Katie shares the stories and lessons of how she got to where she is today, the do’s and don'ts of a successful company rebrand, and resources she’d recommend to anyone who wants to have a successful career in communications.
“Being young and not knowing how things are supposed to go created in me this real comfort with ambiguity and the acknowledgement that there's a ton of opportunity in ambiguity. So if you can embrace that and lean into it and accept that there's no right way to do anything. Everybody's just trying to chart their own path together. And as long as you're aligned on the goals and you're organized and you're going to stay focused on the objectives that the company is trying to achieve, you can learn a lot and get a lot of responsibility really early in your career.” — Katie Miserany
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Episode Timestamps:
*(2:00) - How Katie got interested in internal communications
*(4:15) - Story Time Segment
*(5:08) - The SurveyMonkey to Momentive rebrand
*(7:55) - Working with Sheryl Sandberg & the Dave Goldberg Family Foundation
*(14:15) - Getting Tactical Segment
*(17:15) - Preparing employees for a successful rebrand
*(21:41) - How the rebrand name came to be Momentive
*(28:25) - Top 3 rebrand must-do’s for internal comms professionals
*(38:20) - Asking for a Friend Segment
*(41:10) - Overcoming barriers as a woman
*(44:00) - The biggest challenge internal communications professionals will face in the future
Links
[00:01:45] Amanda: How are you doing today, Katie?
Katie: Doing great. It's been a good day, a lot of exciting stuff going on.
[00:01:50] Amanda: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me.
[00:01:52] I want to start off by understanding about your background. My background is in internal and external communications, but I want to talk [00:02:00] about you. How did you get interested in internal
[00:02:02] Katie: communication? I started out. So in school, I worked at the newspaper. I went to UW UCFB, university of California at Santa Barbara.
[00:02:12] And I wrote for the newspaper, I worked on the copy desk. I actually applied to and got into journalism school, but there's just something right before I was supposed to report in, you know, telling me that this wasn't the career path for me. I kind of switched strategies after graduating, you know, that typical story of an English major wayward, English major, I didn't know what to do with her life.
[00:02:35] I spent some time teaching. I was a substitute teacher. My mom's a teacher. So that was when career path I looked at. But I also was working as a freelance writer for just about anybody who would pay me. I wrote those essays that you read in the act or the sat where, you know, it's about the inventor of potato chips or whatever.
[00:02:56] And then you have to answer reading comprehension questions. I spent some time writing [00:03:00] those. I wrote newspaper magazine articles, but something I also did was started writing as a ghost writer, these case studies for some big tech companies out here in Silicon valley. Really enjoyed it. And that actually ended up being kind of the gateway.
[00:03:14] I had a little portfolio now and I was able to apply for jobs with some experience doing marketing communications work. And that was my first entree into the world of marketing and got a job as a marketing copywriter after. And have kind of worked in every type of job in the communications field since then.
[00:03:33] And now I didn't work on internal communications until I came to Momentive survey monkey at the time. Um, but it's, it's been really. Meaningful and powerful in this age of COVID and remote work and all of the changing things around us to have such an important audience in front of us and all the ways that we have to shift.
[00:03:55] And re-imagine how we're getting news out to them, keeping them engaged, keeping them inspired. [00:04:00] We're going to get into
[00:04:01] Amanda: a lot about that. I want to talk about the new virtual ways of working. I'd love to get your perspective. Clearly, I want to talk about them in Tim momentum, AI. So let's, I'm going to just dive right into our first segment.
[00:04:14] It's called story
[00:04:15] Katie: time.
[00:04:25] Amanda: So
[00:04:25] Katie: let's, let's
[00:04:25] Amanda: dive in and really kick this off. You and your team have been incredibly busy, right? With the momentum of AI. Sort of brand rebrand. Um, and I want to get into the tactics of that in the next segment. So I'm just wondering if you'd be willing to pull back the curtain and talk about what this entire experience has been like for you and your team since, since the momentum of AI has been announced, or since you were in the process.
[00:04:51] Katie: Yeah, well, just one point of clarification. So momentum.ai is our web address, but the company name is just Momentive. We just picked that web address to really [00:05:00] highlight our emphasis on AI, in our products and the ways that it supercharges people's ability to do that. But let's see the rebrand itself was in the works for quite a while.
