MarketingMichelle

Easy Accommodations You Can Offer Without Being Asked

All employees with qualifying disabilities are legally able to request accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act. However, making those accommodation requests can often take a lot of time, be complicated, and often embarrassing for the person asking. On paper, it’s a pretty straightforward process but in actuality, it’s very invasive and draining for the person asking. What is meant to help us succeed within a culture often makes us feel more and more like an outsider. So how can we turn this around, and make your workplace culture inclusive for neurodivergent employees?

Like so many other inclusive measures, whether gender identity, race, or culture, sharing your preferences and asking others about theirs can make a big difference. Some people will need to have recorded Zoom meetings. Some people need detailed emails. Not everything can be accommodated, but the more flexible and open the culture is, the better that everyone will thrive.

Below are specific examples of accommodations you can offer each employee without them having to make a request.

Making Meetings More Accessible

Please record your meetings and offer closed captioning. Doing this can be helpful for a variety of reasons. For example, many neurodivergent people have sensory issues, like an auditory processing disorder. As a result, they can struggle to filter out background noise from the voices talking, or it can take several seconds to process what was said, so closed captions help them follow along. Check out this video to experience what APD is like. The simulation begins at 1:15.

Having dialogue that is audio and visual can help with comprehension and retention. Offering recordings mean that they can go back over any areas of confusion outside of the meeting and take as long as they need to process the information and make notes. Especially when brainstorming or detailing the steps of an important project.

Work with Different Meeting Styles

A lot of people are Zoom fatigued. Being seen on screen does not equal participation. But some people might need body doubling.

Invite Them to Move

Normalize fidget devices
Designate a space in the conference room for pacing
Ask them to walk with you to grab a coffee and talk along the way
If it fits into your culture – daily dance breaks. Of course, be mindful of anyone who might also be struggling with mobility issues.
Asking the co-worker who just had their hip replaced to bust a movie is going to be the opposite of fun. Meet people where they are at.

Create Clear Language Around Priorities

Because of executive dysfunction, it can be tough to determine what is a priority because everything seems like a priority. For example, “I’d also like for you to pull and analyze the report for June. We need it to complete the strategic plan that we talked about yesterday. So we can delay the project status update until next week so that the June report is in your top three tasks for this week.”

Help Define Clear Expectations

Write it all down. We’ve all experience it. You are in a meeting discussing a project, you absolutely understand the next steps you need to take, you’ve made some notes. A short time later, you can’t remember which one needed to happen second or third, which deadline had been agreed to for phase one and the last name of the person you need to email. You look at your brilliant notes and find out, well they aren’t that brilliant after all. Following up meetings and phone calls with an email detailing everything makes sure that all of your employees are on the same page and are set up for success.
Have a single source of truth. There should be one place that everyone has access to that will be the most up to date on what projects there are, their status, deadlines and more. We suggest a project management tool such as Asana, Basecamp, Microsoft Teams, etc. This source of truth can not be a person, even if you have such an amazing person on your team. People can’t be accessed 24/7 (and shouldn’t) It also cuts down on misunderstandings as people communicate their understanding of the project beyond themselves.
Help us right-size the effort we put in. It’s a common accurance with neurodivergent people that they believe they should put 8 hours into a project that you think needs two. They may get to hour four and panic because they can’t figure out what to do next when actually they’ve done more than was needed and you need those 2 hours to be spent on something else. Establishing from the beginning the right size of energy can greatly reduce stress for all employees.
Break a project into tasks – help us make it bite-sized.

Encourage Pet Projects

People who are neurodivergent have what we call “special interests”. For people with autism, the special interests stay the same, for people with ADHD, the interests cycle through. Spending time on those special interests provides serotonin, dopamine, and other emotional regulation. By integrating a special interest into the workday, you will be getting a neurodivergent at their best. Google calls this their 20% Rule and many of their best projects have come out of this. Find out more in this INC. article.

Make Specific Offers of Assistance

Regularly ask, “what do you need right now to succeed?” It may take a while for them to build trust with you and give an honest answer. Don’t ask, “what do you need?” that question is so open-ended it can actually cause a person with ADHD to freeze as they try to process all the possible responses.

Be Their Champion

The requests they make may be met with grumbles from their co-workers. Have their back.

Where to Start When You Have a Neurodivergent Employee

Photo by Gia Oris on Unsplash

If this was shared with you, your employee would like to talk about their ADHD. However, before that conversation, please familiarize yourself with these pages.

Anytime someone with a disability discloses that status, they often must educate on their condition at the same time that they are asking for assistance. That’s a challenging position to be put in. So instead, we invite you to familiarize yourself with the different types of ADHD, co-morbid conditions, and what accommodations are common, which will free them to talk about their particular needs rather than as a representative for their condition.

Step 1. Research – but be careful who the source is. A lot of advice for people with ADHD is written by neurotypical people and offers unhelpful advice. For example, while telling people to check their planner three times a day seems like it would be a helpful tip – it neglects to understand the underlying issues of time blindness, object permanence, executive- dysfunction, etc. If you struggle to remember tasks, setting a task to remember your tasks won’t help. Additionally, there are many sources for helping kids with ADHD that offer guidance that does not apply to adults, especially in the workplace.

Step 2. Ask how they would like the conversation structured as in-person/phone/zoom, with an agenda or conversationally, with HR or another co-worker present or individually. Ask them if there is anything they specifically want you to look into or think about in advance.

Step 3. Expect uncertainty. Some employees may have been diagnosed years ago and are just realizing that they want to share their status. Some employees may have just been diagnosed and are still figuring out what that means for them. This situation will be prevalent with women, who have been chronically underdiagnosed, often not being tested until late into their 30’s, 40’s and tragically even later in life. Also, knowing that you are struggling and knowing what you need to help with that struggle are two different things. Be prepared to brainstorm suggestions.

What Your Neurodivergent Employees Wish You Knew

Photo by Giulia May on Unsplash

There are so many stigmas.

