US WEST
Strategy Development and Organizational Transformation
Challenge
With more than 50,000 employees serving customers across the western United States, US WEST needed to improve coordination across its team to enhance service delivery. The regional telecommunications giant retained SageRiver Consulting to develop a corporate communications strategy for developing an internal company-operated network called the "intranet." Although intranets are common today, this initiative broke new ground in connecting organizational teams and driving operational efficiencies.
Project
Working closely with US WEST's team, SageRiver defined and presented a strategy for the new intranet, which executives approved. The intranet was named the Global Village after philosopher Marshall McLuhan's theory that the world would shrink to a global village, thanks to anticipated technological advances that would connect people across the globe.
The Global Village team developed a prototype internal website with potential applications that could run on it. Leaders and employees were invited to come “tour” the Global Village and then demonstrate to at least two colleagues how it worked. This grass-roots approach helped build awareness and excitement—and gave the team valuable feedback for improvement. The process also allowed executives to become comfortable with the new technology before it was deployed across the organization.
Results
The transformational initiative was implemented over the succeeding two years and received “Project of the Year” recognition from Fortune magazine. US WEST credited the Global Village with: dramatically increasing employee productivity; reducing operational costs by limiting the processing, printing and distribution of paper documents; improving customer service by giving employees instant access to the most current information; and improving overall collaboration and connection across the company.
Story Categories: Organizational Design, Strategic Planning, and Team Building. Story Tags: Change Management, Communications Planning, Enabling Technology, Executive Buy-In Process, Organizational Transformation, Strategic Management Process, Strategy Development, and Utilities.