[00:05:10] I think I got brought in about nine months before. We were scheduled to go live with it, to start thinking about both the internal and the external communication strategy, and also to have influence on the actual outcome. So at that point we weren't locked in on a name. We knew we wanted a new name to give us a fresh page to tell the story of our enterprise offerings and the expanded scope of what had originally just been survey monkey, which was such an amazing.
[00:05:38] Ubiquitous product. Somebody on social media called us the a bandaid of surveys. So when you think online surveys, you think survey monkey, it was so ubiquitous that in some ways it was holding us back. So we have this amazing CX product called get feedback. People didn't necessarily think of us for CX.
[00:05:55] At the time, we have an amazing market research solution. That's being [00:06:00] used by consumer brands and financial services firms for brand trackers, industry trackers, concept testing. Great high-level work, but people were still hesitant to sign a six-figure deal with survey monkey. So we knew this name was holding us back.
[00:06:14] We hadn't quite zeroed in on exactly what we wanted the new name to be at that point. But being involved in the journey was awesome because I got to really think about our stakeholders and the stories that we wanted to tell them in June when we were rolling this out and make sure that the process was aligned with those values.
[00:06:35] We've always, since the days of Dave Goldberg been a really employee focused culture, employee experience is really important to us. Happily. We make software that helps us, uh, ask hard questions and make bold decisions, but in terms of how we wanted to make sure the rebrand resonated employees were our number one audience of making sure that they felt connected to this brand and excited to work for it going forward.
[00:06:59] So [00:07:00] we actually spun up under the guise of employment brands. So we said, we're going to double down on unemployment brand in 2021. And we want your feedback about what makes survey monkey a great place to work. Do you feel like the name resonates? Do you feel like it holds us back? How do you think it resonates with customers?
[00:07:16] How does it resonate with you? And we got tons of awesome insights and really interesting. Facts and stories out of that survey that not only helped shape the brand. So our green color that's a part of our color palette is called heritage green nodding back to the long history of survey monkey being one of the only companies with green and their logo here in the valley.
[00:07:37] It's a very blue if you look around, um, but made sure that heritage. Protected and that the, the new brand, as it evolved, our external face also had some really strong ties to the company that survey monkey has always been. Can you talk
[00:07:53] Amanda: a little bit about working with Sheryl Sandberg at the Sheryl Sandberg and Dave Goldberg family foundation?
[00:07:58] What did you do
[00:07:58] Katie: there as a senior [00:08:00] director? I started working at the foundation when it was just called leanin and I was brought in, or I entered their orbit because I actually covered. Uh, luncheon that Cheryl spoke at before. It was the first time I had ever heard of her. So gosh, it must've been like 2013 or so she came and she spoke at this law firm.
[00:08:23] I was working at, in communications and I had to write up the event to get published in like the women's initiative newsletter. And she just blew my mind. It was the first time I'd ever heard anyone put voice to some of the experiences that I had been having as a woman in the workplace. And when her book came out, I bought it for every single person that I worked with.
[00:08:44] So I was at a tiny startup in that way. Everyone, everyone bought that. Yeah. I was at a tiny startup and there were four women that worked there and I was like, we're starting a lean in circle. This is what this is going to look like. So yeah, I bought the [00:09:00] book for everybody and then the women there started to lean in circle and because I was one of these early lean in circle founders, I was just kind of in the.
[00:09:07] Of the organization and that from time to time, they would reach out with these requests. Like, has anyone in your circle negotiated a raise recently? And would they be willing to talk about that to a reporter and as a communications person, I totally saw this strategy. It was essentially like customer advocacy that they were promoting.
[00:09:25] I thought it was super smart. So love to stay in touch with them and eventually. There was a job that came up in marketing and they sent it my way and said, I should throw my hat in the ring. And I did expecting, you know, I was perfectly happy at my company. We had actually gotten acquired by Salesforce.