The name doesn’t help. We now know that people with ADHD don’t have a deficit in attention but an attention regulation issue. This regulation issue is partly because of a difficulty creating and processing dopamine. Naturally, we seek out dopamine, very like how a person with diabetes might need extra sugar when their insulin is too low. If what we are working on doesn’t provide the dopamine boost we need, we will gravitate to other sources. A source like TikTok, where this creator has suggested a new name for ADHD, Dopamine Attention Variability Executive-Dysfunction. https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMR14Hctj/

When we first start a job, it can feel like a lot of handholding.

Many of us need very hands-on training when we first start, no matter how much experience we have. Part of it is because we are adjusting to how this team/ manager/company does things compared to places we’ve worked in the past. One way to help with situational context is explaining tasks as an if/then statement. For example: “If Paula asks us to work on a task, then all other projects shift down in priority.” “If you can’t find the latest version, then reach out to Abdul by email, and he can help.”

We’re already conforming most of the time … and we’re tired.

The majority of the world is built for people who are considered neurotypical. Just like a wheelchair user has to adapt to an urban setting, neurodivergent people spend a lot of their time and energy adjusting. It can be exhausting. Suppose employers and colleagues can meet employees part of the way by contributing a small effort. In that case, it could significantly impact their neurodivergent co-workers and free up energy for the work at hand.

We’ve had a lot of negative reactions at previous jobs, like being told that we are difficult, unable to cope, etc

Please don’t add your judgment to the long list of negative self-talk we have going on. The chances are that many people haven’t supported our differences. Unfortunately, those experiences stick with us. In many cases, it’s taken a toll on our confidence and self-esteem. While constructive feedback is helpful, criticism can sink us. Especially because many of us also deal with Rejection Sensitivity Dysmorphia.

Asking for help is tough.

Asking for accommodations can make us feel selfish or difficult. Sometimes we don’t know how to ask for help. Consider offering accommodations and assistive technology to all employees as a standard onboarding practice.

Asking you to help us breakdown a project into smaller parts does not mean that we’re trying to make you do the work

Doctors believe that people with ADHD often have trouble visualizing the end result, making it nearly impossible to figure out what it will take to complete a project and forget about starting it. You can help a lot by talking this through with us. It doesn’t mean that we are passive-aggressive and trying to make you do it instead. Ideas on how to help: if you’ve seen a version of a report that you like, share that with us. Help us create a checklist or to-do list. Set milestones of what elements are needed at what point. Then leave us to it. We are happy to dive right in once we can wrap our heads around what needs to be done.

Sometimes we need you to be the organized one

If you can’t keep track of what’s going on, neither can we. There’s not much to add.

Make the most out of our creativity

Let us have our passion projects – and help us figure out boundaries to it. Because we are out-of-the-box thinkers, we can often see opportunities before they fully form into something. Let us develop them. The dopamine that we will get from working on our project 5% of the time will easily power the other 95%. Do they always end up being useful? No, but they do more often than not.

Please don’t expect us to sit still during meetings

We just aren’t naturally still people. And the more energy we spend on holding still, the less we are paying attention. Additionally, studies have shown that people who move when they talk make faster connections between ideas.

Having headphones on doesn’t mean I don’t want to talk to you

Some people see a co-worker turned away with headphones on as standoffish or unapproachable. It is really easy to get distracted by all of the noises in a work environment. Interesting conversations are happening all around us. Additionally, if they have an auditory processing disorder, they might have difficulties not hearing background noises like printers, construction, or the lights overhead. Headphones can cut down on the temptation to spend the day chatting with everyone or drown out the jackhammer down the block.

Why we ask for a later start time

It’s not because I’m lazy, I swear. No neurodivergent people are more likely to struggle with insomnia. Some suffer from Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder. So, if an employee can’t fall asleep until 2- 3 AM regularly, having them start the day at 8 AM is a recipe for failure. On the other hand, having them work a 10-7 workday could improve their productivity immensely.

Be patient if we say “What?” a lot

We are listening, but our brain isn’t always processing. It could be because of an auditory processing disorder or a nearby distraction. If you vary it up, changing pitch, speed, or the order of the words, that helps.

The Festival that Never Was: Jubilee 2020

Photo by Kilyan Sockalingum on Unsplash

Most of my career has been spent in the arts industry. Its only in the last few years that I moved into corporate work. While both have their pros and cons, I miss the easy access to art being made right around the corner. I miss being able to pop my head into a rehearsal or see an individual practice a skill over and over again. Theatres are a place of transformation. The artists transform light, sound, fabric, and bodies to create something more than the sum of its parts. The audiences transform as the story pulls out a whole spectrum of emotions. Good theater changes us. It can comfort us or push us out of our comfort zone. It can remind us of who we are or demand that we grow.

I miss the emotional connection that working in the arts gave me. Like many, I’ve been missing theatre during the pandemic. But I didn’t realize just how much until a recent TikTok came up on my For You Page. It’s a group of actors in a theatre for the first time in nearly a year. They are having the same emotional experience that I’ve seen many have in places of worship or history. Some are quietly saying “its beautiful” others are gasping, and some are crying.

Watching them, I became homesick. Mind you, I’ve never been to their theatre but there is something about a theatre space that is universal. I commented that I missed the special silence of an empty theatre. An empty theater is pregnant with possibility of what is just about to happen of what could be.

I’m also sad because of what the theatre industry didn’t get to do. So many productions that may never happen now. Artists that had to leave the industry and will never come back. Also, because we will never get to see what happened with Jubilee 2020. One of my favorite things about the theatre community is how it never rests. There are always artists pushing it to be better, to be more. Working in the arts, I was able to see systemic racism by well mean white people and how it was woven into every element of what we do. I learned from listening to artists about what responsibilities I had to change the way we did things. Jubilee 2020 was a way to bring all of the work together as a community and celebrate.

The idea started in 2015 after scandal after scandal of white led theatres making questionable choices in shows performed, casting choices, and more. You can see here what the committee laid out as participation. https://howlround.com/welcome-jubilee Everyone was invited to join.

The idea of Jubilee 2020 is a simple but powerful one.

