Post ACM Wrap Up

 As we prepare for today's grand opening of our new VT office, I wanted to also tie up loose ends from the flurry of activity at the end of the year.

I hope everyone had a restful and energizing holiday break.  Having caught up on emails, and gotten the kids back to school and my routine back in order, I’ve spent some personal time reflecting on the All Company Meetings, I’ve read through all the survey responses and the senior team has thoroughly debriefed.  I wanted to summarize my impressions and the feedback and more importantly let everyone know some of the initiatives and projects that have resulted specifically from the intense and productive time we spent in Vermont and Utah.

First, thank all of you who participated (yes, I know it was mandatory – but the overwhelming perception was that folks came ready to learn, share and be engaged).  Thank you, too, to folks who took the time in the mad dash toward the holidays to fill out the survey.  As I hope you will see, it will improve not just future All Company Meetings, but our communication and focus on our company culture.  The feedback was overwhelmingly positive – and the suggestions for improvements was overwhelmingly constructive. 

As I said at the end of both meetings (although the competitive rush to win the prizes in Provo may have distracted a bit from my formal wrap up there!), the leadership team’s goal for the meeting was four pronged:

1.       That we all leave with a Shared Vision

2.       That we reaffirm a Shared Commitment to our “today” and “tomorrow” goals

3.       That we each have a better understanding of each functional area within the company:  how it works, and how each individual’s work supports/aligns/respects and benefits from each of the different areas of our company

4.       That you leave re-energized for the challenges and opportunity in the year ahead

 

The surveys and the leadership team were in agreement that goals 1, 2 and 4 were (to over use a bad phrase):  MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

We would categorize goal 3 as:  Mission Started.  There was a strong sense that while everyone got a better understanding of what the upper level of leadership does, there is a thirst for more information about what our peers in different segments of the company do, how they do it and what they learn.  In addition, there was a very constructive suggestion that many in our company who don’t work with our products every day would benefit from more exposure/familiarity with them – both new products in development but also existing products being used in our schools. 

Because we are a growing, dynamic organization there are quite a few very new hires (which will continue to be the case) who have (duh) a deeper learning curve and could use some additional orientation – particularly prior to such a big event.    Also, while folks appreciated hearing more about our efforts to be more customer focused, there was a very good suggestion that actually hearing from a customer would enhance the ACM.  There was pretty universal sentiment that December travel is no fun (I think the senior team might have stuffed the ballot box here …) and that it would be phenomenal to have an All Company Meeting with ……. the whole company. 

So, some of these suggestions are pretty simple to implement while others will evolve, but will be a focus of leadership between now and the next meeting.  Here is what we have decided and are going to do so far:

1.       Next year’s ACM:  date, participation & location.  Everyone should hold on their calendars November 8^th (a Friday) and November 11^th (a Monday).  The senior team is in violent agreement that we stay out of December – but we also need to avoid iNACOL & ACTFL – two big conferences we send large presence to every year.  These dates accommodate that.  We would also love to do a single meeting.  And we will – as soon as our growth and profitability make that a possibility.  And our goal would be to do such a meeting in a neutral setting (so not Middlebury OR Utah) so that we can build in more time, team building activities and informal time to socialize.  I am skeptical that we get there in 2013, but Ismail and I are reviewing the total costs for this year’s events, and starting to figure out what the budget would need to be to achieve our goal.  For now, please don’t book commitments that would prevent you from attending a meeting on BOTH those dates, and we will solidify plans well in advance for those who will need to travel.

2.       We will have a customer present at the ACM next year.  We are also working to find more ways to profile our customers and expose our entire organization to their experiences – both good and bad.  Dana’s research and efficacy work gets us further along here as does the designation of classroom space in the Middlebury building.  In addition, we would love ideas from any of you as to customers you think we should solicit for their input and ways you’d like to receive more exposure to customers.

3.       We are going to develop mini-on-boarding boot camps for new hires.  This won’t be the same as how to do your new job but will be exposure to the rest of our business – a look at our courses, even if your job isn’t an engineer or a teacher, a list/review of acronyms we use frequently, and an overview of the organizational structure and the roles/responsibilities of each at a high level.  We will run these quarterly for any new hires AND we will do one in the days before the ACM.

4.       We are going to feature a new job/department regularly on the blog.  Some of you (I hope) remember the great work the marketing team did explaining their processes and procedures.  We are going to have many more of those posts and cover the entirety of our organization – what do our teachers do?  What do they/see hear?  What happens in the enrollment function for the summer academies?  What are our engineers, editors and developers working on, spending their time thinking about?  If you would like to be the author of one a blog post to this effect, please let your manager know.  Our hope is to have many voices beyond the typical communicators you hear all the time.  Watch for the first one later this month!

5.       Shortly, you will be receiving invites to demonstrations of our products.  We are going to use these both to share more with those who are interested about our content but also because we want to develop & (more to the point) perfect the skills of team members who give these demonstrations to customers.  This is a really critical skill in our growth and this is a great way to kill two birds with one stone!  So, it will be clearly articulated to you that these are internal product demonstrations – and that you should not expect them to be perfect, but your job is to ask the obvious questions.  Again, look for these sessions to start soon.  We will probably do the first one with some of our more accomplished demo – ers (that is not a word, but it should be) and make sure to include the folks we want to start learning how to demo and who will be on deck next!  Please just check with your managers on the days these are scheduled to insure taking an hour to do this works with other responsibilities.  And know that this is not a one and done opportunity!

That encapsulates our (not quite) immediate feedback.  The need to all be aligned and clear on our roles and passion for fulfilling our goals, living our vision and achieving our mission is not a one day a year event.  The purpose of an ACM is to crystallize, catalyze and energize these efforts.  But we’ll be working year round to be better at all of this stuff.  As always, please comment & respond!

 

Later this week expect some pictures and commentary on the events in VT today.