The midsummer magic of a DWG Member Meeting

[00:00:00.890] – Ed Taylor

We did sort of an overview of our current suite of benchmarks, which runs to five individual benchmarks. So starting at the top, you’ve got Digital Workplace Maturity that provides a holistic overview of the whole enterprise. We then drop down into sort of more discipline focused areas where we look at the management of intranets as a separate benchmark and then move into Digital Workplace management as another separate discipline. Then from there we then drop into product focused benchmarks, which have become very popular certainly over the last twelve to 18 months. Digital Communication Channels is probably our most popular benchmark that we’ve delivered over the last twelve months, and then that’s complemented with the final benchmark called Digital Collaboration. And we did a bit of a straw poll in the room and asked which of those benchmarks that they want to do a deep dive into. And I think that the room chose Digital Communication Channels to help fix some of those comms issues that we highlighted earlier in the session

[00:00:55.690] – Nicole Carter

And bringing everybody together really to have a clear understanding of what the vision and strategy for the digital headquarters or the digital workplace should be. So trying to pull everybody together so they’ve got a common goal and a common direction of travel. And then the last thing really I think that people wish for is to have some sort of wow factor in a digital workplace to help people love the organizations they work for. And I think that will help with any retention issues and that sort of job churn elements that I was speaking about earlier trying to make the employee experience and just the way that people can work in a digital workplace the best it can be so that people love that element of it, and hopefully it helps with the attention of these employees.

[00:01:42.930] – Nancy Goebel

What a special treat to reconnect with my fellow DWG colleagues, Ed Taylor and Nicole Carter for a catch up today. In case you haven’t met, Ed, he’s DWG’s Chief Growth Officer. And Nicole is Co-Head of DWG’s Technology Provider Programme and one of our consultants. Together we explored the magic of DWG’s Member Meeting and Technology Lab held this summer in the heart of London at a DWG member’s offices in the Blackfriars district. Our conversation is much like a highlights reel that explored everything from the rich insights, the special connections, the trending topics, to the shared ambitions for the future of digital workplaces across a spectrum of 20 plus organizations from FTSE 100 and equivalent organizations. This is your host, Nancy Goebel, DWG’s Chief Executive. Digital Workplace Impact is brought to you by Digital Workplace Group. Happy listening.

[00:02:55.850] – Nancy Goebel

Ed and Nicole I’m just thrilled to have you drop into the studio for a chat today about the summer DWG Member Meeting that took place in London. Welcome, welcome.

[00:03:09.230] – Nicole Carter

Hi Nancy. Very nice to be here today.

[00:03:11.730] – Ed Taylor

Hi there, Nancy.

[00:03:13.870] – Nancy Goebel

And of course, Member Meetings are such a unique part of the DWG experience for our members. But sometimes it’s hard to figure out what happens behind the scenes around an event like that because these are closed door sessions. So, Ed, for someone who hasn’t had a chance to experience a DWG Member Meeting and Technology Lab yet, what do you think makes them so special and why?

[00:03:45.510] – Ed Taylor

I think we’ve not got a massive audience. I think we’ve got what I’d say a right sized audience in terms of allowing people to sort of network and meet people. So for the event that we’ve just had over the summer in June, we had 20 organizations and about 50 people. And I think that really sort of gives people an opportunity to sort of meet everyone in attendance over the two day program. They can really sort of share insights from what they’re finding about their organization. And I think in terms of our program, I think we really emphasize placing practitioners at the heart of what we do and we really allow those practitioners to get into the detail, talk to their peers from a myriad of different industries financial services, advertising, charity manufacturing, law, construction, oil and gas, the list goes on. Hospitality, broadcasting, et cetera, et cetera. And I think it’s a very sort of innovative environment. And I’m being biased, but I would definitely say it’s a very unique experience in that I view sort of the role that DWG provides is largely sort of a custodian of bringing those people together and sort of being the sort of oil that gets those conversations flowing.

