eROI Days Email Agency

If you missed Part 2 of the “Inside eROI” story, please read it before you read this blog post. Read Part 2 here >>

Next steps
On the evening of Day 3, I put in another late night and accumulated all of the process improvement ideas that employees had given me in our one-on-one meetings. There were over 50 improvements with the same primary objective: to get people from all departments talking to one another and involved earlier in projects to have more strategic input and ownership. The suggestion with the biggest impact was to create a Process Team with representatives from each department to roll out new processes across the company. All employees really liked this suggestion.

On Day 4, I called an all-company meeting and printed a copy of the 50 improvement suggestions for each employee. We reviewed the first five suggestions as a group then decided to have the Process Team continue the discussion and create an action plan for implementing the chosen process improvements. These improvements all fell into the following categories:

1. Training and education improvements
2. Project strategy process improvements
3. Support tracking
4. Q/A improvements
5. Project launch improvements
6. Better centralization of resources

A week later, we held our annual departmental goals meeting. In this meeting we review and discuss the strategic and performance related goals each department establishes for itself. Normally this is a very dry, low participatory event but this year, it was much different. The energy and enthusiasm that began with the one-on-one interviews carried over into the meeting where the annual goals we discussed. There were some phenomenal takeaways. Despite being out of alignment as a company, it was clear that we all had similar ideas for getting re-aligned. Each department presented and talked about similar concerns, goals and even ideas for reaching their goals. The energy continued to build.

The next week, the Process Team was formed. They met, outlined their rules of engagement, some of their objectives and agreement on weekly meetings. I am not in these meetings, but received a presentation (along with the rest of the company) with an explanation of what was covered and next steps. Ultimately, I’ll be in the loop on all process changes, but the Process Team is truly driving these improvements.

Internal Branding Workshop at Black Butte Ranch, Central Oregon
In years past, we had always utilized this retreat to review the forecasted goals each department had set for itself. This year, I had decided to do things differently. Even prior to the one-on-one interviews, I felt our time at Black Butte would be better spent diving into a company-wide branding workshop. Call it fate, planets aligning or dumb luck - the timing couldn’t have worked out better.

In the weeks leading up to the retreat, I challenged our VP of Client Services, Maureen Pimley, to pull together a branding workshop that would involve the entire company. She assembled a team of five folks that all had branding backgrounds. As important, they represented a cross section of new and old-guard employees.

There were three objectives for the workshop: establish a clear and consistent brand voice, define our core brand attributes and define our corporate values. They narrowed down and assembled a dozen branding exercises that would each in their own way begin the process of meeting the objectives of the workshop. Also, to level the playing field for the non-vocal vs. vocal employees, each person was presented with their own workbook to write their answers on. But this was not all business. They incorporated a fun ice-breaker exercise with prizes, used a lot of visuals and inserted a couple of exercises towards the end that prompted group interaction to come up with their thoughts. Each exercise, bit by bit, helped to narrow the focus on the essence of the eROI brand.

The brand team led the workshop in the morning, introducing each exercise and guiding the discussion to keep things on track. Once each exercise was complete, the company broke for lunch and the brand team regrouped to compile the results for presentation back to the group in the afternoon. The purpose wasn’t to provide the answers to meet the objectives, it was to share and discuss our answers. It was here that the benefits of the one-on-one interviews again came into play.

While I had the benefit of hearing each employee’s constructive information and opinions in those interviews, for the most part, the rest of the company had not shared them with each other. What ensued was a very lively, mostly constructive, three hour long discussion about our brand, our values and our direction. I sat back and let the discussion happen - participating when appropriate. Okay, I was ‘instructed’ by the brand team to do this. It was very difficult at times but I took a ton of notes to keep myself occupied. Were there periods where we got off track and wandered into prickly topics? Yes. But in all, the information that came out of the entire day was then and is now proving to be invaluable for our culture, our company and our brand. Not to mention, as the founder of this company, it was an awesome sight to see that the majority of the people working here are truly passionate about eROI. We all want nothing less than to be the best.