I received this question this afternoon from an association site I belong to.  Below is the answer I responded with on the association site but I want to make sure anyone can add additional thoughts to this topic which is why I am also posting it here (similar to the lemonade stand analogy below).  How would you have answered the question?

Good question, we don’t have a set percentage to gauge success.  My benchmark wouldn’t be a traditional benchmark.  When news articles or internal announcements get more “hits” we assume it is due to what the article pertains to.  We notice that content which isn’t particularly engaging doesn’t get many hits.  Anything from C Level Management, or a major announcement tends to get higher viewership.  Even every day news items may not pertain to everyone.  Furthermore, it just may not interest them.  It is one of those instances where “you can lead an employee to the news story but you can’t make them consume it”.

We may want 100% of our associates reading what we put out but we are finding that isn’t the case and we are looking to move to a subscription and “pushed” communications model.  We are playing with a design that has a top portion of the page what has what is considered “pushed” news and a bottom section which contains what each associate has subscribed to.  Our philosophy is if they have helped decide what they want to see, they will be more inclined to visit the site, or read the content in the email summary.

If you have the ability it would be great to show percent viewing the news story but also the number of comments and how well the story was rated.  I’d personally be much more interested in that data as opposed to knowing an article was clicked or accessed.  It would also be great to have analytics on how long they were on the page and site (time wise).  If you have 1,000 employees and you are able to get all 1,000 to click a 5,000 word article but on average they only stay on that page for 10 seconds, I’d consider that an opportunity.

I’m trying to change our culture but I know it isn’t easy.  Currently I would say we only focus on content consumption but I want to get us to where we also focus on opinions and ratings of the content.  I’m trying to make it so we think of ourselves as a lemonade stand.  We, the Communications Group push out lots of lemonade.  If the lemonade doesn’t have enough sugar in it nobody will want to drink it.  If we put our lemonade on the wrong side of town we make it too tough for them to find us so we opened several lemonade stands (one on our Intranet and one via email like yourself).

If we sell the lemonade and only focus on how much we sell, as opposed to what people think of it, we won’t grow our lemonade business.  Sales and number of product sold is important but I’d take one customer who pays $1 for my lemonade and gives me feedback to 10 customers who each pay a dollar ($10 total) who drink my lemonade yet don’t give me feedback to improve my product long term.  The lemonade stand that focuses on getting the most customers to their stand may be able to attract lots of customers, but the lemonade stand that focuses on what the customers think of their product will be the stand likely to stay open the longest…and make the most money.  Not sure if that analogy works but it was fun to try.

It is also almost like a one sided conversation if we only focus on analytics.  If I do all of the talking, and you aren’t allowed to talk back, how valuable is that for you and the organization?  My benchmark would be anything that can show you are providing engaging content that inspires enterprise collaboration and knowledge sharing.  For instance an article with 10 replies/comments that is rated highly is of more importance to me from a benchmarking perspective than one that is accessed more often.  Great question, that is what I am thinking is the best benchmark but I’d imagine others may find other analytics more useful.

Scott sent this to me a few days ago and I finally got a chance to watch it tonight.  I did enjoy it and am guilty of taking my laptop and phone everywhere I go because most meetings aren’t productive so I disagree with those two rules.  Nicole Steinbeck says: “Meetings can be a huge productivity & time suck. So what if you took out all of the stupid, wasteful stuff and left only the useful parts?”  Below is a summary of her talk by Scott Berkun (but as he reminds us, all credit goes to Nicole).

1. Schedule a 22 minute meeting – Who decided meetings should be 30 or 60 minutes? What data is this based on? None. 30 and 60 minute meetings leave no time to get between meetings, and assumes, on average, people need an hour to sort things out. Certainly not all meetings can be run in 22 minutes, but many can, so we’d all be better off if the default time were small, not large.
2. Have a goal based agenda – Having an agenda at all would be a plus in most meetings. Writing it on the whiteboard, earns double pluses, since then everyone has a constant reminder of what the meeting is supposed to achieve.
3. Send required readings 3 days beforehand – The burden is on the organizer to make this small enough that people actually do it. Never ever allow a meeting to be “lets all read the documents together and penalize anyone diligent enough to do their homework”. (note: I think 24 hours is plenty).
4. Start on time – How often does this happen? Almost never. Part of the problem is Outlook and all schedule programs don’t have space between meetings. By 2pm there is a day’s worth of meeting time debt. 22 minutes ensures plenty of travel/buffer time between meetings.
5. Stand up – Reminds everyone the goal isn’t to elaborate or be supplemental (See Scrum standing meetings). Make your point, make your requests, or keep quiet. If there is a disagreement, say so, but handle resolving it outside of the meeting.
6. No laptops, but presenters and note takes. If you’re promised 22 minutes, and it’s all good stuff, you don’t need a secondary thing to be doing while you pretend to be listening. One person taking notes, and one person presenting if necessary.
7. No phones, no exceptions – see above.
8. Focus! Note off topic comments. If you have an agenda, someone has to police it and this burden is on whoever called the meeting. Tangents are ok, provided they are short. The meeting organizer has to table tangents and arguments that go too far from the agenda.
9. Send notes ASAP – With 22 minutes, there should be time, post meeting, for the organizer to send out notes and action items before the next meeting begins.

>> Download Nicole’s 22 Minute Meeting Poster

I learned three counterintuitive motivations behind our actions:

1. Autonomy
2. Mastery
3. Purpose

A focus on pure profit alone hurts businesses, workers, and consumers.