[00:04:56.970] – Nancy Goebel

And Nicole, what would you add to that in terms of the uniqueness of these Member Meeting experiences?

[00:05:04.530] – Nicole Carter

I think I build on what Ed said and talk about the authenticity really and that sort of community of practice. I mean, that sort of smallish group are brought together for two days and it’s not like a conference where everybody just has those small touch points with people you really are immersed in. And I think that by the end of it, everybody does feel a lot of connection to the other people in the room. And because everybody’s at different stages of their digital workplace journey wherever they are and what other roles and responsibilities they have in their actual workplaces, everybody has something to learn and something to share. So I think that just that sort of contribution. And people feel sort of that they’ve actually got some real benefit from the time that they’ve spent together and some lasting connections as well.

[00:05:52.450] – Nancy Goebel

So to sum that up, it’s really about establishing deep connections in a short period of time, robust conversation about the heart of the issues that these organizations are working through as part of their digital transformation journeys. And also, I think it sets the scene for longer term connections. I know Ed, when we talked about the Member Meeting in the spring, one of the immediate outgrowths from that session was that two of the organizations one financial services, one consumer goods organization actually ended up arranging a five part series where they got together to explore more deeply the programs that each could learn from each other. And that allowed for influencing their respective roadmaps leading up to 23 and 2024. So the connections extend well beyond the two day event based on how we help individuals build those relationships in a short period of time.

[00:07:07.030] – Ed Taylor

Yeah, I think if I could add to that, I think what’s really interesting is the value that they get from those sort of interactions, that you’re able to sort of validate some of your own thinking that obviously would be formed within side the confines of your own organization and sort of talk to other individuals who may have dealt with similar challenges and overcome them. And I think what’s quite nice about bringing those people together is it can have sort of an accelerative effect on people’s own sort of decision making. So I think there’s a huge amount of value in attending those Member Meetings and then building on the relationships that you’re able to drive from attending it.

[00:07:43.510] – Nancy Goebel

And Nicole, what can you tell us about the typical attendees who join a Member Meeting? We talked a little bit about the industries represented with Ed’s help.

[00:07:57.690] – Nicole Carter

Yeah, I think it’s very much about practitioners, people who have and are walking the walk. And there’s certainly a range of professions. It used to be more comms based. I think it was more focused on corp comms or internal comms, intranet managers. And those roles really are still very much to the fore. But we certainly see more as the industry changes, we see other professions and roles coming through. So digital employee experience, people, IT managers, people that are looking at that sort of full gamut of how the employee experience is rolled out across the organization. And because I think DWG has always advocated having that connection between comms, IT and HR, we see certainly more IT people and more HR people coming through. And I know when we did that sort of show of hands, there was a full range of people across those professions in the room, which was really nice to see because they can certainly all have something to share and show how different elements can be viewed from the different perspectives of those professions.

[00:09:10.450] – Nancy Goebel

And I would add that we also have knowledge management led digital workplace teams in the mix, as well as individuals from business transformation and sometimes even future of work organizations as well. And I think that cross functional perspective is really important because the digital workplace landscape in and of itself really spans all the major functional groups inside of organizations. And so when we come together, we’re not just looking at one slice, which is technology or communications or HR as you say it, or even knowledge management, but how that all needs to come together very much like each individual organization. And so I really think of DWG Member Meetings as a barometer for what’s going on in our industry. And so, Ed, I know that you’re someone who goes through some pretty deep thinking as part of that two day adventure with our members and what stood out for you in terms of the most pressing challenges that our members and guests shared during the course of the summer Member Meeting?

[00:10:26.390] – Ed Taylor

Sure. I think I’ve had the opportunity to sort of look through all of the various data that was gathered as a result of that. And I think the key sort of theme that sort of came from me is there’s a clamor from the organizations at large in various ways of how do we get the best from the technology. I think we’ve all sort of gone through a huge amount of change. I know I’m going to nick a point that Nicole made in our conversations earlier about this podcast that Norm mentioned, COVID. And I think we’ve now sort of fundamentally moved into the new world, that hybrid is the new norm. There are various sort of flavors of what hybrid constitutes within the organizations that we’re working with. But I think what we’re now seeing is that the technology has been put in place as a result of COVID and it’s now sort of pivoting more towards how do we get the best from that technology and how do we deal with the change that that’s brings? So I’m sort of seeing quite a lot of challenges that for me, sort of fold up into a whole sort of change management set of challenges.