From the website:

What if there was a yearlong, nationwide theatre festival featuring work generated by those who have historically been excluded–including but not limited to artists of color, Native American and Indigenous and First Nations artists, women, non-binary and gender non-conforming artists, LGBTQIA2+ artists, Deaf artists, and artists with disabilities?

Flash forward to 2020. Not the year we expected. Yet a year that called on a radical change in all areas of our lives. Especially those affected by race. It could have been a year of transformation led by the Jubilee. Instead, theatres were in enforced silence.

In August, I reached out to theatres in the Chicago area who had committed to the Jubilee. “Now everything has been thrown out of the window because of a pandemic. At the same time, the conversation about BIPOC people is at a level it’s never been before. I was wondering how theatre-makers were feeling.”

Below are responses from three artists. I also want to hear your thoughts. What do you miss about theatre? What do you want from it when it returns?

Spenser Davis

Director of Programming

Broken Nose Theatre

Thanks for asking for feedback and thoughts. Here are mine, in no particular order:

To me as a representative of my theatre, the Jubilee has always been about self-accountability, a call to analyze our production history and say, “Whose work are we producing? Who is that work for? How often is the default (cis het male) the gear we drive in?” It asked us to look in the mirror, spot opportunities for improvements with regards to inclusion, and do something about it. And now, in a post-W.A.T. world, that feeling of checking ourselves and changing has never been more prevalent. Suddenly, what the Jubilee asks for isn’t an “opt-in” in our industry; it’s what is becoming very, very expected, and rightly so.

I’d also add, on a more personal level: at the last season planning meeting we had prior to COVID and the proceeding quarantine, the Broken Nose team and I realized that even our track record with producing works that were not written by or for the default (cis het male) had largely improved, to the point where the Jubilee distinction felt unnecessary because it had over the years simply become what we do every year. We are still very on-board with participating, but it no longer feels, to us, like a year as distinctive as it seemed when we signed up years ago.

All this to say, I’m curious if it’s time to reconsider what the Jubilee even means now. If the majority of participants have, like us, made the Jubilee requirements our norm, what further progress can be demanded of us? What is something else the Jubilee can ask us to commit to that would push us further in the realm of D.E.I.?

I don’t have the answers to these questions, of course, but it’s worth asking. Can Jubilee serve a different purpose than was intended for it upon its creation? It’s an interesting conversation to have.

Thanks for letting me share my unedited thoughts, Michelle. I’m very excited to hear what options might be considered and how the program might evolve at a time when so few of us are producing at all, let alone virtually.

Andrew Watring

Theatre-Creator. Activist. Educator.

The company that had committed to the Jubilee, The Fractal Theatre Collective, was shuttered in July. My Collective had been composed of non-binary individuals, women, Black creators, and other artists of color – we took on the pledge as a natural extension of the work already being done. And yet, we wanted to go beyond the pledge. Jubilee’s focus on programming, and it’s uncomfortable relationship with the gender-binary, limited the scope of the changes we deemed necessary.

Jubilee was something to aspire to at a time when capitalist theaters could obfuscate their resource hoarding and institutional violence through “diversity and inclusion” initiatives, and the few Black faces in high places. Now, the aspirations of Jubilee have become the new normal for the theatrical neoliberal class of creators in this time of international rebellion. These institutions and the individuals that maintain them discovered a convenient goal-post in Jubilee’s call to action, and now rallying around initiatives similar to it that will ensure that the status quo remains intact.

Perhaps we have moved beyond the need for the Jubilee. Perhaps we have moved beyond the necessity for any narrowly tailored, reactionary solution to systemic racism, transphobia, colonialism, capitalism, and anti-Black violence. We See You stands out among the crowd as an attempt to build power and solidarity; however, even then, it stops short of openly challenging the power that keeps the most vulnerable theatre artists left out of a community that veils itself in the performance of progressive political action.

Perhaps we have moved beyond the need for theatre, at this moment. What is socially responsive theatre at a time when your social response should be anti-facsist organizing and continuous anti-racist transformation?

My thoughts were racing. Thank you for providing a platform for me to speak.

Michael Patrick Thornton

Co-founder, Artistic Director

The Gift Theatre

We are heartened by the primacy of representation in conversations throughout American Theatre. How joyous that it seems the goal of Jubilee–which once felt aspirational and targeted one specific season–is now the curatorial default for arts organizations. One group not always mentioned/included is our fellow disabled artists, so we are actively expanding our artistic processes and organizational methodologies to manifest loving space(s) where Access is celebrated. In addition to the question of who, we are very much obsessed with what; which is to say merely swapping out individuals in and out of a paradigm that inevitably nudges everything and everyone towards a corporate structure (and, more dangerously, ethos) sets neither the individuals nor the organizations on a course towards permanent, true change. We are thinking very hard about the benefits of a collapsed vertical structure and will be experimenting with structures which foment centrifugal energies; whirling and circulating points of view from every level and department in order to re-balance organization power pools and de-sexify/de-celebrify the position of Artistic Director in American Theatre.

My Job Search Deserves Basic Decency. So Does Yours.

Just two hours before, I had received an email confirming the time and who I would be interviewing with tomorrow. It would be my 6th interview with the company about the job. I had spent hours over the weekend filling out the Caliper Profile as asked. I had already spoken with everyone conceivably related to the marketing position and even a stretch, VP of IT, so this next interview must surely be the last, as it was with the President.

A call came in from J*** ******* , but I was prepping for an interview that afternoon for another company and let it go to voicemail. Instead, I received a text from them, the very first person I had talked to in the process. Not the internal HR person P***** who had been arranging all the video interviews, but the HR person from the marketing agency they had been partnering with to do most of their digital marketing up to now. A text that said:

Hi Michelle, your interview with O**** scheduled for tomorrow is cancelled [sic] and they have decided not to move forward. P**** has informed us to let you know. If you have any questions, please call me back.

Well, that couldn’t be right. I called J*** and they shared no more information than had been included in the text. Having a history of misinformation causing havoc in my life (like when I moved out of my beloved apartment when it turns out that I didn’t need to), I reached out to the HR person at O****.

