Let the Teams Talk

Very often, visionary leaders assemble a team, or group of teams, with the intent of having them execute a strategy. It's easy to bark out orders and set deadlines for execution.

Recently, I've woken up to the following pre-existing opportunities:

- Having a team requires allowing ALL members to add their perspective.
- Asking recommended actions is better than asking for opinions.
- Allowing the team members to build their own synergies and relationships with each other is important.
- Understanding those synergies and relationships is even more important.
- Reading the team stress-levels is second to communicating with the team that you are interested in (and will actually) help them through their stress.
- Celebrating success often and without being overt is always the way to go.
- Having members within the team take risks in leading others builds better relationships and respect with all.
- Share their success with others (over yours).

ThinCrust - New way to navigate

Just think... hundreds of Web sites all relating to one organization- one brand. However, the content authors are many and never once tied together. Thus, the look and feel of many of these sites are never consistent, branded or even speaking the same language (taxonomy).

This was an issue with Johns Hopkins Medicine... and now with the advent of the ThinCrust (named for both the noticeably small footprint across the top of any Web page and for its feel-good contribution to society- kind of like pizza) we figured out how to connect all of the independent Web sites that bear the Johns Hopkins name.

How does it work? With one line of JavaScript code that includes a .js include, we can now control the presentation of the ThinCrust from our site centrally. No handing over images and html. The Host Web site manager simply inserts the one line of code anywhere in the 'head' or 'body' tags and the code will do the rest.

The display allows the user to Explore more sites and navigates via 4 column, CSS menu that includes the Google Search Appliance application. The search will not only search all Hopkins sites, but will also detect the site the ThinCrust is on and search that site exclusively.

The menu options highlight when moused over and will open any Web site referenced- however the selections are organized by intent- Patient Care, Education and Research- where the user can 'learn more', as the fourth column allows the user to 'take action'.

The ThinCrust has been embedded on this blog as an example of how easy it was to implement and use.

Strategic Questions for the Business-minded Web site

• What is your competition saying to your customer online?
• What key phrases do your customers use to find what you sell?
  
• Does our Web site show up when customers search for what you provide?
• What are the typical questions potential customers ask first?
  
• What questions would I you like them to ask?
• How much of my business is generated by or influenced by the Internet?