[00:11:26.670] – Ed Taylor

So just to pull out some examples, one of the UK’s largest broadcasters talking about how do they effectively support frontline workers and make the employee experience more accessible. I think a number of organizations looked into various elements of governance. So obviously, with the proliferation of more technology, that creates higher volumes of communication channels. So who owns all of those different channels and how do they effectively manage the volume of content that’s been delivered through those different channels? Another area around governance was understanding and making sure that there’s clear ownership of different elements of the digital workplace. As we start to introduce more complexity, there needs to be sort of a higher power within side these organizations to make sure that we’ve got really effective guidance and understanding around the ownership. And then I think the sort of final few points that I observe was adoption. There’s a lot of work that can be done within inside these organizations to help end users really get up to speed. And I think the sort of final point that I’d like to make, or there’s actually two, I tell a lie. One is sort of having sort of an overarching strategy and roadmap around the whole digital workplace and really start to focus in on how do we bring the various stakeholders from HR, IT, internal comms together so that we can really drive the value and effectively help organizations change and get the benefits from these technologies.

[00:12:49.980] – Ed Taylor

And that then leads into the final point is have we got enough resources to really make those changes as quickly as we need to be able to do to get the benefit?

[00:12:59.310] – Nancy Goebel

That’s quite a lot. But Nicole, I’m sure that either you’ve got to add to that list or there were some things that surprised you about these challenges. Where would you like to go next?

[00:13:10.300] – Nicole Carter

Yeah, I think there was something about organizations finding it hard to find the talent that they need. So I think that’s certainly something that organizations need to think of. How can they make sure that their organization is attracting that talent and what can they do from an HR and wellbeing and all those sorts of things situations to make sure that they get the best people. Because there does seem to be a shortage listening to the people we had in the room there. And also just to reiterate on what Ed said about having a strategy everyone’s still coming out of the pandemic period and hybrid is sort of settling in and there’s lots of piecemeal solutions have been put in place and those are ticking along quite nicely. But now thinking of what’s the strategy around that, how can they optimize it and make it better and more robust really for the next five or ten years, really? And making sure that I think we saw some people struggling with the fact that they were maybe practitioners and they could see what was needed there, but then trying to highlight that and strengthen their case really to their senior managers.

[00:14:22.520] – Nicole Carter

And that’s one thing that I would say about the meeting as well. There was a real mix of practitioners at that doing level and people that are more strategic thinkers in the room as well. And so for them to be able to see things from each other’s perspective was quite nice as well. And hopefully those senior leaders will be able to take some of those challenges that the middle management are grappling with into their own organizations as well. It’s just having that cohesive push really for the whole organization in what they’re doing with a digital workplace and getting that strategy and business case.

[00:14:59.310] – Nancy Goebel

You know, one of the things I was listening for, between what you’ve shared and what Nicole shared is how much attention was there around the generative AI arena and ChatGPT.

[00:15:13.810] – Ed Taylor

So it’s interesting, not as much as what we heard when we were in Atlanta earlier in the year. I felt this one, we were a bit more restrained on the AI front and I seem to recall having a bit of a we did a quick straw poll as to which organizations were actively sort of looking into this and I think it was sort of a bit of a mixed bag. I think there are a few organizations out there that sort of are quite risk averse and are not quite ready to sort of embrace AI and bring it fully into their organization. But I think there are some out there that sort of clearly see the benefits and are starting with those early stages. But I suspect in the Member Meetings later on this year, I fully envisage the sort of AI dial to get cranked up to eleven and we’ll sort of see where people are going. But I think it’s one of those interesting sort of trends that we’re seeing play out over a longer period of time. And I think getting the insights from Member Meetings can be very valuable to those who have attended because they get to get a sense check as to how big a trend is this?

