During the spring and summer SamSari has developed a global change program for an industry leader. The goal of the program is to create both engagement and commitment throughout the company for their new business strategy and ways of working.

To help our client succeed with this strategy, SamSari has developed a change program for making the new ways of working a day-to-day reality for all employees. Starting with an intriguing film teaser shown at a conference earlier this year, the initiative continues to engage employees all around the world. Recently, employees began taking part in focused workshop sessions. Films, exercises and discussions make sure the new ideas are firmly rooted in the participants’ minds as they begin adopting these ideas in the workplace. To enable an ongoing dialogue among employees, the program also consists of an interactive site featuring content created by the employees themselves. These employee ‘ambassadors’  based at different sites around the world will contribute to this effort as they share videos and other content portraying their own stories and perspectives.

By using top-down and bottom-up communication simultaneously, the program hopes to engage employees at all levels regardless of their role or title. The purpose is to come together as one company in making these new ways of working a benefit to all. The initial responses to the program have been overwhelmingly positive, and at SamSari we are excited to see how the word is being spread throughout the organization all around the world!

Ludwig just sent this link to me, http://thewildernessdowntown.com - probably one of the coolest and most innovative ways of working with the web and the integration between different technologies and medias I've seen in a long time. Have a look! It’s also a great way of interacting with the viewer and it really ads to the experience, on the other hand the song almost ends up in the background even if it’s a great tune. Thinking of what’s going to be possible within the next few years really puts the spotlight on the need for innovative thinking and entrepreneurship.

We are excited to welcome Jonas Rangstad to the SamSari team! Over the coming 10 weeks he will be doing an internship at the SamSari office. Jonas joins us from Medieinstitutet where he is currently studying Project Management, Communication and Learning Design (Projektledning & Kommunikation inom Pedagogik Nya Medier). 

Jonas is passionate about interactions between people and how different tools can be used to facilitate those meetings and understanding among groups of people.

- During my internship I hope to gain a better understanding of how a typical SamSari change project could look like, and of course I hope to be able to contribute with my experiences from both my course and previous employments.

As you prepare to take a well deserved break this vacation season, we’d like to send you off to the beach or the countryside with a few good books that we hope will keep change ‘on the brain’ over the break . So here are SamSari’s five recommended reads for summer 2010—each exploring a unique perspective on change.

Recommendation #1 Daniel Målberg - SamSari Client Manager
Freakonomics:  A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by S. Levitt and S.J. Dubner

Often described as a ‘melding of pop-culture with economics’, this startling collection of insights from a pair of trained economists demonstrates the power of re-examining seemingly ordinary systems and routines from a fresh perspective—a must for any large organization undergoing change.

Recommendation #2 Sarah Stilwell – SamSari Project Manager
Making the Connections by Bill Quirke

Companies know that communication with their people is important. However, the road to incoherence is paved with good communications. Internal communication is often less than the sum of parts, because the parts do not fit together. This book looks at what a business needs from its people to succeed, what gets in the way, and the role of communication in helping to bridge the gap.

Recommendation #3 Paul Gladden - SamSari Creative Director
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell

In this fascinating read the award winning New York Times journalist looks at the sociological phenomenon of tipping points in modern culture, or "the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable”. The implications for large organizations looking to transform to their own cultures are clear.

Recommendation #4 Anna Gilliam - SamSari Learning Designer
Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert

This fascinating memoir chronicles the author's trip around the world after major life changes, and what she discovered during her travels.  A thought provoking look at one woman’s struggle to overcome the obstacles to true change.

Recommendation #5 Johan Bisenius – SamSari Production Manager
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

After the disappearance of his beloved cat, a man finds himself following a chain of events that prove that his seemingly mundane boring life is much more complicated than it appears. With its ensemble inexplicable events and unforgettable characters this excellent novel is at once a thrilling summer read and an intimate reflection on the joys and perils of undergoing profound personal change.

Feel free to share your own recommendations with us via a comment here in the blog. Enjoy the summer!

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I often reflect upon how it’s the things you’ve never done before that really drives development and keeps your energy levels up. This is definitely the case at SamSari; problem solving creates such a dynamic environment and positive spinoffs. Although I must admit that it can be a bit scary sometimes to dive into the cold water not knowing where you’ll end up.

I have a friend that constantly plows and tries to develop new stuff. I can see it’s sometimes a really painful experience, but equally rewarding when he succeeds… and I guess we would all stand still if it wasn’t for all the developers and creative people out there, so thank you all for that. I try to do my ‘plowing’ at SamSari, the place where I spend most of my work life. At SamSari we are devoted to drive the change part in any kind of corporate change project. My experience is that it’s pretty easy to define what to do - but the “how and why” is much harder. Sometimes early on in the concept development of a project things go from good to great and that’s often when we meet someone brave, a person that is prepared to try out new ways and is prepared to risk some to gain a lot. They challenge us and push our development and the need for innovation. The development we go through as a company during these projects is amazing and that’s often the foundation for the next step in our evolution. Braveness, instinct, gut feeling - call it what you want but it is so incredibly important to follow what you believe in. I think Simon Sinek has a pretty good view on why courage and belief in what you do is essential, have a look at this video if you have the time!

