2nd Century Enterprise Systems

Situation

A brand new Vice President, we’ll call him Dave, was leading a large company-wide transformation to modernize the tools and processes used in the manufacturing, engineering and supply chain operational areas. The name of the transformation program, Second Century Enterprise Systems (2CES), was tied to The Boeing Company’s 100-year anniversary in 2016. This program was meant to introduce very powerful and modernized software products to Boeing teammates. The scale and impact of this change was unprecedented at the company and Dave needed help winning thousands of teammates over to embrace and support the change. His budget was in the hundreds of millions of dollars and was taken from a fixed budget from the IT organization. This meant not only were the expectations high from his functional user groups, but his peers were also looking to see results from the money that was also taken from their initiatives. Perhaps the biggest challenge in the program, at least initially, was getting the support from the people he needed at the company who didn’t work for him. He needed subject matter experts, technologists, futurists, engineers, mechanics, and supply chain specialists to all recognize the opportunity to fundamentally transform their respective areas. He needed them to rethink how they approached their work. And Dave was going to have to rely on influence, not mandate, to move these people to act. Dave came from the business-to-consumer world as was used to have dedicated marketing teams to help with his transformation efforts. This transformation program was unique because the majority of the stakeholders he needed to reach were internal. Communications and change management support was limited. He wasn’t going to get the Boeing Marketing team’s support for his program. For this project to be a success, he was going to need all the help he could get communicating the impact and winning people over.

Approach

Dave’s first task was winning over his peers by demonstrating what he was doing with the money with which they had entrusted him. My initial contribution to the project was to put together a 30-page booklet to serve as part brochure, part prospectus, and part slide deck. Most executives would pitch their peers with PowerPoints, print the slides, and leave them with everyone to peruse on the plane ride home from their board meeting. Dave wanted to make an impression. The booklet was a hit. His stakeholders liked the clarity from the stories we included in the pages and wanted more. However, a printed booklet wasn’t exactly how we wanted to sell a digital transformation to the rest of the company so we knew we were going to have to change the approach as we expanded outside of his peer group and into the rest of the company. This is where my team’s work expanded into videos, podcasts, live events, and internal social media posts.

The appetite was insatiable for information about what was going on with 2CES. My team started filming technologists and subject matter experts, acting as a documentary crew, tagging along to simply share what was going on with others. Unlike the Creative Services team at the company, our team was embedded on 2CES. Their success was our success. It was not enough to merely ship a video or graphic on time. It needed to have impact and yield some measurable results. I spent hours and hours learning about the various product teams supporting 2CES so that I could become an ambassador for the program.

Outcome

2CES was essentially the launch customer for my Digital Media Services team. The team produced more explainer videos, mini-documentaries, podcasts, infographics, booklets, and web sites than I can count. 2CES was eventually graduated to an enduring corporate initiative, which meant we succeeded in helping internal teams understand and embrace the changes taking place. Systems were built. Processes were transformed. And I was able to scale a creative team of eight people to ship great work together, eventually transitioning the team to the Office of the CIO.

Responsibilities

Creative Services Management, Change Management, Ghostwriting, Copywriting, Scriptwriting, Storyboarding, Design (Graphic, Motion, Print, Web), Video Editing

Tools Used

Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects, DUIK Bassel, Premiere Pro, Audition, inDesign, live video production equipment (lights, mics, cameras), Microsoft Visual Studio