Hi P*****,

I just received a message from J*** ******* saying that the interview tomorrow has been canceled and I wanted to confirm with you that it is in fact canceled and not a miscommunication.

Thank you,

Michelle

Sent at 11:40 am, I had plenty of time before the 2 pm video interview the next day. I texted a friend who is also in the job market about my frustration.

But, Michelle, 5 interviews already in.

I hope it was a 6 figure salary.

Nope

In the meantime, I went to an interview for a company U** **** ***** that had dropped all communication with me for 4 weeks before calling me after hours on a Friday night. Just a few days prior, I had been told that I was no longer being considered for a position at K***** that I had gotten extremely excited about. It had been 23 days since the last interview with K***** and several courteous follow-ups from me.

I never did get a response before the time of the O**** interview. I showed up just in case, sitting on the Microsoft Teams video for 10 minutes, hoping. No one ever showed.

I deserve better. We all do.

I get that these are unusual times. I understand that companies are having to completely redo their job application process. But in the process, they are messing with the lives of those applying. If they aren’t showing basic respect for their potential employees, why should we believe that our time at the company would be any better? Whether they mean to or not, they are setting up a company culture before we report for our first day.

Of the jobs I have applied to, only 13% have gotten back to me to let me know that I am not a fit. The shortest application to interview to rejection process? 40 days. A current one is at 51 days and counting. A lot of us are feeling taken advantage of. There are so many of us actively looking for jobs. I know others feel like me, that the long waiting times are not a worry for the employers – if I disappear, there are 30 others like me waiting.

While these are difficult times for employers, these are devastating times for most job seekers. Like 2008 and the Great Recession, most of us didn’t expect to be in the job market. Many are learning how to be a job seeker for the first time in a long time. It’s already a daunting process. Often applying to jobs is the least time-consuming part of the process. We are also building portfolio websites, getting online certifications, editing our resume yet again, increasing our social media presence, attending virtual networking events, researching employees and companies for interviews, crafting follow up messages showing our expertise, figuring out at what point it’s appropriate to connect to the interviewer on LinkedIn, pretending not to be bothered when interviewers show up 10 minutes late. I won’t even get started on the nightmare that is unemployment certification in so many states.

To do all of the work, including the mental work to get up and face another day of uncertainty with perseverance, is already exhausting. Adding on these incompassionate interview cycles, that may be what breaks many of us.

Companies – it is on you to do better. You have the power, with so little work, to make an incredible impact on millions of lives right now. If I were to offer a few suggestions:

The right to be told promptly that we are not being considered.
The number of interviewers should match the salary one is applying for.
If there have been 2+ interviews, the applicant deserves constructive feedback. I have contacted every company that I interviewed with after being rejected. Only one person has taken the time to give me feedback.
STOP creating new job posts for the same job. If the job posting isn’t getting you the right applicants, that’s a “you” problem. Its time to look internally to figure out the dissonance issue.
Make sure that the assessment tools you use aren’t unfairly judging your applicants. The Caliper Profile felt very biased against those with social disorders and introverts. I’m an introverted marketer and I’m great at my job. Don’t fall into ableist stereotype traps.

For more thoughts, follow people like Brigette. An HR expert and author, she has 3 million followers on LinkedIn that she actively engages with and provides a light at the end of the dark tunnel for many of us.

We can come through this, all of us, better than we were before. But for that to happen, employers need to take a good hard look at their recruitment process and be honest with themselves about how daunting it really is.

Are You Leaving a Quarter of Americans Out of Your Marketing?

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

26% of American adults have some sort of disability. Many of these disabilities make it difficult or nearly impossible to navigate digital marketing. Below I’ve detailed a number of ways that your marketing team can make your materials accessible to all.

Add subtitles to all of your videos. Make sure they appear even if the sound is on.
Don’t use light font on light backgrounds. See an example shared with me at the bottom of this post.
Include image descriptions. What is an image description?
Provide easy to find transcripts of any audio.
Consider using a dyslexia friendly font.
Avoid using over stimulating design. See an example below from a teacher to their remote students.
Keep colorblind people in mind when creating graphics. Here’s few tools.
Avoid sound design that is overwhelming to audio processing disorders.
Make all materials easy to print.
Make sure that you materials can be used with popular accommodations software like Read & Write.
Is your mobile site easy to use for people with mobility issues?
Double check your word choices. Find alternatives to terms like “tone-deaf”, “tongue tied” and “turning a blind eye”.

Be an Industry Leader

This summer we celebrated the 30th Anniversary of ADA being passed. But there is so much to do before those with disabilities are able to navigate the world without issue. I speak from personal experience.

I have ADD and sometimes I can not get through an important white paper or fascinating blog. I use Read & Write to read web pages to me while I move physically throughout my space. Unfortunately, many websites do not work with these tools. I am not able to use it to read any LinkedIn articles. It works with Forbes if I can handle the constant glitches and starting over. And it works for HBR if you don’t mind it reading the entire column of materials on sales between paragraphs.

As part of my ADD, I have an auditory processing disorder so I struggle with podcast and videos that have especially loud music while someone is speaking, accents, mechanical noises, etc. Yes, I do watch all BBC shows with subtitles on. Its so much better that way.

As marketers, we can do better. How?

Here’s an example from the American’s for the Arts: National Arts Marketing Conference:

Assign each member of your team a different disability.
They should research the symptoms and difficulties associated.
Then imagine a user with this disability trying to navigate your website, social media, and other marketing channels.
What difficulties did they encounter? What solutions come to mind?
Research popular accommodations tools and see how they interact with your marketing.
Make sure that disabled people are represented in your marketing.

Hire disabled people to audit your marketing channels and create a strategy of improvement. If you are in the Chicago area, an organization like JJ’s List will know how to start.