A group of students at Stockholm School of Economics are currently working on a project about e-learning 2.0. SamSari is one of the companies in the field who have been invited to participate in a focus group session on how e-learning can aid in professional training and how it can become more engaging through games and simulation. We look forward to exchanging thoughts and ideas and hope that the meeting will bring about result oriented discussions about how games and simulations can be combined with other tools, such as film and social media, to increase employee engagement.

The social media landscape today is huge, and growing. It seems a new application or tool is appearing every week, making it hard for a regular person to keep up. But the fact remains that social media is a part of the communicative landscape today, and is changing the way we communicate. So how is social media connected to change projects and internal communication?

When talking about social media today people often think about B2C campaigns or tools for private use, but more and more people are looking into how social media can be used to enhance an organization’s internal communication. Traditionally, organizations have been afraid of opening up their communication channels internally, perhaps out of fear of letting negative comments and the like out in the open. But if organizations were to embrace that possibility instead (having people express their opinion is the only way for an organization to be able to comment on them, start up a dialogue and improve) they have a lot to gain.

From my perspective social media, in whatever form it may take, is an excellent tool to use in a change project. Whereas internal communication traditionally is all about 1-way communication from the top down (worst case), social media is all about 2-way communication – dialogue – feedback. In other words, all the things that internal communication should be characterized by. By using social media internally, you can for example:
• create a collaborative dialogue rather than a monologue, and thereby empower employees to action
• have an ongoing, alive communication rather than a static bank of information (compare to many traditional intranets)
• increase involvement and buy-in on the subject of your choice throughout the organization
• ensure knowledge-sharing takes place (make sure your organization is making use of all the talent you have internally!)
• create short-term wins by broadcasting internal heroes or ambassadors.

The possibilities are endless! Making use of social media such as wikis, podcasts, videos etc. internally is a huge change in itself for many organizations today, but I hope we see more of it in the future. At the end of the day, communication is a key success factor for making strategy happen.

Want to read more? Check out the links below for further inspiration:

Slideshow from Abi Signorelli: "Using social networks to engage employees"
Video from Melcrum featuring Abi Signorelli: "Using social media for internal communication"
Examples of groups on LinkedIn related to use of social media in internal communications: Social Media for Internal Communicators, Internal Communications: Getting Started With Social Media, and SMCC - Social Media in a Corporate Context.

This year we decided to complement our Easter greetings with a musical playlist - on the theme of change of course! As we all know, change is important and inevitable, and it happens to all of us in different ways - something that musicians have put into music throughout history. 

Click here to add our album as a playlist in Spotify and listen to our very own compilation of Change Music, a mix of genres and artists to inspire you throughout your Easter holiday. If you haven't got access to Spotify yet, see the change songs we've chosen by clicking here.

Finally, Happy Easter from all of us here at SamSari!

From the earliest days of the cinema, when filmmakers first began attaching soundtracks to film sequences to create the first ‘talkies’, audiences have been utterly captivated by the power of the motion picture. When it’s done right film has the unique ability to immerse the viewer in a world of sight and sound, and as advertisers soon discovered, deliver a compelling message to a large and widely dispersed audience.

Fast forward a hundred years to the information overloaded present, where the business world finds its internal and external communication channels often drowned out by the sheer volume of messages coming  from the world wide web and multimedia broadcasting. Previously restricted by relatively slow broadband speeds, film and video have been on the rise as faster connections have opened up a world of new possibilities. Websites like YouTube have created ‘viral video’ sensations, connecting millions to a single idea in seconds. And this rising tide of information and video is merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg: according to a recent study by Cisco, consumer IP traffic is expected to reach two-thirds of a zettabyte – that’s a trillion gigabytes - by 2013. Of that traffic, 90% is expected to be video.

At SamSari, we’ve watched this trend take shape as more and more companies begin to use video as the dominant vehicle for communicating both to the outside world and internally with their own employees. In our view, when it comes to branding and positioning, employee engagement, leadership campaigns and other strategic initiatives, the power of video to create immediate emotional connections is a truly effective way to get your frontline workforce engaged and involved in the effort straight away.  We see film as a multi-purpose tool that can be used to create a sense of urgency, rally your workforce around a new strategy, or share inspiration and best practice examples from throughout the organization. Whether it is a fast paced interview with  key personnel, or a dramatic production illustrating organizational values, you can count on the power of film to leave a lasting impression.

As we make our way to the Year of the Zettabyte, we will  be watching this trend and helping our clients to make better use of this tool in their large scale transformation efforts.  These days, it’s always best to try and stay a step ahead of the technology, especially when it affects the way your organization communicates. As we say at SamSari, change may be inevitable, but it doesn’t have to be unmanageable!

Want to read more about film as a tool for effective communication? Click on the links below for some inspiration!

A summary of Cisco's report on IP traffic in the future.
Alfa Bravo - a blog about online video and digital media business development.
Story of Stuff - a cool combination of animation and film.

Do you know of other inspirational websites? Leave a comment in the comment field and share your tip with other readers!

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