Developing the awareness materials
One of my favorite comedy sketches involves Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner doing a skit about a 2,000 year old man (Brooks) being interviewed (by Reiner). At one point, the interviewer asks the 2,000 year old man what he thought the greatest technological invention is. The 2,000 year old man thinks for a moment, and then exclaims, "The thermos!" "The thermos?," asks the interviewer... "Why the thermos?" The 2,000 year old man looks at the interviewer with perplexity at not understanding and replies, "Simple, because it keeps hot things hot and cold things cold." The interviewer just sits and stares blankly, and then asks "So?" With that, the 2,000 year old man points his finger in the air enthusiastically and bellows, "How does it know?"
So, I told you all of that to tell you this - you'll know you've hit upon the right awareness materials to back your method if you are getting the answers for which you are looking. Let's say you put out a newsletter, and, in the newsletter, you write a piece about metrics management and how you want people to contact you regarding their choosing the right charts. If no one contacts you, either your targets aren't reading the newsletter or you aren't clearly stating that you want them to contact you. In everything you put together, you are going to need to assess both the medium and the message, because they have to work together.
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Method |
What do you want to know? |
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Interviews |
You are asking the right people the right question if they ask to see more information about the topic at hand, because people usually need both visual and verbal information to understand somewhat complex topics. |
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Surveys |
You'll want to begin by checking people's level of awareness of the topic in general, and write your survey so that if they "get it" you can ask them more in-depth questions, and, if they aren't aware at all or just "don't get it," you can follow up with a conversation or reading materials. |
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Newsletters |
Newsletter pieces should be written to entice your audience to get more information either directly from you or from an internal web page or PDF or something else that can go into more details. The problem with printed newsletter articles that don't work is that you have no interactive way of knowing if folks have read them, and you'll want to follow up with a few calls or e-mails here and there to see why you aren't getting traction. |
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Memos |
More formal than the newsletters, memos should be written to gather responses and can act as either a formal interview or survey. The biggest problem with memos is that in this day of instant messaging and e-mail, memos seem a bit heavy handed and should probably only be used for formal pronouncements rather than informal information gathering. That is, unless no one is paying attention to the informal awareness campaign. |
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Posters & screen savers |
As stated before, these should only be used for short messages or attention-getting devices and should direct the reader somewhere else for more information. |
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E-mail blasts |
Because you have to make your message short and sweet, it should probably be designed like the newsletter article wherein you point the reader to somewhere for more information. |
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Group decision making |
If you are mature enough to have productive group decision making sessions, then you are mature enough to be able to present whatever ideas you need in these sessions and work through as many objections as possible, clearing the way for acceptance and assignment of responsibilities. |
One of the more interesting methodologies we've heard of for introducing metrics was a guy who put together a quick survey of some "how many XXX does it take to screw in a light bulb?" type jokes as a way of introducing measurement and metrics. That was one we never thought about.
Which then got us thinking even more about the subject, and we thought we'd turn it over to you to tell us how you are implementing metrics in your organization, how well that's going, and the obstacles you've had to overcome.
Click the link HERE to take give us your input on your awareness program.
And click HERE to see the results of what others have said about their awareness programs.
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