By VMware Director, Information Security Strategy, Craig Savage, and VMware Senior Program Manager, Eddie Eriksson
This is the fifth in a blog series on Beyond Zero Trust
Once the change management team has completed their process (see previous blog), the communications (comms) team came into play as the project was approaching its execution phase. Project and change managers worked with a comms professional to put together a viable comms. package.
This included the following:
- Approval cycle for the comms content, ensuring that appropriate managers approve the content and timing of the message
- Summary of project-related activities
- Project resources needed for the communications to go out
- Key messages
- Target audience
- Total impacted audience
Fig. 1 offers an example of a comms process ‘swimlane’ that outlines the above steps.
Fig. 1
Proper comms were critical to the success of the program. The mediums we used were Slack, email, Confluence, Source (VMware intranet), Workspace ONE® Intelligent Hub Messaging, and company-wide meetings with executives that emphasized the importance of the program.
Pump up the volume?
One of the challenges with comms was how to deal with sheer volume of them. With more than 35 active projects, we had to be careful not to overwhelm stakeholders with too much information in too short a time. This can backfire as employees will simply ignore the initiatives altogether until forced to deal with them.
Therefore, we made the decision to be selective about who the audience is, always offer concise, to-the-point messages with associated links (FAQs, detailed instructions, etc.), and be constantly aware of how many messages were being sent in a given time period. In addition, it was necessary to sync with corporate and IT comms to ensure we were not overlapping with similar audiences—and thus causing exacerbated comms fatigue. This meant monitoring an enterprise calendar and incorporating comms publication constraints into project schedules.
We had a corp comms tool that allowed us to track read and click through rates for sent e-mails. This was extremely useful for how the message was being received and for any follow on comms that might have been needed.
Seeking the right approval
Creating an approval and protocol comms template was equally important since getting appropriate feedback on the message content was mission critical. Some leaders preferred to be in the approval chain to ensure any given message is accurate, well written, includes all key components, and is appropriate for the audience. Others wanted to be included in approvals, but were less proactive due to other commitments. Ultimately, we proposed a variable approval queue based on audience type and size to ensure drafts were vetted in the most efficient way possible. This approach proved invaluable as many last-minute/late-in-the-game comms were unfortunately inevitable in the process (as with any enterprise initiative). Figuring out who needs to approve comms when you’re in a rush is not a good place to be.
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