Get company wide disability training. Develop sensitive to situations. An example: Recognize when a sales phone call won’t do. Someone with a speech impairment might prefer to email you rather than talk over the phone. HOWEVER – if someone has a speech impediment and prefers to use the phone, go with it and make them comfortable. Say something like, “Is it okay if I repeat things back to you if I need clarification?” Then respect and follow through on what they advise.

Image description: a university website showing doctors in white lab coats on a white background with difficult to read white text overlaying the image.

Image description: a school website with the blue, red and yellow Superman logo in the background, a table of information in small text highlighted in neon green. To the right is more information, some on white backgrounds and some highlighted in neon yellow or neon green.

Why I Used the Terms I Did

There has been much discussion about using person first language and terms like “differently abled” rather than “disabled”. I have used terms like “disabled” because of the conversations had in the many groups that I am a part of. These are their (and my) preferred terms and I am honoring that.

15 Minute Marketing Plan – Bark Place

For today’s blog, I thought I would give something new a try. I’m calling it a 15 Minute Marketing Plan. I choose a small business in my area and spent 15 minutes looking at their website and social media to come up with suggestions that I think could improve their marketing. Today I choose Bark Place in Rogers Park as I’ve shopped there before.

Social Media

I love social media so I stopped by their Facebook page first. There are some great posts there but I see an opportunity to show off the personality I know the owners have. One of the reasons I choose Bark Place is that I see it mentioned in our community social media all of the time. I know they are highly engaged with the neighborhood and I’d like to see a little more of that on their page. Something like the “Bark Place Pup of the Month” featuring one of the local dogs they’ve come to know. A little about the pup, their personality, maybe their favorite Bark Place toy or treat. This is fun for their followers and also creates a special moment for one of their customers who will of course want to reshare the post to all of their loved ones.

A further social media series they could do is with the local pet shelters. Both Felines and Canines and Tree House are in the neighborhood. Featuring one of their fur babies looking for a home would be a great partnership.

A great way to show off the products they sell would be a feature called “Rufus recommends”, ideally with a pup named Rufus and the product they are highlighting in the same adorable picture.

I loved the recent photo they used for the Fourth of July. I would have loved to push it a little further. Any pet owner knows that the Fourth of July can be a hard holiday for animals with all of the loud noises. A Tips and Ticks series with one focused on the Fourth of July would have been wonderful for their community. Something corny like “Many pups have a ruff time during the Fourth. Here are 3 tips and 1 product to keep them safe and healthy during the celebration.”

Website

Next, I headed over to their website and was a bit surprised. Whereas the Facebook page is retail oriented, the website was all about their many services, none of which I knew about! A lost opportunity. The Services pages have a wonderful amount of information to help an owner know how seriously they take the care of our pets. I would suggest using creative formatting to break it up a little so that we read all that they’ve included. There’s also an opportunity for creative use of photos and videos. On the Daycare page, they speak about the opportunity for socializing. How about a video of a bunch of adorable riotous pups doing just that?!

For the Walking page, it would be wonderful to have a photo and short bio of their dog walkers. This will give prospective clients a real feeling of safety and continue the community feeling we are going for.

Throughout the website, I would love to see the amazing testimonials on their Yelp page sprinkled. Maybe even with the photo of the pet who received the wonderful treatment.

Partnerships

As I mentioned before, there are two animal rescue facilities within walking distance of Bark Place. How wonderful would it be if they did a partnership? Something like Adoption Days sponsored by Bark Place. Both organizations could share about it on their social media and other communication channels such as email. Bark Place could offer a discount off of its services for the new pet owners and a take-home package with everything they need to start off right. This happy day will be closely tied to the company that they know they can go to over and over again for years for all of their needs. A trusted friend in raising their new pups and kitties.

With that, my time was up. And with that, I leave you with one final thought – Where are the kitties? As a cat owner, I didn’t see myself on the website or Facebook page when I know that Bark Place has been there for me to take care of my lovely cat Lula.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the crazy 15 Minute Marketing Plan. Let me know your thoughts!

Onboarding New Technology – IT Governance Audit

Photo by Fabrizio Chiagano on UnSplash

IT at John Crane

I started with research into the IT structure at our company. First, I checked our Leadership team for a CIO. No such luck. I saw a Chief Technology Officer but after looking into the roles that make up that team, I discovered that its related to the technological advances we are making in our products and services, such as our Asset Management Program that monitors equipment to help determine when a seal or pump is about to break down to prevent a complete shutdown. Well, I had the name of our onsite IT guy Richard, I thought I’d explore up the chain. That’s when I realized that our IT department, or as they call it BIS, is part of our parent company Smiths Group, which we are a division of. That level of removal may explain why our marketing department doesn’t have a day to day relationship with the BIS department, aside from when our computers break down.

Building a Relationship with IT

Knowing that we are about to implement a crucially important piece of MarTech, how do I help get BIS involved? I think my best tactic is to reach out to Gus, our IT Client Services Supervisor. I want to let Gus know that we are onboarding the technology and I am creating a guiding coalition to help make the organization change as successful as possible including a member from the BIS team to bring that viewpoint to the table. Especially when it comes to scalability. Despite having over 110k contacts in our email platform, we are starting of Marketo with 10k contacts. If BIS can help us come up with a process to know when it’s time to scale up, that can help us grow healthily.

“The modern IT worker is a tech-savvy innovator who creates change across the organization’s entirety, not just a single department.” (The Changing Role Of IT In The Future Of Business) Once I have a counterpart in BIS that I’ve established a relationship with I want to bring them on board to help us figure out projects and processes overall, including helping us figure out how to be General Data Protection Regulation compliant across all of our systems. For instance, GDPR requires that once someone unsubscribes from any communication with your company, they need to be removed from all databases we own. How can we make sure that we have removed them from not just Marketo and Mailchimp, but Sales operated techs such as C4C and other systems that we don’t know about? Can bringing them onboard help get our salespeople using C4C properly instead of using their homegrown systems, since that leaves us vulnerable to millions of dollars in fines?