[00:16:13.020] – Ed Taylor

Is it something that we need to act upon straight away? Can we take our time? So just getting a feel for what others are doing can be hugely beneficial for those practitioners assembled in the room.

[00:16:22.320] – Nancy Goebel

I think it’s much like any other generations of technology that we’ve seen, where, of course, you see the hype cycle kick in and then reality and the need to think about what are the use cases? How do you bring new tools and resources into an organization in a way that’s ethical, that safeguards intellectual property and a whole host of other things? It’s not just a matter of plug in AI. Ready, set, go. There’s a lot to think about, and certainly when we were gathering in Atlanta, Ed, it was just off the news headlines cycle around the developers at Samsung who had put some pretty sensitive code out into the public domain. So I think lots of organizations paused right after that and we were feeling a little bit of that when we gathered in London because organizations did want to take the time and care to plan and think through how this really should come together as a leapfrog moment for organizations over the medium and long term. One of the things I think is an important part of the Member Meeting experience is that of course we have DWG experts in the room, whether it’s you and Nicole, Ed or others around the team.

[00:17:47.860] – Nancy Goebel

And so, of course we talked about the challenges and for every challenge there are ways of approaching them to break them down and to think about what’s needed next. So can you share with us how DWG helped members tackle some of their pressing issues during the two days?

[00:18:10.570] – Ed Taylor

Absolutely I think, you know, having just talked through some of the challenges that we observed, I think we’re sort of very well placed to help organizations make sense of that and understand where their sort of strengths and weaknesses are. And that’s where we sort of went into a bit of a deep dive on our benchmarking services because I think it’s important that organizations are able to get a solid baseline as to their performance in different areas of their digital workplace so that they can make effective change going forward. So to that point, we did sort of an overview of our current suite of benchmarks, which runs to five individual benchmarks. So starting at the top, you’ve got Digital Workplace Maturity that provides a holistic overview of the whole enterprise. We then drop down into sort of more discipline focused areas where we look at the management of intranets as a separate benchmark, and then move into Digital Workplace management as another separate discipline. And then from there, we then drop into product focused benchmarks, which have become very popular certainly over the last twelve to 18 months. Digital Communication Channels is probably our most popular benchmark that we’ve delivered over the last twelve months, and then that’s complemented with the final benchmark called Digital Collaboration.

[00:19:19.080] – Ed Taylor

And we did a bit of a straw poll in the room and asked which of those benchmarks that they want to do a deep dive into. And I think that the room chose Digital Communication Channels to help fix some of those comms issues that we highlighted earlier in the session. And with that benchmark, what we’re doing is looking at eight distinct different dimensions. So getting into topics around channel targeting, push pull channels, real time multimedia channels, brand culture and values, involvement, advocacy, strategy and coordination, central and local balance, you wouldn’t have thought I was reading off a list there. But in terms of sort of our overarching benchmark that could be turned around in eight to ten weeks, it involves two of our consultants doing a very thorough investigation around the organization and the sort of elements that are in scope. And what they’re seeking to do is demonstrate competency and find evidence of competency in certain areas relative to the dimensions that I’ve just described for the Digital Communication Channels benchmark. And that’s quite a powerful deliverable that can be used within the organization to affect change. I’ll climb down from my benchmarking soapbox and talk a little bit about some of the stuff that Paul covered.