[00:09:40] And so was excited about that next chapter and learning a lot from my counterparts on the Salesforce communications. But I made it through the interview process. And the final step is that you go and meet Cheryl. And let me tell you Charles, a closer. So even though I wasn't necessarily looking to make a big career [00:10:00] change, I had a lot of incentives, economic and otherwise to stay at the company I was at.
[00:10:05] I met with Cheryl. And again was just so inspired by her that I ended up joining the team and I led the marketing function there. We focused primarily on public awareness campaigns. So getting out broader awareness of equal paydays throughout the year and the impact that the pay gap was having on women of all different backgrounds.
[00:10:28] We did a lot of work with, you know, the NBA running a men's awareness campaign, just to say, these are the ways that men can show up for women in the push for equality. And while I was there, actually Dave Goldberg passed away and that kicked off. You know, Cheryl writing her second book, option B and the creation of a second part to the foundation, option b.org, which is designed to support people in building resilience through life's inevitable setbacks, just like Sheryl went through.
[00:10:59] When [00:11:00] Dave passed away, it was an incredible learning experience. I mean, Getting to work at that scale. So one of the awareness campaigns that we ran was about women supporting each other in the workplace. And we had this idea that we could get women from all different backgrounds and all different industries to go on camera, celebrating the other women who had lifted them up in their career.
[00:11:22] And so, you know, we had Emma Watson, we had Selena Gomez, we had Serena Williams. It was this incredible cast of people, Kerry, Kerry, Washington, they were all talking about, you know, Carrie was thinking Shonda Rhimes and Emma Watson was thinking Sophia Coppola and Serena was thinking Venus for pushing her to new Heights.
[00:11:39] And I was part of the team that got to fly around the country, meeting with these amazing women and working with their teams to get these videos. I was just like,
[00:11:49] Amanda: is there one in particular that stands out? She, I mean, the people you're mentioning are just like, I love Serina volumes. She's amazing. Like everything she taught you.
[00:11:58] This is amazing. When I grow [00:12:00] up, I want to be Serino. That's the one I said to my friends. She's phenomenal.
[00:12:04] Katie: She's phenomenal. And she's on our board. Yeah,
[00:12:08] Amanda: I love her so much. She's fantastic. Is there a story, is there a story from flying around being museum that really sticks out to you that really maybe changed you a little or influenced your
[00:12:17] Katie: career leadership style every time I've interacted with any of these teams?
[00:12:23] It's always been a really positive experience. I think, I mean, one of the most interesting things was just seeing. When we were working on coming up with a script for this kind of video, we had some knowledge of who they might think based on their resumes or what they were doing. So, you know, we were like, Serena's probably gonna think Venus.
[00:12:45] They came up together and they were training partners and they pushed each other to these amazing Heights. And for Emma Watson, we were like, oh, maybe JK, Rowling would be somebody that she would celebrate. What was fantastic was just to see that they all [00:13:00] have. More people behind the scenes who were supporting them and who were promoting them and who made their lives better and made their work stronger and where their biggest advocates.
[00:13:12] And it was just really heartening to see the breadth and scope of all these incredible women behind these women that we see on screen or, you know, performing at the top of their game. I remember, I think. Selena Gomez who had an all women business team. So when we were on site, Her agent and her publicist and her manager and all the other people who I'm not even sure what their titles are, who support a superstar like Selena Gomez, they were all women.
[00:13:41] And it was just super cool to see the ways that the campaign was really true for these individual women. It was definitely not window dressing. They all had great stories to share. Wow. That's absolutely incredible.
[00:13:54] Amanda: Sort of all struck by this store. I think it's fantastic.
[00:13:58] Katie: I mean, even when I was living through [00:14:00] it, I was like, okay, so this is, this is my peak.
[00:14:02] I've peaked let's you
[00:14:04] Amanda: have it. And that's the thing you
[00:14:06] Katie: have it. I'm lucky. I definitely keep getting amazing opportunities thrown my way. And it's, it's been really. Let's just move into getting tactical,
[00:14:16] Producer: um,
[00:14:17] Katie: trying to figure out tactics and it'd be prayerful, honest, and I didn't have to worry about tactics to the merger here I am in charge of driving to see why didn't you sleep?
