When The Change Is Unpopular, Don’t Forget To Lead With Empathy

THE BURNING ISSUE

A global pharma company was falling down with their intranet which had over decades developed into an outdated information jungle. It was the internal communications channel that everyone loved to hate: confusing to navigate, full of untrustworthy, defunct information, and with a clear lack of ownership or accountability. Plus it cost a fortune to keep the lights on. With thousands of sites in various states of upkeep, the problem seemed almost too big to fix. 

North Tangent joined the project team at a very critical moment: the mass rollout of a new, lighter technology to all affiliates worldwide on extremely aggressive timelines - just one year to relaunch a single, integrated intranet with “sections” for countries, global teams, global projects and initiatives. Plus the planned sunset of hundreds of thousands of outdated pages of content. Close to a hundred internal communicators needed to learn how to manage their new site, taking in-house what was often offloaded to outside agencies.

Then one week into our engagement, the world shut down due to Covid-19 and more than 100,000 employees shifted to virtual working. Having a reliable and functioning company-wide internal communications channel had never been more urgent or mission critical. The company needed a single source of truth. This accelerated the program timelines and raised the stakes for the program team.

HOW WE WORKED TOGETHER

At the core of our activation strategy was to lead with empathy. The key stakeholders - internal communicators worldwide - were on the front lines during covid. They were working round the clock to keep employees informed around how their working life was changing: from health and safety updates, to info on site closures, plus helping teams adopt virtual ways of working and stay motivated and connected from home. They were overworked, and themselves coping with uncertainty. So adding an intranet migration for many was one ask too many.

North Tangent led a robust stakeholder outreach, spending a lot of time listening and seeking to understand the pain points of the internal communicators community. They told us loud and clear: if a new intranet wasn’t dead easy to build and launch, they couldn’t take it on. But they also acknowledged that a better tool could ease their burden.

First we designed a light “blueprint” for the content, a kind of a branded template that could be quickly deployed and made available for a country, a global team or an important initiative. We threw out the word “migration” - we couldn’t afford the time to sift through and repurpose old information. Instead, we advocated for a break with the past, and shifted the messaging to “deployment” - creating and setting live content that was fresh, lean and streamlined. 

Once we shrank the work to the bare minimum, we gathered as many teams as were ready, built short 4-week sprints, and ran live content management sessions to teach communicators the basics. With this lean approach, the time to launch a new intranet site could take as little as a few days. Showing quick progress helped to build even more interest and momentum.

Key to our success was shifting the “perfectionist” mindset to being more agile. We constantly drove home key messages: start fresh, build as you go, get v1 live, gather user feedback, continue to improve and iterate. For perfectionist-minded teams, they had to embrace imperfection for the sake of speed, accepting that sometimes good enough is… good enough. We also reinforced the message with end users: watch this space, it is a work in progress. 

Once a month, we ran community sessions that were fun, interactive and highlighted success - part show and tell, part Q&A, with a lot of hand holding and encouragement. Giving individuals a touchpoint to share best practice, show off what they were proud of, and just stay connected while stuck at home became one of the most valued parts of the program. 

THE OUTCOME

Through a strong collaboration with the internal program team and communicators worldwide, North Tangent was able to successfully activate and foster a strong network of collaborators to drive an unpopular project forward under extremely challenging circumstances. Our work helped the program complete its transition on time and on budget, and convince skeptical stakeholders to take the leap to the new technology. In one short year, all countries launched their new presence on the intranet, getting their hands on a powerful new communications tool at a critical moment that made their jobs easier. The end result was the intranet becoming a new favorite channel for communicators and employees alike.