Current Marketing Technology at John Crane

“Marketing executives are being tasked with leveraging technology to improve customer experience, drive client growth, and meet loyalty goals. Therefore, they’ve become more reliant on IT for web-and data-based marketing activities, such as behavioral targeting and geo-tracking” (Bridging the Gap Between Marketing and IT)

I work in a department that has gone rogue IT wise. So much so, that when I suggested earlier this week that we should include someone from IT at our upcoming marketing strategy event, I was asked why. Yet marketing and IT executives often don’t speak the same language or understand each other’s goals or roadmaps. (Bridging the Gap Between Marketing and IT) This even though one of the most important parts of our strategy are how to use the MarTech we already have and move to Marketo. For this report, I’ve decided to look at some of the MarTech that we are using to figure out where we could use IT governance to be successful.

I’ve only fleshed out a few of the technologies so far. How to attack all the technology? I’m going to borrow Gartner’s Run, Grow, Transform framework despite it reflecting monetary spending, not resources.

RUN

C4C

“IT is being used to improve the way organizations interact with their customers. Specifically, customer relationship management systems – often referred to simply as CRM in the business world – track and organize every interaction a company has with its current and potential customers.” (Five IT Functions in an Organization)

According to its product overview page “The SAP Cloud for Customer solution helps you manage day-to-day sales contacts efficiently by sending and receiving signals between front- and back-office solutions and providing a single view of the customer.” That isn’t how its currently working for us. At present, I download a daily excel report from our Sitecore website of the forms filled from customers on our website wishing to connect with our sales team, which I alter the formatting of before I copy to a template that communicates with C4C to add these leads into our system. When that’s uploaded, a notification is sent to a Lead Coordinator based on the location of the potential customer who then assigns it to a salesperson for them to follow up with the customer. However, that’s not happening. We’ve been working with Sales Enablement to try to get to the bottom of this. Some say it’s because we have an older workforce that doesn’t care for technology and wants to do it their way outside of the system. Others say that not all sales folks have access to C4C and even if they do, they aren’t given any training on how to operate. Now I’m wondering if we should include someone from our IT department to help us figure out a way to streamline the process and determine how to improve them so that our salespeople are excited to use a system that makes their jobs easier.

Sitecore

Our website uses Sitecore as our web content management system. There are a few issues around Sitecore that need to be addressed. The first is that only two people have access to the website, my boss Skyler and myself. And I was never trained on the system despite many requests. If Skyler and I, who sit next to each other, caught the plague next week, you better hope you don’t need any work done on the website. A second issue is that the version of Sitecore we are operating on is wildly outdated. We are currently on Sitecore 6, the current version is Sitecore 9. Our version is so old in fact, that we can’t do a direct update from 6 to 9. We will have to do a bridge update or two. All in, it will cost us $100k to update. This sounds reasonable for the size of the company we have until you realize that it won’t change the look or feel of our website at all. Our IT department should be included to help us determine a plan for all future updates including deadlines and other triggers for improving our technology.

Rightpoint

Rightpoint isn’t a technology but a company that we work with on our website for help with design, maintenance, and more. A project that I’ve been working with them on that our IT department might be interested in taking part in is making sure our website is secure and compliant. When I started at John Crane a year ago, I ran the website through several audits to check its health. It was concerning across the board, from areas of the website that weren’t properly secure and more. Another project I would love to include IT on is our Contact Us page mentioned previously. Currently, it’s the only way to contact us on the website. While it’s meant for customers to connect with our sales team, it’s a catch-all for anyone who wants to ask about employment, products they want to sell us, charities that want us to sponsor their 5k, and ex-employees looking for lost W-2’s. At present, I’m manually weeding them out and they are going nowhere. In part because I can’t get HR, Procurement, etc. to understand that it’s not sustainable to individually forward those contacts to my guesstimate of who should handle them. Working with Rightpoint to create a design and IT to create the process that information moves along will improve everyone’s workflows and satisfy those trying to get ahold of us.

MailChimp

One of the many platforms that I brought on board to replace outdated legacy programs was MailChimp. Previously we were using a system called Etelligent that some think was specially built for our parent company. Unfortunately, it was an out of date and limited platform. You could not link to anything, couldn’t add more than two images, couldn’t get useful analytics, etc., etc. MailChimp has very much become my baby. We started using it in May to send our first ever company email. The list of who we were sending the email to come from several regional sales managers and product line managers. The data was a mess. I decided to only add in the email addresses and no other data like names, companies, etc. because there were so many bad practices in the 25k accounts shared with me. It continued this way, with each series of emails that our marketing and communication managers give me, I’m given a mystery list of unknown origin and health. I’ve started going directly to C4C and other sources to build a robust database in MailChimp. I am not supported on this by my director even though it has improved our targeting for emails. Bringing on someone from IT to look over this whole process, tell me what I don’t know, and help me find sources of clean data as well as a process to keep that data safe when more people have access to it than just myself would be invaluable.

Hootsuite

Teams

Jotform

Survey Monkey

Brandfolder

Wistia

Intranet

Readytalk

GROW

Pathfactory

Tableau

Google Analytics

Google Ads

TRANSFORM

Mobile version of the website

Marketo

Going Forward

“Now accurate business planning, effective marketing, global sales, systematic management, real-time monitoring, instant customer support, and long-term business growth cannot be achieved at the optimum level without IT.” (The Role of Information Technology in Business Success) I realize now just how important IT can be to the success of marketing and the larger business. I’m inspired to reach out to our IT team to take a deep dive into our MarTech stack and see where improvements can be made. It’s time for us to stop being a rogue department and build important relationships with our IT folks, even if they aren’t John Crane employees. Doing so will ensure that we reach the goals we’ve set out to accomplish.

Citations

Afzal, A., & Writer, A. A. B. F. (2015, May 14). The Role of Information Technology in Business Success. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/role-information-technology-business-success-abid-afzal-butt/.

Newman, D. (2016, July 28). The Changing Role of IT In the Future of Business. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnewman/2016/07/26/the-changing-role-of-it-in-the-future-of-business/#1492d205525d.

SAP Cloud for Customer l Omnichannel Customer Engagement. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.sap.com/products/cloud-customer-engagement.html.