[00:14:25] Suit tactics, tactics. Let's back
[00:14:30] Amanda: up for just a quick second about your opportunities and your experiences. Something that really stuck out to me when I was, you know, looking at your background is, you know, you're working leading startups, founding startups. Can you just talk about what's helped you thrive in that startup culture?
[00:14:46] Um, and maybe a piece of advice you would give someone who's leading communications
[00:14:50] Katie: at a startup. So the first startup that I worked at was tiny prints. Back in the day, it was just totally revolutionary that you could [00:15:00] design your own family holiday card and upload your own photo and put it in there. I know it sounds so ridiculous, especially to the young women on my team.
[00:15:08] Now I have to explain to them why this was revolutionary. I have to go to a stationary company. Yeah. Like there'd be these little mom and pop shops and you'd bring your photos and they would, you know, put them in a card for you. And it was this whole thing. So. Tiny France was great. It was there. We had a, a woman founder, Laura Chang, and a lot of women on the team.
[00:15:29] So some of my closest friends to this day were women working at that company who were so creative. It was, you know, as a tech company, it was also a lifestyle brand. And so it attracted this really unique blend of people who were living in the valley at the time. That being my first real job aside from, you know, substitute teaching and freelance writing for newspapers and magazines kind of spoiled me to some degree because.
[00:15:57] In a startup, there's a lot of [00:16:00] chaos and there's a lot of ambiguity, but in that ambiguity, there's a ton of opportunity. So if you are a self-starter and you are able to see a path and you want to raise your hand and say, Hey, I could run this. So for example, Twitter was brand new when I was working there.
[00:16:17] And I remember the director of PR was like, somebody needs to run. You can just like write that you had your morning latte or whatever, but just, do you want to run it? I was like, sure. I'll figure this out. Right. But you, you ran the Twitter. I ran pretty tiny prints. I was riding a Twitter account. Yes, yes.
[00:16:34] And for our wedding line as well, but just being, being young and not knowing how things are supposed to go created in me this real. Comfort with ambiguity and the acknowledgement that there's a ton of opportunity and ambiguity. So if you can embrace that and lean into it and accept that there's no right way to do anything.
[00:16:54] Everybody's just trying to try to pass together. And as long as you're aligned on the goals and you're, you're organized and you're [00:17:00] gonna stay focused on the objectives that the company is trying to achieve, you can learn a lot and get a lot of responsibility really early in your career. And it can be a really powerful.
[00:17:10] I
[00:17:10] Amanda: want to talk about from an internal communications perspective, how you prepared employees for this change for that Momentive roll outs. Talk about that plan. Talk about, just get a little bit more tactical there. How did you announce it? What, what, what did that look like? What would the first, the first time employees heard
[00:17:28] Katie: it?
[00:17:28] What did that look like? Yeah, I have to give a ton of credit to the amazing team that worked on this as Sophie corlay who's based in Amsterdam. She's one of our EMEA teammates. And then jarmila hen who's based here with me on the west coast of north America. We, if you, if you think about how you would normally roll out something like this, there would be a big.
[00:17:49] Everyone would come together and you would celebrate and you'd get new swag. And it would be this exciting day of there'd probably be customers in attendance or amazing board members or all these people to learn from. And [00:18:00] a lot of excitement, I tend to think
[00:18:01] Amanda: of it as like when apple rolled out the iPhone, right.
[00:18:04] Just
[00:18:04] Katie: that. A big unveiling, Betty and
[00:18:10] Amanda: champagne pop is getting employees up dancing and
[00:18:13] Katie: yes, yes. And instead here we are all in our home offices and guests bedrooms. And there was one woman on my team who was taking calls from her bathtub. Cause she had so many roommates that she was just trying to get away from it.
[00:18:29] We knew it was going to be different. And so we spent a lot of time thinking about. The experience that we wanted employees to have. And at the end of the day, if you can't make it exciting, if you can't make it this moment of coming together and really celebrating, then we, we decided, you know, the best thing we could do was just to make it authentic.
[00:18:49] And we have an amazing set of leaders at the company, namely Zander, Lurie, our CEO, who just radiates, warmth and. He's the type of [00:19:00] leader that everybody wants to follow. It's not hard to get people to line up around sander. Everybody wants him to be, you know, the closing call and they're really tough recruiting calls and things like that.
