Rowan's blog

The Integrated Digital Plan

I have been noodling with Integrated Digital Planning approaches for around three years. I lead the digital planning effort for IBM Marketing and Communications globally which involves the ongoing creation and cross-functional coordination of methods, development of guidance and learning materials with stakeholders incl. discipline planning and skills leaders and the Talent and Learning organization.

The latest iteration of the 'Integrated Digital Plan' chart:

(View full size on SlideShare)

Some explanatory points:

• Listening, content, media selection, metrics and analytics are core pillars of digital marketing and communications.
• Other pillars listed (social engagement through to virtual events) to be selected as part of the Engagement Plan based on relevance to the Objectives, selected Constituents and their local digital usage behaviour (Insights). This list is not exhaustive, for example you could run a Digital Jam or use Collaborative Software. Technologies will emerge over time that facilitate engagement in new ways.
• Frequency of iterations to be decided (loop in orange along the base of chart). The more frequent the iterations, the faster the plan will become optimized.
• The Engagement Plan is required in order to define the Management Plan – and vice versa. Think of them as two sides of a coin.
• If resources are sufficient, more than one Business Priority (Input) could be addressed at one time.

 

First, thank you to George Gallate (Global Chairman Euro RSCG 4D) for tweaking my pencil drawing, turning it into the pretty colored chart shown above and creating a full sized billboard (for use at the Digital Strategy Workshops):

Second, I'd like input on this approach. Is anyone else out there attempting to operationalize this kind of planning process within a large enterprise / organization? If so, I'd love to hear from you.

IBMers can replay a presentation & discussion on the Integrated Digital Plan here.

Many of my recent posts relate to this approach, including:

• a conversation with Tony Zambito
• my post on Building Constituency: A communications approach for open leaders which overlays the Constituents, Listening, Engagement Plan, Measurement, Analytics and Iteration portions of the Integrated Digital Plan, but through the lens of building relationship (rapport) and co-creating value with Constituents.

Other posts describe the business transformation challenges involved in implementing this kind of approach including my latest ramble, on the parallels between:

• the internal transformation organizations must go through to keep pace with the external technology revolution we are all experiencing with digital/social communications and
• the outstanding strategic change plan Major James Gant outlined in 'One Tribe at a Time'.

I'm sure my thoughts on this topic will continue to evolve, as the transformation within IBM gathers further momentum and results - and as I learn more from others.

Input welcome via the comments section below.

 

Mexico, Milan, Madrid

At work, I'm part of a team driving the effort to increase, optimize and integrate the use of digital in marketing & communications plans across IBM globally. This is a pretty challenging transformation effort, requiring large scale changes to enable constituent-focussed integrated planning (moving from inside-out marketing and communications to an outside-in approach).

As part of this effort, we run Digital Strategy Workshops. My Manager @EthanMcc, Vice President @benedw, colleague from another part of the business @DMBeckmann plus our global agency partners from Euro RSCG 4D @gallate and Ogilvy @howardpyle, and I, are continuing to get out to more IBM markets this year.

Workshops in Mexico, Milan and Madrid

In the last two weeks we ran workshops in Mexico, Milan and Madrid.

It was wonderful to meet the local teams, including local Digital Leaders I've been working with for some time. It was good to better understand their business priorities, local gaps/opportunities and market landscapes. We worked with these local teams to improve IBM's capabilities in digital, drive deeper integration between internal functions around digital and, ultimately, to identify ways to meet their growth objectives by developing integrated marketing and communications plans with digital at the core - the next steps for their markets in this transformation effort.

Many thanks to Leobardo V Mendez in Mexico, Paolo Carnevale and Loredana Galante in Italy, plus Luis De SopeÑA Pastor and Particia Jimenez in Spain for all your hard work to make these workshops possible. It was wonderful to meet you finally!

I'm not sure what I would have done without the tremendous support of my colleague Denise Beckmann who looked after me when I got sick with laryngitis (when I arrived in Mexico City). I couldn't stand for more than 30 seconds and had lost my voice (not that I could speak Spanish anyway)! Also, big thanks to staff at Sheraton Suites Santa Fe, Mexico who, on request from Denise managed to get a friendly and professional Mexican doctor to my hotel room within 40 minutes and were very kind and helpful.

Photos from the workshops are up on Flickr. Some of my favorites are below.

Mexico:

 

Milan:

Madrid:

 

Japan

This time last week I was en route from Australia to Tokyo, where I joined IBM and agency colleagues from the USA, Singapore, HK and of course Japan, for the Japan Digital Strategy Lab. I thoroughly enjoyed the workshop and meeting our 70+ Japanese colleagues during Day 1. The photos are up here.

Some of the team at end of Day 2:

NB. If you're ever in Tokyo, I recommend the Green Tea flavour KitKats (but not the French Cheese flavour so much, eew). I was upset not to find the Wasabi flavoured ones. Pocky sticks were nice too.

