Digital Strategy (beta)
RenewableUK is developing a digital strategy. This is the third in a series of posts describing our journey. You can read the first, about our digital principles, here, and the second, on our social media rules of engagement, here.
The digital strategy is an attempt to pull together a lot of different strands into a coherent body of information which allows a better strategic view on what the organisation is doing, or perhaps could be doing.
What format?
From the off, me and my colleague Nia were fairly certain that a traditional document *wasn’t* the right way to go. Too much information to be easily manageable, and links which need to be made between different components are not well replicated in traditional text platforms.
This is where notion.so comes in. It’s a cross between a project/task manager and wiki. It’s a Freemium model which provides your first 600 blocks free. Yes, 600 is ample for a modest project like a digital strategy.
The platform allows users to navigate between different components of the strategy in a coherent way, with hyperlinks, breadcrumbs etc supporting navigation. The learning curve in using it is a touch steep, but once you’re into it it makes perfect sense.
How about structure?
This required quite a bit of thought. Linear doesn’t work, and nor do all digital aspects sit in the same box. In the end we’ve decided to go with a split between Delivery and Governance. It’s still in beta, so very much subject to change, but it feels as though we’re moving in the right direction. See the image below for the top-level view.
The flowchart above was a piece of cake to make using LucidChart. I think it’s an important piece of the puzzle in helping to support colleagues in conceptualising what digital *is*, and how it fits within the overall business strategy.
Another step in supporting engagement and understanding is (hopefully) going to be with the development and regular deployment of a digital dashboard. I played with some graphic design ideas, borrowing heavily from inspiration on Dribbble, and came up with the ‘concept’ dashboard below. Note that the information about top influencers has been removed to save the blushes of our best connected contacts.
Where next?
There’s still a hell of a lot to do to get anywhere near full implementation. I’m going to be working with my colleagues on some of the content of the strategy at the end of this month, with a view to prioritising the stuff that we’re behind on, and simultaneously giving a bit more structure and support to those who are trying to make changes internally on some more advanced aspects.
I need to get feedback internally on structure and content, and I’m keen to move forward with some of my priority suggestions, such as getting Paul Boag (my digital hero) to deliver a digital workshop for our whole staff complement.
But it feels as though we’re starting to move in a more strategic way in our digital journey, and that’s quite an exciting step.
Peer support
If you live or work in south east Wales and want to join a supportive group of people from public, private and third sectors who meet regularly to chat about digital things, check out Beer, Burger & Bytes which meets on the last Friday of every month. More info in the Digital Wales Best Practice group.
Thankyou to….
Everybody stands on the shoulders of giants. I’ve been massively supported by Catalina de León Belloc of Purple Bunny with her wonderful design ideas, and also by Ruth Billingham of Living Streets who provided some very useful thoughts on social media strategy.
