Ludovic Fourrage and "The Liberal Enterprise"
Very special thanks to Ludovic Fourrage, Group Program Manager from Microsoft for his answers (below) about "The Liberal Enterprise." I asked Ludo for his thoughts on this as I'm working on a chapter for Employee Involvement in regards to trasnsparency. Ludo also works with my friend Paolo Tosolini and both are in charge of MS's Academy Mobile, an amazingly robust internal program at that allows people to create content within MS for fellow employees.
Please describe the basic concept of “The Liberal Enterprise.”
The Liberal Enterprise represents a new set of operational models that corporations could use to empower their employees, resulting in increased productivity and employee satisfaction. Rather than limiting employees with rigid operational models and systems, Liberal Enterprise uses technology innovation to bend those models and improve employees’ ability to choose how to work and perform. Liberal Enterprise touches every key aspect of a corporation: how it goes to market, sells, educates, influences, hires new employees…
In terms of employee segmentation based on knowledge (employees needing to learn what they’re actually interested in, etc) how can new technologies/media break down segmentation and empower employees? Both to be better workers and to be brand ambassadors. (via a blog, podcast, etc. And please feel free to discuss Academy Mobile in the sense of giving employees a voice—that’s a great case study as I know from doing the presentation with Paolo at The New Media Expo).
That’s a great example. Traditionally enterprises will segment their workforce by roles. As an employee you will be put in a box: you’re a sales, finances, marketing person etc... Enterprises will provide you with
1) information on company policy, general guidelines and information on the industry or field, legal issues you are supposed to be familiar with (such as sexual harassment laws, violence in the workplace…) . that’s easy: it’s mainly dictated by law, company guidelines and 2) what you should know in order to perform in your role. That’s the tricky part. How do you define that holistically for every employee in a given role? Commonly Enterprise will look at economies of scale and simplification, by building unique training programs that will satisfy the majority of the population.
This “one size fits all” strategy assumes that every employee in a defined role needs the same information, independently of their location or their customers’ needs.. Furthermore, it does not account for the diversity of the employees’ experiences/backgrounds, job goals, and career aspirations. As a result most employees seek for knowledge outside the official channels, starting with their peers.
That’s where new media, like audio or video podcasting, can play a great role supplementing this model. With new media, knowledge is no longer segmented by role but by topic of interest, each topic being very short and specific. How often have you ended a one-day training thinking, “Only the last 30 minutes were really relevant to me”. The promise of new media is to give you straight access to these 30 minutes, and stop wasting the employees’ precious time.
Ideally, each employee can be given the opportunity to find and select the knowledge he needs, based on search engines and metadata information. The goal of the corporation becomes fostering the creation of these knowledge nuggets by leading the creation of core content, as well as helping employees to create their own and share them with the community.
“Academy Mobile” is the perfect example of what the Liberal Enterprise can do. This platform, simply YouTube built on Microsoft SharePoint, enables you to find videos, and also identify subject-matter experts/podcasters. There are more than 1200 unique podcasts on the platform to date, 6 months after release.
In this model, employees trust the knowledge they receive directly from their own community, and feel compelled to share their personal perspectives to these topics. That way, they are also more efficiently trained.
I see your point in terms of the need for employees to relate to a company’s history. Beyond the “how” of things in terms of employees relating to a company’s history, I’d also like your thoughts relating to the “how” in regards to what they “can” and “can’t” say in terms of their company/brand. We’re working in the book to find the delicate balance between “good” transparency (making a video poking fun at your own product if it engenders trust for customers) versus full disclosure or “bad” transparency (an employee ranting against a policy at work on a personal blog, divulging information about a product too early, etc.). How can organizations help employees push the envelope in regards to old PR practices (approved press releases only) and the “let it all hang out” mindset where some think you should be able to video everything and comment unabashedly in every online forum?
Let’s assume for the sake of this discussion that the corporation is genuinely interested in empowering employees. I’m not talking for example about employees complaining about Walmart labor policies, because then good and bad transparency probably takes on another dimension.
