And IT folks, too: IT professionals typically want to ask: "How can UC help you?" or "How can IT fix something for you?" Wrong.
We hear a lot about the need to involve business-unit leaders in IT strategy (and vice versa). I agree that needs to happen, and indeed, that's one of the key characteristics of companies whose executives view IT as a strategic asset (rather than a cost center).
But this leads to many questions: Who should run the projects? Who should seek approval and funding? Who should communicate the vision to IT, business units, and executives?
Often, large IT projects are most successful when several people from different areas of the company take interest. For example, a large financial-services company decided to implement telepresence suites in about 30 global sites, and high-definition, room-based videoconferencing in most other locations. The plan was to reserve telepresence for executives, and high-definition video conferencing for all other employees. The business justification for each is to reduce travel costs and improve quality of life for all traveling employees.
The VP of global telecommunications led the project from the IT side, while a business-technology liaison was aligned with the executive team to sell the idea to several C-level executives, including the CEO and CFO. This approach was successful because the VP of telecom focused on the technology issues and challenges with IT, while the liaison focused on the business benefits to the executives. Some of the business-unit leaders were so impressed with the plan, they became stakeholders, too.
But because so many individuals at all levels of the company had poor previous experiences with videoconferencing in the past, the IT staff suggested the liaison also engage the corporate marketing team to "market" the program internally. In the end, a core group of business and technology leaders spearheaded a program that became highly successful in terms of real dollar savings and employee productivity. But there was a lot more happening behind the scenes that helped, too. For example, the CIO--who was not the project leader--was an advocate. By doing so, he built consensus within IT right from the start. He conveyed the importance of the project to managers and directors, who in turn, did the same with their reports. The CIO also backed the VP of telecom in determining who was going to own which pieces of the project, helping to eliminate IT staff in-fighting over who would control the project.
And backing up even further, the company first identified a need for videoconferencing. IT professionals typically want to ask: "How can UC help you?" or "What can we do with virtualization?" or "How can IT fix something for you?" Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. That mindset is what keeps IT locked into being a cost center.
In order to get to the root of business problems, liaisons must ask a different set of questions that resonate with the business units. They simply don't know how IT or specific technologies can help resolve their problems. They do know what gives them a headache, how they could improve customer satisfaction, what the key problems are in their workgroup.
In this case, the liaison asked various business units what problems they were experiencing day-to-day. It was just a general question, but he heard several similar issues: The company was quite distributed (both within the U.S., within Europe, and globally), yet employees still had to work together, and basic phone calls weren't doing the trick. For those who required face-to-face interaction, international travel was becoming tiring and personally draining. Thus, the idea of video conferencing was born within this organization.
A successful liaison must possess a few key characteristics: He or she must be trustworthy, likeable, and approachable. This person must genuinely want to understand problems employees face, with the goal of resolving them. It's a good idea to hold these conversations outside of work, perhaps at a lunch meeting or with an after-hours cocktail, to provide a more relaxed setting.
During those meetings, not only is it imperative to ask the right questions, but to do it in a way that is sincere. A structured set of questions is good, but if the employees feel they are taking a boring survey, they won't open up. So it's important to have those structured questions in mind (or on paper), but don't be rigid. The meeting should resemble a conversation between two trusted colleagues, rather than a phone call from a Gallup Poll survey-taker. There are some general questions the liaisons can ask of any person in any position that provide some insight to the problems that exist.
Such questions include:
* What makes your job more difficult than it needs to be?
* What is your biggest challenge at work?
* How do you interact with your colleagues?
* What is the most frequent customer complaint you hear?
People like to talk about their jobs--what works, what doesn't, and how to get better. Key to getting that information is to ask and listen. Don't jump in with solutions. Rather, spend a lot of time listening and asking follow-up questions to determine every detail of the issue at hand. As employees start seeing IT's increasing interest in making them successful, they will come back again and again.
The liaisons must be able to clearly articulate the problem to the technical side of the house. This means they should not report what they think they heard. Rather, they should confirm with the employee(s) reporting the problem that what they heard was, in fact, correct. The best approach for this is to restate the problem verbally at the end of the meeting, and then follow-up with email to get sign-off that everyone understands the same problem.