Shumway, A. P. J. (2016, March 18). Bridging the Gap Between Marketing and IT. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2016/03/bridging-the-gap-between-marketing-and-it.

Walters, S. (2019, August 23). Five IT Functions in an Organization. Retrieved from https://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/five-functions-organization-2102.html.

Analysis and Application of Conflict Resolution Techniques in Media – The West Wing

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I chose to analyze this clip from The West Wing. It’s a great example of negotiation going badly, moreover of negotiation styles that Getting to Yes warn us against.

Without including previous footage from the episode, we can only use context clues to guess at how they had gotten to this point. I believe that they most likely use compromise as collaboration seems unlikely in a political setting no matter how effective it would be.

The video opens with a lovely example of informal relationships between the President (POTUS) and the Senator. You can tell by the language they use, verbal and body, that there are commitment and mutual respect to their long-term relationship. The president’s use of “We need to do better” creates a sense of community that collectively moves forward, connecting with other’s personal values.

They may not agree on everything, but they understand that today’s conversation is one of many like it and want to use their capital accordingly. They clearly have shared values or interests as Getting to Yes puts it.

Then the Speaker of the House (SOTH) enters the conversation. His entrance, to me, speaks to a likely high Thomas Kilmann score in competing. In the beginning, he uses a deferential tone and chooses his words carefully, he quickly drops that façade. It’s apparent the role he has cast the POTUS within his story and how he quickly makes himself the villain in the POTUS’ story.

The first line he speaks in the conversation is breaking a commitment already agreed to by all the parties. “Excuse me, Mr. President, there’s been a change.” Not asking but informing. “I know we talked about a 1% cut” establishing that there was already consensus. “It’s going to have to be 3.” He doesn’t take the time to share his story, explain the basis for this decision, who the decision-making parties were, and why the President was excluded. Later he refers to it as an offer, as if he is doing the president a kindness.

The SOTH likely doesn’t have a great deal of social competence with his emotional intelligence. He misreads the POTUS’ sigh as resignation and quickly flashes a smug look before suppressing it.

The body language throughout is fascinating. When first greeting each other, the SOTH makes a smile that looks more like a grimace or restraining bared teeth. While POTUS and the Senator sit down in relaxed positions, the SOTH is leaned forward, already working his hands almost like he’s prepared to lunge just as he does so verbally. When SOTH has declared his point and believes it’s a moot point for the POTUS to argue back, he nods his head as if projecting the agreement that he expects to eventually receive.

The POTUS has pretty steady body language throughout, possibly showing a learned history of restraint. However, his eyebrows give away his shock and frustration when he is questioning the SOTH. Fascinatingly the SOTH only seems to make eye contact at certain points. When he is feeling confident, he doesn’t bother making it. When he is pretending to have regrets, he does make eye contact. The most telling moment though is when he is waiting to see if the President capitulates, showing the real power dynamic is not what he wishes.

He mistakenly assumes that POTUS naturally tends towards compromise and doesn’t see his natural competing instinct until SOTH thinks he has successfully push POTUS into a corner. He didn’t realize the POTUS’ BATNA, that it was better to walk away entirely than salvage the deal.

I’m not sure that they would ever have gotten to a place of agreement but here are some suggestions that could have helped. First off, the SOTH needs to recognize his formal and informal relationship with the President. It’s a unique situation, where you are required to work with people who have completely different beliefs than you. You can’t take your skills to a competitor. If you want this job, you need to learn how to maintain a working relationship for the long haul.

Second, interrupting so soon into the meeting, when they were still reviewing what had already been discussed shows a disrespect for the process. If he had waited until the end and shared that they had just left a conference with his peers and that they were demanding more of him, he may have been able to appeal to the POTUS’ values. At present, it seems like the POTUS values doing the right thing by everyone whereas the SOTH wants to do right by those who think like him.

Third, lose the hard positioning. Providing a set of options could have done wonders for this negotiation. “Mr. President, I know we agreed on 1% but I’m hearing that the budget can’t succeed without 3%. Could we estate the 1% at midnight tonight with a firm public commitment to consider raising it to 3% in 2 months?” He could take it a step further by adding in criteria to agree on such as “During that time, I would like to convene a panel to see what the real-life consequences would be if we do and don’t raise the percentage.”

I was reminded of how important empathy is to being a good leader. How slowing down to ask questions and truly listen to the other party can fast forward a conversation to where it needs to be. I learned about the idea of already knowing what tradables you have and making sure that what you are bringing to the table has value to the other party.

From this video, I learned who in that room I would rather be conducting business with, the Senator instead of the Speaker of the House. I want to develop long term relationships where both parties feel like they will win and lose some but ultimately get what they need because of mutual respect. I want to work on determining what people’s value sets are and what values we have in common. I also want to develop the confidence to say no to a bad deal and walk away. As someone who is primarily a collaborator, I can spend entirely too much time getting people to the table and working too hard to keep them there. Sometimes I need to be the one to walk away.

Citations

Gladwell, M. (2013). Blink: The power of thinking without thinking. New York: Back Bay Books.

Stone, D., Heen, S., & Patton, B. (2010). Difficult conversations: How to discuss what matters most. New York: Penguin Books.

Smith, D. M. (2008). Divide or conquer: How great teams turn conflict into strength. New York: Portfolio.

Bradberry, T., & Greaves, J. (2009). Emotional intelligence 2.0: The world’s most popular emotional intelligence test. San Diego, CA: TalentSmart.

Emotional Intelligence 2.0 – Take the Test. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.talentsmart.com/test

Fisher, R., Patton, B., & Ury, W. (2013). Getting to yes: Negotiating agreement without giving in. Winnipeg: Media Production Services Unit, Manitoba Education.

Thomas, K. W., & Kilmann, R. H. (1974). Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument.

