Does Your Company Have a WIG?

What is a WIG?

Occasionally, when engaging with potential clients, I find that they have an excellent WIG, but no plan to get to there. At times, they really don’t know what the end goal is or what makes it successful. No problem! My job is to help define the WIG and help clients define what a successful WIG looks like in their organization.

A WIG is a “Wildly Important Goal”. Your goal could be a company goal, department goal, or even an individual goal. Think of a time when you had a new WIG. 

An easy analogy is weight loss. If you set a WIG to lose 30lbs, do you intend on starving yourself for a few months to reach that goal? How discouraged are you when you step on the scale after the first 7 days of your diet only to find that you have not lost any weight? 

Losing weight is a process that takes a lifestyle change. Giving up fries, managing your time to include exercise, and saying no to Krispy Kream donuts (even when the “hot” light is on). Accomplishing your goal requires a vision, commitment, planning, and accountability.

Companies who seek to deploy intranets are creating a WIG that requires significant planning to be successful. Without planning, a really cool tool is deployed that will create significant confusion, frustration, and dissatisfaction. What is the purpose of your intranet? How will you educate employees? How will you know if your new intranet is successful? Who will own the intranet?

1. Define Your “Wildly Important Goal” with Precision

Have you defined the vision of an intranet for your company? Is it clear and understandable to all employees? 

There is no right or wrong answer because it depends on your company needs. Here are a few goals that need to be more clearly defined:

1. My intranet should be a location for employees to find all corporate information.
2. Our intranet should be a one-stop-shop for learning about internal skill sets for upcoming projects and a location for all project information to be stored as a Corporate Asset once a project has completed.
3. Our intranet should increase employee engagement by sharing user stories and employee information.
4. I’d like our intranet to be mobile responsive for our sales employees to quickly enter their information and get approvals on proposals faster.
5. My company needs an intranet that will allow vendors to engage with our employees.

The Vision

Your intranet vision will vary based on your industry, culture, and business needs. Establishing your vision is absolutely the first thing you should do when planning your intranet deployment. Your vision should include a few precise points: What, Who and How. 

• What do you want to accomplish? 
• Who will benefit from the intranet? 
• How will they benefit? 

Creating your vision first will manage scope creep and encourage you to think of measures of success as you continue your plan. The vision should be clear and concise. Don’t use lots of words to describe your vision. Be short, sweet, and to the point – focus on precision. Your goal should never explain how you will accomplish, but it should state how the goal will be beneficial. 

Below is a good example of an intranet vision:

Our intranet will serve as a means of collaboration between employees, clients and vendors to allow us to serve our clients with the most up-to-date innovative solutions in a timely manner. The main focus of our intranet is:

1. Collaboration
   1. Microsoft Teams
   2. CEO Blog
   3. Yammer Feed for Corporate Knowledge Sharing
2. Document Repository
3. Internal Company News disbursement
4. Time Entry
5. Corporate Information Disbursement
   1. Company Benefits Information
   2. Open Enrollment Sign-up
6. Company Events Calendar
7. Employee Directory
8. All Company System Links
9. Employee Spotlight News
10. Company Goal KPI, Key Performance Indicators

2. Set SQAG’s

SQAG‘s are Small, Quick, Attainable, Goals. “Tiny goals help us build the momentum we need to share slightly bigger goals later.” You can’t lose 30lbs in a month without becoming unhealthy. You can’t deploy an intranet in 30 days successfully. You must build your plan with small goals in mind or it will become overwhelming. 

Each pound lost or goal met gets you closer to the end result. Celebrate little victories throughout the process as an encouragement to your team. Progress is progress, no matter how small.

3. Establish The Voice of Accountability

When losing weight, how difficult is it to admit that you gave into the Krispy Kream “hot” light? Or when you have to tell your accountability-partner that your weight went up this week? 

Accountability is a method of keeping you going, keeping you honest, and helping you stay on track. Developing a project team with a project manager for accountability is so very important when deploying an intranet. 

Project Managers & Teams 

Project managers keep people on track ensuring goals are being attained (both big and small) during the project’s progression. Having said that, a project manager is only as good as the project team. 

Building well established teams is a method for keeping everyone accountable to each other without over focusing on one particular area. A project team should consist of business leaders, HR representatives, Marketing, Internal Communications, and IT. 

When the team doesn’t perform, keep on task, or deviates from the project plan, the momentum goes down, team members get off track, and the project falls behind. Strong project managers are the voice of accountability who help the team refocus and find their way back to the plan. 

Weekly or daily scrum meetings are a great way for project managers to keep the project team on task and track the progress of your development.

4. Keep Score

During your weight loss journey, how do you know you have lost the weight? Maybe you compare how loose your clothes are becoming, but the most accurate way of measuring your success is a scale. 

Scales give you a way to keep score of how well you are doing. You weigh at the beginning of your journey, then you weigh at the end of each week until you reach your goal. Scales and scoreboards are also important when working on a WIG. 

Deploying an intranet will require a project plan. Your project plan serves as the scoreboard and journey map. The project plan should have milestones to help measure and scale the progress of your journey. Being able to gauge how close you are to the end, and how far you have come, serves as good motivation for everyone. 

Always keep score. Correct your path if the team deviates. Celebrate each goal met in the process.

5. Celebrate Your Success: Before & After

When on your journey to lose weight, you take a before photo. When you reach your 30lb milestone, you will proudly take an after photo showing your visible progress. The same applies to your intranet. 

To celebrate your newly deployed intranet, compare where you were to where you are once you reach the end. Always capture screenshots of your existing intranet before working on a new one. Capture screen shots as you progress. You will want to reminisce and show off your progress once you have completed the journey; it’s certainly something to be proud of.

Take time to celebrate them with your team during the process. Celebrating your completion and success, no matter how small, will help keep up momentum during the life of the project. 

Remember, to accomplish your WIG when deploying your new intranet (or trying to lose weight) you should focus on these 5 items:

1. Precisely define your WIG: Wildly Important Goal
2. Set SQAG’s: Small Quickly Attainable Goals
3. Create a team and hold each other accountable
4. Keep a scoreboard for your WIG
5. Celebrate your successes

If you have any questions about this process, need help defining your organization’s WIG, or want to talk to someone about overall strategy for your intranet, feel free to contact us.