[00:20:26.660] – Ed Taylor

So, Paul Miller is our founder and now Chief Creative Officer at DWG, who gave a very quick overview of his sort of work in Rewilding Work in ten easy steps. And this is where Paul went into a lot of detail on some of the sort of top challenges that he sees that we need to wrestle with for the future as we seek to sort of create significant improvements in the way we go about working with inside organizations. So just picking out some of the top points. Paul’s highlighting the transition to servant leadership, where CEOs play much more hands on role in navigating large scale organizations, the ethical use of artificial intelligence, and making sure that the sort of appropriate frameworks are put in place to manage AI. Looking at establishing digital headquarters for organizations, finding or establishing this concept of being hyperdigital and hyperphysical. So making sure that we’re consciously working in a digital environment and then making sure that we’re spending physical time with our colleagues to get the value out of that and finding that balance effectively. And then I think Paul then summed it up in a really interesting way, that he wants to sort of see digital workplaces really shift into this kind of living adaptive system.

[00:21:42.830] – Ed Taylor

And I want everyone to sort of picture the idea of a starling murmuration sort of moving around to the various challenges that it’s facing if you sort of take the analogy of putting it into a digital workplace. So, really interesting work from Paul and there’s lots of opportunities to find out more about Rewilding on our website if that’s of interest to people.

[00:22:01.430] – Nancy Goebel

And Nicole, I know that we also allocated some time for a Technology Lab, which in and of itself is a unique set of resources that we share with our members by way of bringing technology providers into our space on the second afternoon of the two day event. Tell us a little bit about how that played into the conversations with our members as well.

[00:22:32.530] – Nicole Carter

Yes, so the Technology Lab that’s come out from our Technology Provider Programme, which was established in 2020, so a very strange year for everybody, but really it came out from the need that our members were expressing to have more of an insight into technologies that are coming out. So DWG had always been technology agnostic, trying to sort of be a neutral player in that and just looking at how change management or how the tools are used and the employee experience of those tools rather than the actual tools themselves. But there was certainly a need being expressed for our members. So we established that programme at that time and because of the nature of the last few years, really we’ve iterated that over the time and now we’ve been able to get back in the room with members, the Technology Labs have come into play. So we had our first one last year and we’ve got a few this year, but the one in London, we had four technology providers come and they give people it’s a bit like a quick overview of the technology. It’s very small sessions, so there’s between 8, 10, sometimes twelve people in the session and the providers come in and give a demonstration, ask questions of the audience, and the audience have the opportunity to ask questions of the provider about the technologies.

[00:23:51.670] – Nicole Carter

So even if a practitioner isn’t really at that stage to actually purchase or look at those technologies at that point, it gives our members a good insight into what’s out there really in that sort of safe space, there’s no sort of marketing talk behind that at all. It’s really a safe space to have a look at the technologies and get that good overview of how technologies are changing and how things can maybe be integrated into their difficult workplaces in the future and we had a good range of technologies there as well. So we’re trying to do that in all our in-person events just to give people that safe space to get a deep dive into these new and emerging and exciting technologies.

[00:24:32.940] – Nancy Goebel

Yeah, and Ed who were among the main providers in the mix and how were they sourced.

[00:24:39.610] – Ed Taylor

So we had organizations, including Unily, Halo, AvePoint with their product from tyGraph which is a measurement tool, WorkJam and Igloo and ultimately they’re sourced from what we hear on the ground, from our member advisors and our consultants. So what we want to do is give like minded tech providers an opportunity to get up close and personal with the people that are going to influence the procurement of those services. And it’s worked really well and I think they get a lot of value from this. And I think some of the nice things that I’ve certainly observed with those sessions is that people who are practitioners in digital workplace, they might not necessarily buying technology at this particular point in time. But I personally think they kind of have a duty of care to be aware as to where technology in general is headed and what interesting features are coming down. So it’s always good to be able to check in with providers and really understand where the roadmaps are heading. But as I say, we’re always on the lookout for technology providers that have a good track record with ideally DWG members and organizations that sort of fit the sort of large scale businesses that we tend to sort of operate with.

