groups still on brand. Whew. Well, I hope you get the first of emails. We get we get a lot we have a lot coming out in our platform that'll help you do that. But, Jason, I think you just spoke to that piece of Yeah. Not only that, but if it's like, you know, truly communications, maybe big c communications, and you want them to feel personalized and customized, even if you don't have Firstup or any other kind of thing other than just, you know, regular old email, then hook that up to whatever your HRIS system so that when you're sending that out, it doesn't say dear employee. It says, dear Jason, dear Kyla, dear Jennifer, dear Miranda. Like, we know our employees' first names. It is in the HRIS data. Take that and then start using it in that way. You know? The worst the worst piece of junk mail that I get here in my mailbox says, dear Jason, surely we are at that level in almost every organization on the planet at this point. So take advantage of it. Personalization is huge. You are so right. Okay. So this is another question I get all the time. Biggest challenge is using various platforms. And it goes on to say, whatever those channels look like, you might be using Teams, the Internet, emails. You might have a mobile app. You might have all of these and knowing which one to use for each communication. I think this is a very worthwhile because channels really, really, speak to we're trying to reach everyone, but they really, help perpetuate the noise and the volume that's overwhelming people. For me, it's it's just doing that. Go back, prioritize your channels. When you put them into place or when you inherited them, what were they intend what were they used for to do in the first place, and how can you go back to that? And for me, it is the number one key to doing this right. Yes. Be intentional so that everyone knows. You know, use email for this, more formalized communications. For chat, you use Teams or to collaborate on a project. For our Internet, that is more formalized communication or our community. Let's say your Firstup platform, that is a place where we can get employee voice plus the communications that you need. Really be intentional on whatever is used for. And then the most important thing is make content exclusive so that you don't you're not just spraying the same content across all 10 channels. Then what's the point of having different channels? You need to make sure that then you align with your intention with those. And so formalized emails really get, you know, into emails and into email boxes. It's different from your team's collaboration space, and it's different. And people start understanding what types of information they'll find if they no longer see every piece of information on every channel. Yeah. I think that's an important point is, you know, start with all the channels that you have. And if you have 10, great. If you have two, that's also great. Whatever they are, that's what they are. And so define. We're gonna use email like this. We're gonna use an app like this. We're gonna use Internet like this. We're gonna use digital signage like this, town halls, shift change meetings, like list them all, and what they're gonna be used for. And I think, this is a little bit counter pilot to what you said. I think that when you do that, it is perfectly fine to have the same messages across all of those channels because what will happen is that people will then say, alright. Well, I love email, so email is gonna gonna be my channel. And, oh, I like the Internet. I'm on there all the time, so Internet is gonna be my channel. So what you're trying to do is make sure that that you're taking the information to where they are, the choices that they have made, and not trying to bring everybody to where you are or where you want them to be. And so if that means duplicate messages go out over all of your channels, then everybody that only looks at email is gonna see it, and everybody that only looks at digital signage is gonna see it. And when people talk about noise, that means I don't know where to look for what, and I see the same thing everywhere. And so I don't know how to prioritize any of that stuff. But when you define those channels that way, they stop looking everywhere. They will pick the one that applies to them the most, and then they will get everything they possibly need right there. I think that is key. I think maybe there's a compromise there of I still don't think we should spray everything across every channel. Maybe you're right. You can't put 45 slides on on digital signage. Maybe put some of the things that work better for that plat platform setup so that there's a reason why people might need to use it. There might be people in your organization who don't need to be in Teams as much. Maybe there might be some, you know, you might have your frontline employees that need that mobile experience so they can easily access something, maybe drop some feedback in there, and that's what they need most of all. And so I think that is maybe that is the thing of just really heavily defining for yourself first. Again, put on your oxygen mask first. Make sure you understand why your channels exist so that you can make it very clear for your audience of what they'll find there. Yeah. Agreed. I think yeah. So one here's a question from Larissa. How can we keep audience retention and enhance engagement amongst our employees across the organization? I think the key to that is having all of your communications be focused on the employee's needs and from the employee's perspective. So, for example, we've all seen press releases that, you know, today, the Jason Anthoine | Employee Experienced announced this. And then somebody will take you know, copy and paste that and then put that in some sort of an intranet article or something. That entire tone is from the company's perspective. What how can we then take that and turn it around and have it be from the employee's perspective? So if you want to engage me, you want to retain me, then you have to speak to me as me, not to me as the company. We there's enough of that as it is. So for the things that we really want, you know, retention around and engagement around, then it has to be from the employee's perspective. You know? The organization constantly thinks of all employees as, you know, every employee. But the reality is individual employees think of it as each employee. So you're not trying to reach every employee. You're trying to reach each employee. And if you reach each employee, you will reach every employee. But you're doing so in a way that matters to each employee individually, and then the whole thing happens collectively, in my in my in my humble opinion. No. I agree. I think, I mean, that's who's reading your comms is each individual. So how can we make it feel more personal so that it yeah. I think you're you're absolute I think that's key to so much there is never to feel like like you're just blanketing the same message to everyone. How can we target and how can we really take that perspective of our audience down to the individual person and what they need and what their preferences are? So And, oh, by the way, that's what every one of your employees does when they're not at work. You know? They have apps on their phone just like everybody else, and they wanna check their banking information. They don't wanna look at weather and sports and their banking information. They have separate apps for weather and sports. You know, that's as personalized as it can be. How can we have that feel that same way when they come to work? Because they're bringing that expectation with them, so we might as well meet them where they are. Agree. 100%. And with that, I think that's a good place to end. I think we have just a few seconds left on the clock. So if anyone is still here, thank you so much for for joining us for this hour. If there are questions that are in the chat that we did not answer, we're gonna take those and and contact you with answers and do some follow-up there because we know we've we've just scratched the surface on on where to go from here. So we'd love to hear, kind of what you do and take take forward with this. Yeah. Yeah. And I I would I would just close by saying, you know, kinda like we start we we started out with, like, where we are now is similar to kind of the pandemic, and this isn't sort of run of the mill change, like we've been used to maybe over the last couple of years. It's, to me, it's kinda disruption run rampant, especially at work. And, you know, despite all the stats and the numbers and everything you read every morning, when you first wake up and you hold your phone out there and go, what is it gonna be today? Like, you know, this is no time to, you know, to worry or or to be you know, have despair. This is a time for courage. This is a time for courage. Your employees need that. Your leaders need that. You need that. Yeah. This is a time for us to really start thinking about what we can do to help with this situation and not be, you know, panic stricken by it. And that is to keep the main thing the main thing. And the main thing right now is increasing revenue, decreasing cost, and mitigating risk. And so together, I think we can help pull all of our organizations and our employees through this just like we did before. Yes. So glad to have you today. Thank you so much, Jason. Yeah. I learned something Thanks for having me on. Often. I learn something new every time as well. So thank you all for being here. Again, we will follow-up, with any questions that were left unanswered, and thank you again. Good luck going forward. Alright. Have a great week.