Replying to LO24768 --
Dear LOers,
As part of our strategic 'planning' process, we intend to initiate and
foster a lively intranet based exchange.
In the past we have learnt what does NOT work: Design a structured
database, provide the structure somewhere apart from the operational
system and expect the people to fill the data in. This should have become
the 'fact-book' as base for strategic decisions. Those assigned to make
the system work live a sort of Don Quichotte life - independent of whether
it is a small database of a sales group or a full fledged Siebel CRM
system.
I have called this approach a 'law and oder' approach. It may work for
accountants whose job is to accurately track the business development. It
does not work for salespeople who cannot see the benefit of such a
factbook for them.
We are now introducing a companywide implementation of SAP as a new
operational system and design it such that the part of the factbook which
rely on operational data will be provided automatically. The machine will
have to take care of the 'law and order' part, especially process
improvements designed for benefits at the front line of sales - customer
history, shorter lead times, relyable committments etc.
For the rest of the factbook, I talk about 'give and take' as opposed to
'law and order': Share that information available to you, which would
directly be benefical to you if someone else would have shared it. We
think that this as a basic philosophy should have a chance to grow.
Practically we intend the following as a first step:
- Provide a newsgroup with a starting set of keywords for the subject
line, so that members can easily see whether a news may be of interest for
them at all.
- Add a feedback mechanism on the value of each news, by letting those
who read the news rate it from 0 to 5.
- Give some incentives to those members who shared the most valuable
information in total.
- Evaluate the news-sharing and feedback pattern in general to learn
about possible improvements.
In the spirit of 'give and take': I have shared what did not work and what
we intend to do. Please share your experiences and intentions as well.
Especially I am interested in any DO's and DON'Ts and CAUTIONs from your
experiences:
1.) regarding the newsgroup (or whatever else) design.
2.) on how to introduce the newsgroup to the people: how much training and
facilitation will the system need until it becomes part of daily work like
the telephone or e-mail.
Looking forward to any suggestion, comment and critique.
Liebe Gruesse,
Winfried
--"Winfried Dressler" <winfried.dressler@Voith.de>
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