[00:25:50.990] – Nicole Carter

I think the technology providers, when they’ve fed that to me, they really see the benefit of actually speaking to the practitioners in the room and finding out what their pain points are and what things they’re grappling with. So they certainly see it as a learning point from their viewpoint as well, seeing how things are changing for the practitioners on the ground. We did have some good key takeaways really from the lab so that I know that something that seems to be coming to the fore is how the frontline can really have great mobile, useful services to make their work lives easier. Because we’ve seen through DWG that we’ve tried to do some work over this in recent years. But now that really seems to become to the fore that organizations are realizing that they can tackle this perennial problem of how to connect with their mobile workforce who may not have the traditional log on security arrangements that maybe their corporate employees have. So that’s been really interesting to see that come out and there’s lots of really good providers trying to tackle that issue now. One of the things that comes out with the people that we do feature in the tech lab is that they do have to have some link with our members.

[00:27:02.360] – Nicole Carter

So it’s usually a member that’s using them that’s some of the criteria. So then we’ve got those case studies to fall back on as well. So if a member is particularly interested in one of these technologies, we’ve usually got some live examples who are our member network as well that we can share as well as the information that comes from the provider itself. One of the other takeaways that’s coming through is the power of real time data and analytics and how people are using that evidence to improve employment improvements in their digital workplace. So very much leading from an evidence base in business strategy and business cases. One of the foundations really is that Microsoft is and will always remain a default enterprise platform. So we’re seeing that the technologies that we’re connecting with tend to have really trying to look at capitalizing on the integration with Microsoft platform. So that makes it easier for people to be able to bring those elements in which will then add on to the Microsoft stack and make the improvements they’re looking for whilst having Microsoft as their foundation. Because sometimes they need to do that because that’s their organization’s main platform.

[00:28:12.640] – Nicole Carter

And then I think the last one we’ve already spoken about before is generative AI. All our technology providers are looking at that as well and how they can bring that to the fore and work from where looking at how the industry is going and how they can integrate that into their platform whilst getting the benefits from that as well. And they’re sort of finding their own way with that too.

[00:28:34.100] – Nancy Goebel

And Ed, anything to add to the takeaways from the Technology Lab itself?

[00:28:39.110] – Ed Taylor

No, for me I just think it’s such an amazing sort of platform, sort of bring those groups together and I look forward to the sessions that we’ve got coming up later in the year and involving a broad section of different technology providers. I think what’s interesting for me is that a lot of people might just think within other tech labs that we’re looking at out of the box SharePoint solutions. And I think what I really like is that there’s so many different flavors of technology that we’re starting to see get involved in the tech labs and I think that just brings more awareness to the practitioners that are attending those sessions. So, very much looking forward to seeing how the tech lab develops over the next few Member Meetings that we’ve got coming up this year.

[00:29:19.520] – Nancy Goebel

Excellent. And so Nicole, I think it would be a nice way to cap off the review of the summer Member Meeting with a final share. One of the things DWG does is trigger reflective moments on the part of the members because over two days they’re taking in quite a lot of information and I know there was some conversation about their next stage ambitions, their wishes for the digital workplace. Can you share some of those highlights with us?

[00:29:51.500] – Nicole Carter

Yeah, certainly. I think that some of them were quite surprising as well. The main surprising one for me was that people wanted to have more robust data and insights to be able to show their impact and make better informed decisions. So it wasn’t too much about that low level just getting the job done, it was how they can then take some data and be more strategic around that. That was really great to see. And I know that sometimes that’s hard to put into place because we did see that practitioners have a really busy time of it, really looking at the day-to-day work that trying to lift their head from that and be more strategic is sometimes a challenge. So that was really good to see, I think having an integrated and intelligent digital workplace experience. So trying to make sure that employees do get the best out of the services that they’re offering is coming, is a foundation to all of this. And we’ve seen that for a long time. But just really that drive to make sure that happens and for practitioners to use everything in their power, whether it’s data, whether it’s new technologies, to be able to bring that to fruition for employees coming through as well.