[00:19:08] Cause he's just this really charismatic, really fun, really warm guy. And so we asked Sandra, we said, you know, to make this, the experience that we all want it to be for employees, we, we really need to deploy you. And we took all 1500 employees at the time and we broke them into time zone specific small group.
[00:19:28] So, you know, I think we started at 4:00 PM Pacific the night before the announcement, because that was already early morning in Australia on the date of the announcement. So Zander met with our Sydney team and then he met with our EMEA team. And then he met with, you know, folks in Dublin. He met with folks, um, on the east coast, moving through in these small group sessions.
[00:19:51] And he told them in as intimate a setting as we could have. Tomorrow, we're going to announce that we're changing the name of the company. Here's the why [00:20:00] here's all the input that you were able to give. Here's how we used our own market research tools. We surveyed something like 21,000 people over 10 different studies to make sure this was the right name.
[00:20:11] And this was representing the types of values that we wanted to have out in the market. And. To his credit. I mean, it was a long day. I was on all the calls too. And he was, as he showed up as strong in that last set of meetings, as he did with those first ones with Sydney the night before in the midst of this massive, you know, strategic move to rebrand the company.
[00:20:33] And obviously we had to talk to investors and customers and other people's. But he really took the time to make sure that this was an intimate and authentic moment for the team that they could remember hearing it from Zander first, hearing it before the market. Hearing it in a way that was as close to us, sitting around a table in the office as we could get during the pandemic.
[00:20:55] And I think it made a big difference. I mean, obviously we were worried about risk and [00:21:00] the potential for leaks, but the team to their credit, you know, It went out as planned. We had several media exclusives the next morning that, um, really popped and we're able to tell the story really loud and proud. And I look back on it as, as making the right call.
[00:21:15] We could have, we could have shied away from that, uh, to the, at the expense of employee experience, but we really leaned into our values and tried to make it as special as we could. That's awesome. How much did, was he awake for
[00:21:25] Amanda: almost 24 hours to get, get the word out
[00:21:28] Katie: or he was, yeah, it was just, um, it was, it was a pretty grueling.
[00:21:33] Instead of days there, but I think the payoff on the, can you take a step
[00:21:37] Amanda: back and talk a little bit about the name Momentive
[00:21:40] Katie: where did that come from? Yeah, we, we considered many names. There were many names in the finalist. I remember it was a little down to 10 and then it got whittled down to three.
[00:21:51] And then of the three we, we latched on Momentive and like I said, there was a big part of that, that involved concept testing and research using our own tool [00:22:00] to make sure that. I liked it. I think what we really like about it is it indicates momentum and move. And it inspired our brand team, but by Karen doodle, who's just a visionary.
[00:22:12] She came to us from Google and she really was the person who shaped the whole rebrand. It, the name alone kind of kicked off. This idea of our customers are the people who are shaping what's next for their company, for their industry, for the future. And so we had all of this. Brand supporting brand architecture.
[00:22:31] That was about how we help enable you to shape what's next in whatever you're doing. We highlighted amazing customers on our website. People from companies like Allbirds that are not only. You know, producing this amazing direct to consumer shoe and now apparel and all these other things, but also sharing they're just wholesaling, their sugarcane plastic that is so sustainable and so great for making these shoes in a sustainable way to other shoe vendors, which is [00:23:00] just breaking the model of how, you know, you normally you'd horde those kinds of secrets, but they're all about environmental impact and sustainability, and they want to make sure that's a standard for the industry.
[00:23:10] There are shaping the industry in a different way. So I think we were all really excited about the way that this indicated momentum and movement and the ability to really shape what's next. All of that made us pretty confident that momentum is the right identity for us going forward. That you'd mentioned that you, you had like, sir, even surveyed your employees.
[00:23:31] I'd love to
[00:23:32] Amanda: hear. Just some, some top level themes that came out of that. Um, they
[00:23:37] Katie: didn't, maybe you could, if you wouldn't mind sharing, just a couple of things that stick out to you. Some amazing stories came out of the survey. The stats alone were incredible. I mean, I think that it was 93% of employees were proud to work at survey monkey.
