We are excited to introduce this week’s Friday Feature— @Deleted. Melanie is an Online Communications Lead for Cargill, owning adoption, engagement, measurement and value for online company-wide initiatives. She received her first MVP Award in Office Servers and Services in 2016.
Tell us a little bit about who you work for and your role in the organization.
I’ve worked for Cargill for seven years in change and communications, supporting technology projects. Cargill is large and diverse, with more than 150,000 employees in 70 countries, and products that include animal nutrition, food ingredients, energy, transportation, metals and financial services.
My role owns adoption, engagement, measurement and value from company-wide online initiatives sponsored by Cargill Corporate Affairs, including Microsoft’s Yammer platform and Spredfast social media management (Conversations, Experiences).
Beyond channel governance and community management, I support campaigns and integrations such as Cargill’s digital workplace, advise on intranet content migrations and UI design, and proofread corporate publications. My natural enemies are change resistance and bad kerning.
How has Yammer impacted the way that you communicate at work?
I’ve seen Yammer connect people, teams and communities of practice in amazing ways. It has a unique value proposition in the Microsoft ecosystem. When people share their work or questions in a network, you can hear from anyone in your company, whether or not you knew they existed.
These connections aren’t limited by the org chart, time zone or language. They ignore hierarchy and job titles, and people are so much deeper than their current role. We all have prior job and life experience, professional networks, hobbies, friends, relatives, and that article we read online just this morning.
I like to say that in a company of 150,000, or even 500, you simply can’t know everyone who knows what you need or needs what you know. The more people and information we can get into Yammer, the more connections we’ll make, and the more we’ll benefit from agility, innovation and reapplication.
What is one piece of advice you would give to someone struggling to drive change in their organization?
Find the pain. Seriously, pain is the “burning platform,” the reason to change behavior, when humans really hate to do that.
Early on, I spent a lot of time inviting my stakeholder targets out to coffee and finding ways to start them complaining. What’s broken? What sucks?
Listen up, find someone’s specific value proposition, and offer to partner. Inspire people to pull the solution you’re pushing.
What do you consider your most valuable skill? Why?
I make complicated things simple, relatable, and sometimes even fun. That’s been my reason for existing as a communications and change manager for more than 20 years.
Does anyone think life is getting less complicated? Yeah, me neither.
What is the most rewarding part of your job?
I value the communities and connections I’ve found in this role, and all the learning and love they’ve brought into my life. There are so many more people now than four years ago who could really have one of my kidneys if they needed it, it’s remarkable.
What’s the biggest challenge in driving change in an organization?
That challenge will vary depending on your culture. You can’t copy-paste a change strategy from one company to another and expect to succeed. This is also why benchmarking company social network metrics is such a dicey proposition, as you’ll almost never find an apples-to-apples comparison.
Second only to culture, the challenge is resources over time. Many change strategies end a few weeks after launch and surviving hypercare. The measurement, reinforcement, local ownership and value capture pieces are important. If you want a change to succeed, plan for long-term support.