Rainier Case Study – Acquisition Assessment

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Rainier Case Study

“Companies love to restructure without taking culture, structure, work, and people/relationships into account.” That’s in my notes from our very first class of Organization Behavior with Bob Ernest. It’s a shame that Rainier and especially Bill Simons didn’t attend because they could have saved themselves a lot of headaches if they had. As another class note states, they should “step back before going forward”. Hopefully, the disappointing financial numbers and Philadelphia’s concerns about a lack of customer service will act as a wakeup call.

Going forward, I’m often going to refer to Bill instead of Rainier, because for all intents and purposes, it seems that he has been driving all these decisions with little input from others. Bill’s first move should have been to examine each location’s resources, competition, time, etc. This includes Seattle as well. Going forward, Seattle needs to be treated like it is one of the locations, not the head of the body. Seattle and Sacramento are two of the successful locations. What makes them that way? Are these lessons transferable to other locations, or is it part of the individual culture of that location? For other locations like Atlanta which don’t feel as stable, what is it that their competitors are doing differently in their niche that Atlanta isn’t? Which staff are ready to become partners or to move to another location to share their expertise and develop staff at those locations? This time could be used to assess multiple elements of the location’s culture including whether they fell into Clan, Adhocracy, Hierarchical, or Market buckets. Among other elements, gathering intelligence on the locations before the consultants could have avoided the situation of clients in Atlanta also having now duplicate accounts with other locations. This would also have let Bill know that there are a lot of staff members at Atlanta that don’t see things as broken and so don’t want to fix them, as well as the antiquated IT and infrastructure.

After they gathered this input, they could have done everyone a favor and admitted that they are dealing with a V.U.C.A. situation. Bringing each new location onboard will be volatile and complex with a lot of uncertainty and ambiguity.

Using the information that they gathered, Bill could move to strategy on multiple fronts.

By examining their staff, they can build up people and create relationships. Again, what staff should be considered on track to become partners? This could be a great way to keep Porter of the New York office on board. Identify leaders within the organization. Determine, with their input, if they should stay at the location they are at present, either in their current role or another, or move to another location where they can help develop new teams. This could be especially beneficial for Sacramento where they lack support staff and their current line of business is drying up. Newly reallocated staff can help expand into service areas and clients beyond the tech sector. I think that Bill should do this investigating in person. I believe each location would be greatly served if Bill moved there for at least 6 months, if not longer. His job is to observe and take note of changes to make, without yet instituting them. Additionally, Bill needs to present the findings not just to Seattle’s senior staff, but the collective senior staff at all locations. Then they need to work on a way to communicate it to all staff, perhaps in a townhall. This sort of internal communication should be ramped up in multiple ways. To help build relationships across locations, something like a monthly leadership spotlight would be great. Regularly paying for staff from all levels to visit other locations and participate in Meet and Greets, Lunch and Learns, etc. Build up Atlanta’s confidence by holding the Annual Staff Meeting there. Build channels for feedback from every level of the organization and regular intervals when its discussed and considered. They should look at the human cost of the organization and determine what development can be done across the board and start building succession plans.

In another direction, I think it would do all the relationships a lot of good to hear Bill fess up to his responsibility in creating these difficulties. Bill could use some work on being self-aware and when his passion has him running towards the next project when he should be walking. Bill should admit that the consulting came just in time and that it should have been done internally from the very beginning. Also, Bill should reconsider where he’s placed, Marcy. First off, he isn’t listening to her about her needs and it seems like the relationship between her and the original seniority in Atlanta isn’t going to improve. Consider moving her to New York to replace Remington if that is her skill set. It doesn’t seem like turning around stagnated locations is, which is fine. Identify someone else in the company who is. Have them again move there and observe. Make someone in Atlanta co-director with them so that it doesn’t feel like a takeover but a collaboration.

They also need to work on the relationships with their customers, recommitting to clients. In Sacramento, that will mean a rebranding campaign. Reintroduce old clients to the company, letting them know that everything they loved is staying and what improvements they can expect. Develop the brand beyond tech to help them cultivate new clients. New York needs a campaign for its clients where they commit to providing the level of services they’ve always received. Seattle needs to be reassured that clients won’t be bombarded by each new bell and whistle that these acquisitions make available to them. Also, determine what it is that clients get by moving to one of the Big Four that they aren’t getting from Rainier. It will be difficult, but they also need to block the noise of Wall Street and stay present. If they have excellent customer service, Wall Street will fall over dead before seeing them fail.

Rainier needs to create several strategies both long and short term. Each location needs to be assessed for what it is capable of, rather than an arbitrary 10% goal. Make sure that the timeline for those goals is achievable as well. Initiate a process of regularly reviewing and rightsizing goals. A goal set before the Recession is going to be completely unachievable. Ask partners who want to divest what goals they need to see met to move forward.

Rainier needs to reevaluate its Seattle mission and determine what a new company-wide vision looks like and shares that with all its stakeholders, including staff.

Determine the process for which accounts will stay with Atlanta and which will stay with other locations. Be kind and give Atlanta as many wins as they have the capacity for and move other accounts to locations that can serve the client better.

Listen to staff about needing collaboration. A great jumping-off point would be staff from Sacramento who works closely with the tech sector coming to Atlanta to help them update their IT resources.

Work on ways that the offices can reflect both the local and companywide culture much like Nike does.

My honest opinion which Bill wouldn’t like is to put Philadelphia on hold. He has a lot of work to do already. Once, and if, that’s accomplished, then he should invite Philadelphia to go on a tour with him to each location, showing how they’ve honored each location’s culture while using the structure of the larger company to improve the experience for the clients and provide the staff the support they need and opportunities to grow. Show Philadelphia first-hand how their clients will be treated and what they could expect from joining the Rainier family.

This case study reminded me of the many times that a charismatic and visionary leader I worked with overextended the company out of passion. When I first began writing, I was considering letting Bill continue after Philadelphia because he clearly wants it to happen. But a good leader looks at the reality in front of them. This company is at a crossroads. If someone doesn’t ground them in their reality and make their foundation solid again, the first crisis could wipe everything out. When I laid out the reality of the situation, I realized that there is no institutional time or energy left over to even think about the Philadelphia acquisition. When you take the time to honestly assess, it’s clear as day.