[00:23:55] They're very proud, are extremely proud. And that's a stat that I don't think is, [00:24:00] is really, um, common across the industry. So that, first of all, just the sheer number of people who are proud to work at the company who supported our mission and our vision and our values, which stayed the same through the rebrand.
[00:24:12] That was awesome. It was wonderful to see. But I think the things that really resonated with me were the individual stories about what it means to work here. People shared that on their first day, back in the office, after battling cancer, they got a standing ovation from their team or that, you know, on their second day back from parental leave, their manager who also had two kids, pulled them aside and they had a really great heart to heart about, you know, how they were doing adjusting back all these little stories in these tiny moments of.
[00:24:46] When you think about a company, especially now where we're all distributed and you're not going to an office, you're not getting a free lunch and there's no special celebrations for different things. It's really. Interactions between you and your manager, your colleagues, the people you [00:25:00] see the most that define what a company culture is.
[00:25:03] And it was really sweet and touching to see those stories come in, in waves from the team who are sharing, you know, what it meant to them to work here. Yeah, absolutely. How are, how are
[00:25:14] Amanda: employees. Um, I'm gonna assume 93%. That's that's absolutely incredible. I think the highest I've ever seen a company I worked for was like
[00:25:21] Katie: 83%, so right.
[00:25:24] Wow. I mean, yeah, it was a little daunting, right? Cause we're, we're like about to go change the entire identity of the company to the public. So we knew, you know, there was a high bar for this rebrand. We knew we had to get it right for this group that felt so passionately about. And
[00:25:39] Amanda: how are they, how, how was the adoption going?
[00:25:42] Have you, have you done some
[00:25:43] Katie: surveys, followups? That's a good question. We, so we are very religious about running our employee engagement surveys, but I don't think we've asked about the rebrand at any of them specifically. We did use our. Quarterly employee engagement survey as a proxy for [00:26:00] how employees were feeling after the rebrand and those scores are being so we're only a hundred days in to the rebrand right now.
[00:26:06] So the scores are being tabulated. I may have, have to come back and do part two and let you know that's going. Anecdotally, I can say a lot of people are really excited. And in particular, the folks who faced, uh, our customers most regularly, the sales folks, AEs BDRs, SDRs, um, the customer success folks, the customer ops folks, they got it right away.
[00:26:30] They were like, this is going to unlock so much for the company. Like we said, you know, people were using the technology and loving it, but they're hesitant to sign those big checks. A company named SurveyMonkey, which feels a little consumer and a little silly. So we, we, they were really excited and we were pleased to see how the team reacted to a lot of that.
[00:26:50] I'm happy to hear
[00:26:51] Amanda: that with a change like this, you know, oftentimes that brings a, you know, a change in values, a change in mission. Um, did this also bring apart like a little bit [00:27:00] of a culture change that you're, you're still working through or is it pretty much business as
[00:27:04] Katie: usual? What's interesting is that we actually kept our mission and our vision and our values, the mission we tweaked.
[00:27:12] So we, our mission was always to power. The curious, and we added a little addendum. So now we power the curious to shape what's next. And I think it really just connects the dots a little bit stronger to not only. What our employment brand was, which was always focused on curiosity and growth and innovating for customers, but also sharing how that has impact on customers too.
[00:27:37] And what I found working at this company is that a lot of people at Momentive are motivated not only by, you know, doing cool stuff, building AI models, building excellent brand trackers that are gonna enable people to, to go do great things, but they love the customer stories and the customer impact.
[00:27:57] Drawing a stronger connection between the work we [00:28:00] do day to day and how that enables customers to do great things on their own, I think has been really positive and really powerful for generating meeting for a lot of those folks. That's great. That's
[00:28:11] Amanda: great. One more question about this, this whole brand, um, you know, rebrand has been just fascinating to me, speak to an IC professional out there.
[00:28:19] If they're preparing for a company rebrand, as you just went through, what are their top three
[00:28:23] Katie: months? Well, it's not every day that you get to rebrand your company. So I think first and foremost, take a step back and acknowledge the unique position that you find yourself in. And the fact that this could be a bit of a career defining moment for you, if you do it well, I would be excited and I would, I would take that step back and acknowledge the place that you're in as being really special and that you're going to shape something that's going to be really lasting at the organization.