[00:30:57.190] – Nicole Carter

And certainly a big wish for people. It’s like their reason for being really that was sort of underpinned by maybe creating a seamless partnership across stakeholders. So I spoke about that before but HR, IT, comms really coming together and we are seeing that happen more and more which is really lovely to see because we’ve been advocates of that stakeholder relationship for a long time. And bringing everybody together, really to have a clear understanding of what the vision and strategy for the digital headquarters or the digital workplace should be. So trying to pull everybody together so they’ve got a common goal and a common direction of travel. And then the last thing, really, I think, that people wish for is to have some sort of wow factor in a digital workplace to help people love the organizations they work for. And I think that will help with any retention issues and that sort of job churn elements that I was speaking about earlier, trying to make the employee experience and just the way that people can work in the digital workplace the best it can be so that people love that element of it, and hopefully it helps with the retention of these employees.

[00:32:07.380] – Nancy Goebel

That’s such a great recap, Nicole. And one of the things you talked about, of course, was the idea of colleagues coming together cross-functionally. I do know that DWG has two more opportunities for members to come together along with invited guests as we move into the fall. So Ed, can you recap for us what these opportunities look like?

[00:32:34.530] – Ed Taylor

Absolutely. So in September, on the 20th and 21st, we’re going to be heading out to Intuit, who are based in Mountain View, California. And we’ll be hosted by Priya Thummalapalli, who we’ve known for a long, long time and very much looking forward to spending two days with her team and finding out all the amazing stuff that Priya has been doing within Intuit. And then later in the year, we’re going to be putting on our winter jackets and heading out to Malmö, Sweden to go spend some time with Patrik Bergman at Malmö Stad or City of Malmo. And that’s going to be happening on the 15th and 16th November. So if any listener is interested in sort of applying to join those events, you’re very welcome to head to digitalworkplacegroup.com/events and you can register there and hopefully we’ll see you at those locations.

[00:33:23.050] – Nancy Goebel

And for our DWG members, we have all the details around both of these events on the extranet as well. The roster of members is building up quite beautifully for both of these sessions. So we’ll have a wide mix of organizations represented, much like the list of industries and roles that both you, Ed and Nicole described at the top of this conversation. Believe it or not, we’re in our final moments together. These sessions just fly by, so I’ll just open it up for a final reflection, a final thought. What have we missed in the essence of trying to capture the experience of our summer Member Meeting and our early look at the fall series? Anything for you, Nicole?

[00:34:16.330] – Nicole Carter

Yeah, I think the only thing I’ve probably not brought out in this conversation so far is that sort of change management element and how organizations seem to be really behind that now, which was something that we was missing in the past. It was like deploy new technology and hope for the best. But we are seeing in many more elements of behavior change and change management and some resources put in behind that and people thinking about how these technologies are going to go down in the organization and how they can get the best out of them from the people point of view rather than just the technology point of view. And I think that’s really encouraging and great to see.

[00:34:55.470] – Nancy Goebel

Excellent. Ed, anything for you?

[00:34:57.840] – Ed Taylor

Yeah, I would just round off with saying that first and foremost, the Member Meetings are designed to be a confidential forum. So it’s very much about placing people in a safe environment where they can share as much or as little as they want. And I think in the main, the vast majority of organizations that come along to these sessions have a huge willingness to share their successes, their failures that they’ve had with their digital workplaces. And I think it’s such a fantastic environment that you really do need to see it firsthand. So go back to my earlier point, reach out to us and take us up on our offer to come along as a guest at the next one.

[00:35:34.830] – Nancy Goebel

Excellent. Well, Ed and Nicole, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to have a little chat with me about some of our takeaways from our summer Member Meeting and a look ahead to the fall. It’s always great to catch up with you both.

[00:35:52.290] – Ed Taylor

Absolute pleasure.

[00:35:53.890] – Nicole Carter

Thank you, Nancy. Thanks, Ed.

[00:35:59.610] – Nancy Goebel

Digital Workplace Impact is brought to you by the Digital Workplace Group. DWG is a strategic partner covering all aspects of the evolving digital workplace industry, not only through membership, but also benchmarking and boutique consulting services. For more information, visit digitalworkplacegroup.com nowhere.