Of course, the sushi was to die for (thank you, fish)

:s

 

The evolving nature of how companies organise for social

Jeremiah Owyang from Altimeter Group recently posted results of a survey on how social strategy programs are organised.

How is IBM's social strategy program organised? I'd say it currently looks like this:

Based on the Altimeter Group graphic, my guess is we will see an evolution in the nature of how companies organise for social from:

1. 'Decentralised' or 'Centralised' to
2. 'Hub and spoke' or 'Multiple hub and spoke / Dandelion' to, finally
3. 'Holistic'.

Having said that, I don't believe social can be separated from digital as social is relevant to all digital content (and digital, in turn, cannot be separated from marketing, communications and support - in fact all functions that touch the client / customer). Changes driven by technology are necessitating change in (and integration between) each of those department structures, so I think it would be more holistic to look at the organisation of social in relation to those too.

Do you agree / disagree / see an alternate option?

 

ADDED 22 Oct 2011:

If you've read this far, you may be interested in IBM's journey:

IBM's journey to social business

View more presentations from Rowan Hetherington

Photos from 2010 Digital Labs

Photos from the 2010 IBM Digital Strategy Labs are up on Flickr. I can't seem to work out how to embed the collection into this post, so you'll have to click this link to view them.

One more Digital Lab to go this year; Japan. We will be there two weeks today. I'm looking forward to it (and the food in Tokyo)!

Google, can you find my slippers?

I've been really busy lately. Not just like the 'busy' I was before.

I guess this is what happens when you set yourself a big mission at work, (which recently turned into an official global role) involving lots of o'seas travel, start a part-time post grad course and commit to moving house from Sydney to Canberra (for my husband's work).

If I have any available free time in Canberra, at least I will be able to entertain myself by suggesting to Canberians that polititians replace themselves with crowdsourcing (see my previous post). That should get some classic reactions ;-)

I have another idea on how to use the additional capacity of the National Broadband Network; augmented reality search engines. I've been complaining to Google for a long time that they don't help me find my lost horseshoes. Soon I will be adding plenty of household items to that list (e.g. the items hidden in box 38, located at the bottom of the pile of boxes in the storage room, waiting to be unpacked).

Given the world is becoming smarter with billions of data sensors in products, wouldn't the natural next step be to design tiny microchips (smaller than the ones designed to track rubbish) that could be placed on all your items (or inserted as part of manufacturing), then build an augmented reality app search engine to find them... Kind of like this app which IBM built for Wimbledon, but enabling us to find our kettles, misplaced iPhones, favourite slippers (which my dog likes to take into the garden) and keys...

Would this be useful to anyone else out there? Who do you think will provide this solution and how long do you think it'll be till we get it? Hopefully I will have had time to find my slippers by then...

 

Going global

I'm at the end of my whirlwind tour. In the past two months I visited cities in six countries for work (Hong Kong, Taipei, Dubai, New York, Bangalore, Seoul) and two for holidays (UK and Thailand, en-route in between the work trips).

The work I mentioned in my earlier post on managing change in the digital environment now has much broader (and much more senior) ownership, which is necessary and very exciting. Why? The second of John Kotter's change management steps is to develop a cohesive guiding team:

• Assemble a group with enough power to lead the change effort
• Encourage the group to work as a team

It was great to spend time with the big brained senior IBMers and agency leaders who hang out in the concrete jungle that is New York - and exciting to see the guiding team develop. The digital workshop has evolved and improved - it was wonderful to deliver the Bangalore and Seoul workshops as a part of this large, talented team. Pics are up here: HK, Taiwan, Dubai, Bangalore (no group pic), Seoul. See photos from all the workshops.

More workshops in more countries to come. Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to humming along to the Qantas song "I still call Australia home" as I complete this trip today.

Hong Kong and Taiwan

I mentioned in an earlier post I've been working on rolling out a new approach to marketing planning, which involves placing digital at the centre of the marketing plan.

Last week I ran two-day workshops in Hong Kong and Taiwan with a colleague. It was great to meet the teams and see a little of two new cities. I've added the pics to Flickr here.

HK and Taiwan teams - thank you for your wonderful hospitality!

Next stop, Dubai.

Managing change in the digital environment

I don't often talk about my work on this blog, but initiatives at work over the past few months have renewed my interest in managing change, which I do want to talk about - and request your support with!

At work, my role is Digital Strategist / Leader for IBM, Growth Markets (officially within 'Brand System', working closely with Demand Programs and Market Management, which all sit within IBM Marketing and Communications). Back in June 2009 I started to work on overarching digital strategy guidance for the Growth Markets - and the business process management around it.

Digital: Strategic approach

An implementable strategy covering all Growth Markets would not produce optimal results, since the market conditions in countries such as China, India, Korea, Sth Africa, Russia, Poland etc are fundamentally dissimilar (incl. IBM prospect/clients use of digital tools, media and technologies). Also, local objectives are different in each country - in fact the breadth of IBM's offerings mean IBM's objectives are different for each audience within each country. So I created a 'Digital Planning Roadmap' which each country / Program team can follow to build a solid, locally relevant digital strategy & locally implementable plan.

