Digital Governance in

complex organisations

Tutorial Philadelphia 13, J. Boye

conferences

Facilitator… more than

anything

I come from a small organisation that

focusses on knowledge sharing

between digital professionals. We are

very driven by customer demand and

steered by our ambitions and our boss’

vision. Decisions aren’t made

particularly long term but the sales

process is always long.

Our HQ is in Jutland, that is different

from Sealand where I operate from.

Agenda

09.00 – 09.10 Short introduction

09.10 – 09.40 What is governance and how much do you need?

09.40 – 10.10 Excercise perspective

10.10 – 10.25 Reflections on excercise

10.25 – 10.40 Break

10.40 – 11.00 What is management?

11.00 – 11.20 Leadership

11.20 – 11.40 Culture eats strategy for breakfast...

11.40 – 12.00 Some next steps to get going, and some great tips from others

who have done it

Technology

Marketing

Sales

Design Usability

User Testing

People Management

Customer Service

Commercially astute

Portfolio Management

Partner Mngt.

Stakeholder Mngt. &

Engagement

Education and training

Visionary

Analysis –

impact of

digital in

offline world

Presentation and

communication

Competitor analysis

Creative and think-

out-of-the-box

Risk and Compliance

awareness

Change Management Strategic

Result-oriented

LIKE SUPERHEROES – WE AS A DIGITAL PEOPLE RELY UPON SPECIAL WEAPONS, POWERS, SKILLS

eCommerce

Multi-channel/device

Team/org.

Development

Lead digital

transformational

change

Manage BAU while

being strategic

The stakeholders When is Go-Live?

How hard can it BE?!!!

I need more

layouts

Lunch?

Help

I just don’t like

this colour

What do you mean

it’s the font in

our brand manual?

What do you

think? I wanted a web site,

NOT a governance

project

Your definition of (digital) success?

New Standards,

New normal

Head aches

Too much content

The wrong content

The wrong technical platform

The technical platform is owned by the wrong

people (or disowned by the right people)

Don’t have the right team

Don’t have the right mandate over the team

Don’t have control over project portfolio

Spend too much time doing the wrong things

But...not everyone are equally frustrated

Some have a plan

Some have a management that understands

the importance of digital

Some just seem to get the job done

Some have a better understanding and

acceptance of management and executive

decision processes than others - So, how do you know that you need more

governance?

- And what is it that you need?

It starts with play

Survival

Support systems and people who break them

Infrastructure problems

Make sure that the

rules are a help, not just

something to

circumvent

Your governance structure?

Line of command?

Support systems?

Measures to enforce?

What are the weak spots?

Speed networking

1.Choose a challenge you are currently

dealing with

2.Ask for advice from 3 different people, one

by one (you get 4 minutes with each)

3.Then change from asking for advice to

giving advice

Reflections?

Did you get different input from different

people?

What suprised you?

New input?

Getting the right decision through

Management and power structures

There is always governance somewhere

• Brand and identity strategy

• IT Governance

• Growth strategies

• Consolidation strategies

How are executive decisions made?

Logic?

Rarely long term

Gut feeling

Authority

Organization type

Safe choices

Prestige

Who has authority in your organisation?

What is good leadership?

How is your role model doing it

Leadership DNA

Hard work and lot’s of insight, constant double checking Trust, but follow up Always demand a little more, but not too much – push outside the comfort zone Commmunicate, communicate communicate Be visible and network Set the right team and work it

What are the best qualities in your leaders? Prioritisation is always possible

Do you lead?

Looking for a model...?

Slides from J. Boye 12, Philadelphia, Kristina Podnars Governance cook-book

Culture eats strategy for breakfast

Culture

“…that complex whole which includes

knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and

any other capabilities and habits acquired by

man as a member of society…”

EB Tylor 1871

Culture in your organization

• How are decisions taken?

• Who can overrule

• The role of a specialist versus manager

• Looking for perfect?

• Consensus driven?

• Idealistic?

• Materialistic?

• History or Future?

Factor in culture

Beware of trigger points that are different from

your own

Definition of leadership

Double check common understanding and

sense:

How is your manual read differently

What is an order?

A complaint?

Is there a conflict, or isn’t there?

Gender

Next steps to get going – tips from your peers

Organisations in general coordinate too little and publish too much

There is too much content

Content is a liability

Not enough accountability, in the necessary positions

We can see how centralization could be an option but what if:

The decentral organization is a political head count game?

Centralization takes more time than we think

We have decentralised the web editing to make sure content is

maintained by the subject matter experts and always updated and

correct

We want a CMS that is more user friendly so the responsible people

will do a better job

We need to spend less time on first line support

We need to do more training

We have no control over our message and brand

We can’t do SEO because we don’t know our content

We want to be more proactive and spend more time on development

not maintenance

Your elevator speech? The problem seems to be that

our editors spend too little time

working with digital media to

have any chance of staying

abreast with how to write for

Google, or handle imagery, text

etc. Furthermore they get no

recognition for their work and it

becomes impossible for me to

argue that they need to prioritize

online. When they actually DO

something on the website the

quality is usually sub standard

and they often reinvent the

wheel because they haven't read

the manual. I do a terrible

amount of first line support and

haven‘t got enough time to get

our other projects finshed on

time. blablablabla...

Make the problem easy to understand

Make sure you have a plan and

stakeholder buy-in

Acknowledging that the central digital strategist

should do more than administrating the

common platform would change the power

strucure

Creating a digital strategy takes 3 months (give or take a year)

Fill the void

Don’t loose momentum

Choose visible projects

Communicate successes and results

Communicate risks

Limit your message to stakeholders

Always look and ask for solutions

Look at the real reasons?

Hidden headcounts?

Politics?

Don’t show the tools?

Source: uxforthemasses.com

Who will use it, Think carefully before you show a ”non-digital” your tool

Be tactical about showing design

Action plan and road map

Det politiske spil

?

Don’t talk about tools

What they needed to know to invest in SML

Save money on focus groups, reports and other

market analysis

Crisis management

Budget share between PR and Research dpt’s

CALL IT SOMETHING ELSE... ”ONLINE LISTENING”

What management needed to know about

your content problems

Massive amount of the editors are infrequent (response rate: around 300 /perhaps 1000 editors to online questionnaire):

- 45 % of the respondents work less than 4 ours /week with digital

content, homepage and intranet

- 41 % of the respondents work less than 1 hour/week on digital contents,

homepage and intranet

- 24 % are responsible for 1-5 pages in total, the rest more

Progress indicator: Decreased page count Fewer editors with more responsibility Freed central resources spend time on projects looking forward

When things change rapidly

Helena Hed, Digital Manager at Assa Abloy:

”We were just about to really roll out our new

strategy with CMS upgrades, editor training,

new identity and new team members, and then

everything froze because of a merger... What to

do?”

Focus on product marketing in it’s smallest building blocks

Don’t be afraid to

know better, but don’t

overspend and don’t overcommunicate!

And if you can’t get the formal GO to do the

right thing, find another job or do it anyway

because What is there to

loose?

Talk more?:

Twitter: onlineredin

Linkedin:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/sararedin

Email: sr@jboye.dk

Phone: 4530277990