One thing I learned from my No Sports for a Year experiment is that I love learning from the strategic side of baseball and I love applying what I learn to other areas of my life. So, lately, as the new 2017 season gets going, I was thinking more about how and why the Chicago […]
What an amazing ride it’s been these last five years! I’m grateful for such a tremendously inspiring, challenging and rewarding experience of leading employee communities and collaboration at Walgreens. What an honor it’s been to have had so many opportunities to learn, grow and build new relationships and strengthen partnerships, and help the organization […]
I recently celebrated five years at Walgreens, and as part of this career milestone employees are given a ceremonial 5-year pin and the team gathers around as managers and colleagues say a few words about the milestone and the employee’s accomplishments and contributions to the company. At Walgreens, this pin holds an important cultural significance […]
As I continue to explore how to work out loud and grow our employee communities at Walgreens I’m always on the look out to find good books that give me inspiring ideas and stories about how to work better and develop our community strategy. So I thought I’d share a list of books about working […]
One of the most important things you can do to increase engagement and adoption of an enterprise social network (ESN) and employee community is to invest time and resources in branding and marketing it. At Walgreens we’ve invested a lot of time into branding and marketing our ESN and social intranet experience and it’s been […]
Each week I look forward to the inspiring buzz I get from #ESNChat and I’m excited to join the team leading #ESNchat. If you’re new to #ESNchat, it’s a weekly Twitter chat founded by Jeff Ross in September 2013 for those interested in Enterprise Social Networks (internal social networks for employees of businesses). The topics covered are primarily of […]
I recently had the pleasure of speaking to graduate students at Depaul University in Chicago about the future of work and internal communications. Looking back on this talk I was surprised and delighted because it was not only a chance to talk with students about the future of work that’s unfolding within organizations, the talk was […]
In my work building employee communities for Walgreens and other organizations I’ve have had to lead communities through change many times. While experiencing the impact of organizational change I’ve learned that it’s critical to have a change plan for your community. It’s also important to not only be reactive to change but you must be […]
Earlier this year I had the opportunity to speak at the J Boye intranet conference. During the conference I shared the story about how at Walgreens we’re using community management strategies to roll out a new social intranet, develop an internal social media program and build communities of practice. During my talk I shared this quote […]
I recently had the pleasure of kicking off the Community Roundtable’s new Community Manager spotlight series. It was tons of fun chatting with Jim Storer and sharing the inside scoop of the development of our enterprise social network and employee communities journey at Walgreens. Highlights of the chat include: an overview how how we […]
It’s inspiring and encouraging to see how much Community Manager Appreciation Day has evolved since it was started in 2010. Four years later CMAD has become the dedicated day to not only give thanks to community managers and recognize them for the work they do, it’s now become a 24-hour celebration where we also roll […]
When you’re building an enterprise social network at a large company and aiming to make your organization more social and collaborative, one of the most important things you should do is surround yourself with smart people who have done or are doing the same thing as you’re aiming to do. That’s why I’ve […]
Continuing our exploration of community management and social media, here’s a video and the deck from a presentation I gave when I spoke at the Socialmedia.org Blogwell event in New York City. My talk was about how, at Walgreens, we’re using community management strategies to build relationships, support culture change and engage employees within our internal […]
I’m thrilled to share with you some exciting news as we continue our exploration of community management! This year I took an active role in helping to develop the research for The 2013 State of Community Management, a yearly industry report led by the Community Roundtable. I’m honored to be part of the SOCM 2013 advisory […]