The idea is that this digital plan should sit, embedded in the centre of the broader local marketing plan. Digital tools/tactics relevant to the audience in the market would be interwoven into the overall contact strategy for that audience. (I should add that this was already happening in many places, but a consistent approach had not been formulated.)

Digital: Business process management

Ideally, many parts of the business would be involved in the creation and implementation of a locally developed digital plan (because digital is relevant to many parts of the business). Therefore, the next step was to create a Cross-functional Digital Lead in each market. This person's role is to drive effective, coordinated use of digital in their market cross-function using the 'Digital Planning Roadmap' approach - and optimise their country's use of digital over time. Essentially, this person will be the 'Digital change agent' in their market.

A global 'Digital Community of Practice' has been set up to enable and support these individuals, utilising Enterprise 2.0 collaboration technologies (plus the good old conference call)! The objective of this de-centralised community is "to eliminate redundant efforts, to amplify learnings and best practices across IBM and to build the critical mass of talent and energy that will command more focus and funding".

The number of community members has passed 60 140 and is ever-growing - as is the wealth of experience, expertise and guidance the community members are able to share with one another. It has been very exciting to bring this to life and it is gratifying to watch the community start to develop its own momentum as community members use the forums to reach out to one another.

Why am I requesting support / information?

I just read Rawn Shah's article in Forbes: "Enterprise 2.0 Changes What Kind Of Leader You Need To Be". His article prompted me to write this post, because, while I think it is fair to say I meet his definition of "one of the new leaders" (not necessarily people with titles and management authority; rather ones who fuel group efforts to produce results), this is something I want to get better at. If you happen to be doing something similar, I would love to compare notes!

I am in my element when I:

• can work on a big game-changing opportunity (in this case, 'how do we embed Digital into the marketing mix to best effect, to meet our specific objectives')
• have the freedom to develop / sell the approach and 'rally the troops' (in this case, global as well as Growth Markets marketing teams)
• am facilitating the process (making things easy).

BUT I would not call myself an expert in large-scale organisational change management. I am hungry to learn more.

Long term, I'm keen to hone my leadership and change management skills so that I can make a larger impact with projects that involve digital (my area of specialty) and change management within IBM & the corporate world. I'd also like to be able to contribute in the area of animal protection (my other passion) / social issues.

I'm starting a Graduate Certificate in Change Management at the Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM) in Sept. Meanwhile I found a wealth of information on the topics of digital and change management (shared below)*. If you share my passion for this area and/or know of people, organisations, blogs, initiatives etc that I might be interested in, please leave a comment / get in touch!

Many thanks.

*Resources on Digital and Change Management (in no particular order):

• Presentation - Managing change in the digital environment (IdeaGarden)
  
• Lots of presentations on Change Management on Slideshare
  
• Groups covering Digital and Change Management on LinkedIn
• Ashoka (Innovators for the public)
• Ashoka - article on Games for change
• Games for change
• Altimeter Group blog
• Groundswell blog
• Drink Digital - talks
• Heart of Change (book) site
• McKinsey Quarterly
• Social change group on Vimeo (I created the group, please add relevant videos)!
• 'Tribes' by Seth Godin

Note: The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent the positions, strategies or opinions of my husband, my dog or any company including employers or clients.

Student Insights on Smarter Cities

IBM held a Smarter Planet University Jam, a massive online collaboration event where nearly 2,000 students offered their progressive take on what would make a better, smarter world. 

The students from over 200 universities in 40 countries discussed a number of topics, including the environment, education, work skills, and healthcare.

"Students are confident that their future will be a smarter place – a world where they will drive cars that get 100 miles per gallon, learn in virtual classrooms connected with students across the globe, and where they can run their businesses on a secure, energy-efficient and interconnected grid. They are boldly challenging the industry to transform that vision into their reality, and IBM is committed to meeting that challenge," said Jai Menon, vice president of technical strategy and university programs, IBM.

“The Smarter Planet University Jam was one of the most exciting and innovative experiences I have ever been a part of. IBM is setting the standard for the corporate world to start learning from the people that depend on them,” said Taylor Vogt, a student majoring in political science at Pace University.

Much of the jam focused on progressive and smart-growth ideas related to water management, healthcare, universities, open source technology, and city building.

“This kind of free-flowing forum is extremely vital to the sustainability movement, where far too often good ideas are never shared or worse, never listened to. I was proud to be a part of this experience,” said Vogt. 

Sounds like it was a success. Read the full details in the 'News In Business' article.

Jeremy Hodge + a couple of the interns at IBM, Daniela Retelny and Michelle Morrison put together a short video reflecting the results from the jam as well as another survey they conducted independently among a group of college students. The video is now on the 'Building a Smarter Planet' blog.

*The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.