So let’s take Microsoft - where I work - as an example of such a genuine corporation.
We now have more than 25 years of history, with key products like Windows being around for more than 20 years. Do you remember how long it took for enterprise customers to say that “Windows Server is Enterprise Ready”? Most of it was because of our history and perceptions were built around Windows NT. We had an Enterprise Ready product with Windows Server 2000 and still customers were telling us it wasn’t ready.
Keeping record of our company’s history – and its products - is the key to having a relevant conversation with a customer. It can transform a feature or price list conversation into a trusted relationship. How to accomplish this? An idea is to maintain an internal Wikipedia, that on top of providing general information on the company will focus on its products’ history, internal and external perceptions. Some sort of “collective memory,” that will also play a role maintaining the enterprise culture.I haven’t heard of any company doing this diligently today…
That’s a good segue into your other question about what employees can and can’t say on the web. It’s all about knowledge. Knowledge about your topic: get the facts. Academy Mobile or other Liberal Enterprise tools can help you do that. Social knowledge: respect your audience and everyone’s opinions. I realize this sounds very naïve, but how many of us too often think we know while we in fact assume…? If you are in fact stating your opinion, make sure that is clear.
Finally, if employees want to be taken seriously and act professional, they should act as stakeholders:
- If you like your company, say it and say why
- If you don’t like your company, and won’t try to change it, then quit.
- If you don’t like your company and want to change it, then get the facts, and be professional in the way you communicate.
Your work will also definitely help in the delivery of commonly accepted guidelines regarding what to say / not to say and how to say it. I think it will work in the long run with a well educated, professional and smart workforce.
I’m currently writing a chapter about Transparency in Sales and would love your thoughts on “why can’t corporate marketing truly empower sellers.” Beyond knowing the details of a product, how can salespeople get more support from their company if they’re on the front lines? Why can’t salespeople be welcome brand ambassadors versus a necessary evil? Any thoughts on making sales more transparent and implementing those policies in a larger organization is very welcome.
I think the answer lies in implementing several concepts that I started to describe earlier, like interest-based training to empower employees with the knowledge they really need, giving them access to the enterprise memory, etc. The ultimate goal is for sellers to become what we call at Microsoft “World Class Sellers,” people who are very smart about the products they sell, who really understand the pitfalls and strengths, and who can show humility rather than arrogance when discussing them with their customers.
Spin is inevitable, unless a miracle happens and overnight all companies stop spinning their messages. So at least companies need to equip their sellers with the knowledge they need to go beyond this necessary evil and be more credible before their customers in a 1:1 or 1:few environment.
There are also ways to improve how marketing campaign engines empower sellers in their relationships with customers. Today most marketing campaigns are based on this model:
1) Content is developed 2) Event is scheduled 3) Customers are invited from a list (from internal CRM, or a purchased list) 4) Customers are surveyed for next steps 5) if all goes well the customer will then be contacted by his seller to follow-up.
In this workflow why is the seller the last person to know about it?
In the context of an enterprise relationship, when sellers have established and trusted relationships with their customers, customers are often receiving invitation emails from a vendor’s robot (rarely from the actual company, since it’s almost always externalized), sometimes with little relevance to their business pains or goals. This out-of-the-blue invitation will be perceived as spam by the customer and forwarded to his seller.
The seller will then have to spend cycles go back to the source, figure out what the event is about and try to make sense of it for his customer.
This subject got me very interested a couple of years ago and I spent some time developing a new integration model where marketing campaigns would be executed through the managed relationships sellers have with their customers.
Any other thoughts?
Like any significant evolution in the way enterprises perform and operate, it starts with technology innovation and is quickly followed with new business and operational model opportunities. Enterprise 2.0 today is too much focused on the technology innovations and not enough on the business operation opportunities. That’s what I’m trying to achieve with the definition of the Liberal Enterprise: transforming these new technologies into operational improvements and efficiencies. What satisfies me the most is that at the center of it are PEOPLE. Liberal Enterprise means a People-Ready Business! :)
