Dear all,
I came across this article about this... worth reading albeit long. However, it gives an insight into how employees at EDS are meaningfully engaged.
Source: The Business Communicator: Jul/Aug 2005 issue
Author(s): Mattia, Tom
HEADNOTE
EDS employs around 118,000 people worldwide, had revenues of more than US$20 billion in 2004, and is ranked 95th in the Fortune 500. The company has gone from strength to strength following the technology boom of the '90s, but to stay ahead, it has to ensure it not only embraces change but leads it. Here, the head of corporate communication Tom Mattia explains how the company is using the age-old tradition of storytelling to take it to a new level.
Technology solutions company EDS manages more than 50,000 company servers, 350 million-plus customer relationships, and over two billion customer interactions annually in 41 languages. As 2004 drew to a close, the company faced a number of challenges. EDS had been struggling for the past 18-24 months, and with two CEOs in four years, it had lost its direction. Employees felt divorced from leadership. The senior management needed a framework to help employees understand organizational strategy and to engage them in the vision they had for the industry and EDS itself.
In late 2004, a UK consultancy called The Storytellers was brought on board. There had been a culture of storytelling previously when ex-presidential candidate Ross Perot ran the company. The belief that storytelling simplifies the cascade of strategic information persisted among senior management, but the culture of storytelling had died away.
Developing a storytelling culture
Until recently, most of EDS' internal communication had been delivered via electronic means, mostly by email. But the organization wanted to create more of a storytelling culture. So the internal communication team led by Jane Bamford in the UK and The Storytellers began the process of developing a culture of storytelling within the company.
"EDS went through a tough time," says Tom Mattia, vice president of global communications. "There were still company stories from Perot's time, but they were no longer being told in a unified fashion. We started thinking about turning storytelling into an employee engagement process. The EDS culture in the past was one in which we told stories to advance the company."
The process was necessary because of the quick succession of CEOs: "We had a new CEO swiftly followed by a new management team. We had to keep 118,000 people on board despite those changes," says Mattia.
From India, Pune
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108I came across this article about this... worth reading albeit long. However, it gives an insight into how employees at EDS are meaningfully engaged.
Source: The Business Communicator: Jul/Aug 2005 issue
Author(s): Mattia, Tom
HEADNOTE
EDS employs around 118,000 people worldwide, had revenues of more than US$20 billion in 2004, and is ranked 95th in the Fortune 500. The company has gone from strength to strength following the technology boom of the '90s, but to stay ahead, it has to ensure it not only embraces change but leads it. Here, the head of corporate communication Tom Mattia explains how the company is using the age-old tradition of storytelling to take it to a new level.
Technology solutions company EDS manages more than 50,000 company servers, 350 million-plus customer relationships, and over two billion customer interactions annually in 41 languages. As 2004 drew to a close, the company faced a number of challenges. EDS had been struggling for the past 18-24 months, and with two CEOs in four years, it had lost its direction. Employees felt divorced from leadership. The senior management needed a framework to help employees understand organizational strategy and to engage them in the vision they had for the industry and EDS itself.
In late 2004, a UK consultancy called The Storytellers was brought on board. There had been a culture of storytelling previously when ex-presidential candidate Ross Perot ran the company. The belief that storytelling simplifies the cascade of strategic information persisted among senior management, but the culture of storytelling had died away.
Developing a storytelling culture
Until recently, most of EDS' internal communication had been delivered via electronic means, mostly by email. But the organization wanted to create more of a storytelling culture. So the internal communication team led by Jane Bamford in the UK and The Storytellers began the process of developing a culture of storytelling within the company.
"EDS went through a tough time," says Tom Mattia, vice president of global communications. "There were still company stories from Perot's time, but they were no longer being told in a unified fashion. We started thinking about turning storytelling into an employee engagement process. The EDS culture in the past was one in which we told stories to advance the company."
The process was necessary because of the quick succession of CEOs: "We had a new CEO swiftly followed by a new management team. We had to keep 118,000 people on board despite those changes," says Mattia.
From India, Pune
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