Don't Go It Alone

Don't Go It Alone: Get Organizational Buy-In - Part 2
This is Part 2 of an article by Rob Zimmelman, a senior digital asset management consultant for the Rookwood Group.

Organizational buy-in is critical to any MAM initiative. How do you get organizational buy in? Here’s how:

You’ll be talking to the people that the MAM initiative will impact. You will learn how MAM can improve workflow, save time and money, and open up new revenue streams. You’ll be creating lots of diagrams to help illustrate your arguments. You’ll be making presentations to show the Return on Investment and improved workflow. Through these mechanisms you’ll gain support for MAM in your entire organization, not just one department or group.

You’re going to have to work with individuals high up in the organization chart, so that you cross departments. You will need to work high up enough in the org chart so that the people see a single organization view and beyond the competition that may exist between groups. You’re going to have to identify the people and work flows impacted by the MAM initiative, document the effects of MAM to the organization, and use visual tools to reinforce your ideas to help get organizational buy-in.

I have seen MAM initiatives fail to reach their objectives when one group suddenly realizes that the MAM effort exceeds the bounds of the group’s authority. I have also seen MAM initiatives fail to reach their objectives when two groups in an organization compete over which vendor’s solution will be implemented only to have neither solution in place when the competition is over.

How do you find the people who will be impacted by the MAM initiative? Follow a typical media asset through its lifecycle in the organization and note the people who touch the asset as it moves along through the organization. These are the people whose workflow will be impacted by the MAM initiative. Interview each of these people. Map out the existing workflow and then map out the proposed workflow when the MAM initiative is in place. Use these workflow maps to show the benefits of MAM in a way that is easily understandable. Use the maps of the existing and the proposed workflow as a tool to help you get organizational buy-in.

You will have to talk to people who create and touch media assets in the organization. You will need to observe their work at the beginning of the work session, when they are setting up and retrieving assets as well as at the end of their work session when they are saving assets, performing backups, and doing clean-up work.

It helps to make the goals and expected improvements of the MAM initiative understood by as many people as possible. You will do this interactively during presentations using diagrams and illustrations for team members to review and mark-up, allowing the team members to help shape the solution.

Executive buy-in will be more likely to happen when group and department managers can agree on the benefits of the chosen MAM solution. If you are working high up enough in the organization, your initiative will cross departments, and you will have a much better chance of getting organizational buy-in.

In some organizations there is no clear “owner” of Media Assets. It may be simple to identify the creator of a particular media asset, but identifying the owner may be a different story entirely. The entire organization owns the media assets, much in the same way the entire organization owns the furniture and other fixed assets.

A whiteboard or a pad of paper is a great place to start with your MAM initiative. A whiteboard is a great place for a team to collaborate and to illustrate MAM concepts. Block diagrams do a wonderful job of allowing a small group of people to sit down and come to agreement on a particular workflow or system configuration.

If you must use software, Visio is a popular tool for creating diagrams. With a tool like Visio, you can create various simple diagrams that can help to explain the current workflow as well as the improvements offered by the MAM initiative. You can also create Information Flow Diagrams in several versions, with icons for various domain-specific Information Flow methodologies. It is simple to create a computer system and data network diagram that can help illustrate what components will be used, where they will reside on the corporate network, and what means of connectivity will be used. If you are working with a consultant, they may use software associated with a particular development methodology. In either case, you will end up with a visual representation of your work flow and data movement. You will be able to visualize the media asset throughout its lifecycle and come to agreement as a group on what direction you MAM initiative will take.

Excel is a popular tool for creating spreadsheets. A spreadsheet will make it easy for you show the results of the math and to represent what-if scenarios to team members. You can come to agreement as a group on how much the initiative will cost and how much money the initiative will save the organization (the Return on Investment).

There are a quite a few tools and techniques that a MAM consultant will use to help you to illustrate your initiative and get organizational buy-in. Some of the visual mechanisms that a consultant will use are slide presentations, flow charts, information flow diagrams, data-model diagrams, system design diagrams, and network diagrams. Whatever the tool, the objective is to visually represent the project to gain organizational buy-in and move forward.

So, you have come to the moment of truth, the Executive Committee meeting (or some variant). Imagine these two scenarios and choose the one that you’d like to participate in:

In scenario 1, Marketing proposes a MAM solution, IT proposes another MAM solution, and the Advanced Technologies group proposes to develop a custom MAM solution in-house. There is heated debate followed by personal attacks as department managers wave their arms and try to pitch their own solution over the other department’s solution. The meeting ends with the CEO screaming at the various department heads for wasting everyone’s time. Everyone loses.

In scenario 2, Marketing and IT jointly propose a MAM solution and the Advanced Technologies group gives its nod of approval. There is agreement and enthusiasm over the proposed solution. Everyone wins.

An outside consultant can help you to get organizational buy-in for your MAM initiative so that you, or your boss, is in scenario 2 above, not scenario 1. Some of the above tasks are a bit daunting, and some understanding of the landscape may be necessary before you can really dig-in to the issues surrounding your organization and the specifics of your initiative.

Page 1

Here are some items that a consultant can help you with regard to gaining organizational buy-in:

Identify management decision-makers and make sure that they understand and support the investigation of MAM.
Identify the people that the MAM initiative will impact and get a good understanding of HOW they will be impacted.
Map out the workflow that will be affected. Map out the new workflow after the MAM initiative is in place. Be prepared to identify the tangible benefits of MAM in your resulting diagrams.
Return on Investment calculations. At a minimum, show the cost of recreating an average media asset, cost of time spent searching for assets, cost of time in idle project setup. If you can’t come up with some tangible reason to be involved in MAM, then it may be time to wait until you can.