[00:28:48] I would think about first principles. So. We started when we created and Sophie Jermell and I created that internal comms plan. We took that big step back and said, how do we want employees [00:29:00] to feel when they hear this news? What do we want that experience to be like? And starting from that lens of employee experience helps you then walk into the decisions that you'd make.
[00:29:10] So. We did have a big celebratory townhome moment where we got to watch all the brand videos. And we had these, we have these amazing board members that we call in for moments like this is, you know, Sheryl Sandberg and Serena Williams and Erica James, and all of these great folks sharing their perspective.
[00:29:29] Ryan Finley, the founder, who was so supportive and so excited about the name, change, talking about what it meant to him. So we did do all of that. And we had that celebratory moment, but when we looked back at our principles and we said, we want the team to feel supported and engaged and not shocked in that moment, that meant we had to make that decision to do the small group sessions, to create another more intimate setting for them to process that news before they could get excited about it.
[00:29:56] So I would definitely start with first principles, grounding [00:30:00] yourself and employee experience and how you want people to think and feel and believe. What do you want them to believe in that moment? And then I would say docu. Everything because there's so many moving pieces and there's so many little moments along the way that are easy to lose sight of.
[00:30:19] And especially as more people come on board. So the tent starts very small. And then you're adding people who, you know, someone from HR who's in charge of scheduling all these small group sessions or somebody, you know, from it had this huge work stream where we have to switch over everything. Piece of identity that comes along with working at a company to now reflect this new name from our email addresses to our Octa log in to everything in between.
[00:30:45] So as people get added, you can then add them to the same document, which has the same timeline, which has the same guiding principles. I think you can stop yourself from recreating the wheel a million times over if you just have a single source of truth that houses everything that they need to know to come [00:31:00] on board and they can also flag, Hey, you're planning to have.
[00:31:04] Town hall at this time, that's going to eliminate these people from this time zone that are on my team, or we won't have XYZ ready. Like we had major delays in getting a swag. Which we, in our vision, it was like on the morning of the announcement, you'd get your box of swag. So how did for them? Yeah. Yeah.
[00:31:23] Um, it came a while later, but we, we worked around it with some really creative digital assets and our team like went nuts, strike making slack emojis, and things like that, which was also great to see. So, but yeah, those would be my top three is just take a second to acknowledge the unique place you're in.
[00:31:39] Make sure that you're grounding yourself and your team and your first principles that are really focused on employee engagement and then create that single source of truth so that you can stay super organized as the scope and the complexity of the project evolves. That's awesome.
[00:31:53] Amanda: Um, you miss it, you mentioned Ryan Finley.
[00:31:55] I'm in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I used to live in Madison. I just moved here, but as the old Wisconsin [00:32:00] folklore goes. It was survey monkey was invented at UWA Madison. Um, and it sort of the pride, the of, I mean, it came up a lot when I worked there, I used to work in the UN on the campus.
[00:32:13] Katie: Um, that's great. Yeah.
[00:32:15] What an amazing entrepreneurship story of just seeing the vision for what this could be. And then here we are at this company 21 years, almost 22 years later. Dana's amazing things evolving and all these creative ways and really powering all these companies that are changing the future. I think it's, he's got such a great story.
[00:32:35] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:32:37] Amanda: We'd mentioned with the rebrand rollout, everyone's virtual working remote. The pandemic has changed how we work clearly. You're at home, I'm at home. Um, but a big part of that is ensuring that we have a good, inclusive, positive. Employee experience. So can you talk about what you've learned over the past 18 months?
[00:32:57] Um, that's helped you change the way we think about [00:33:00] creating a good employee
[00:33:01] Katie: experience? I think every company on the planet is just trying to figure out how to make their culture go digital. Especially for us as we, I shared, we've always been a really employee focused company and a lot of that culture was based around our offices.
[00:33:17] I love the San Mateo headquarters of Momentive from really survey monkey. It was beautiful. It was highly curated. There were all these amazing collaborative spaces. There's beautiful rooftop deck. We have amazing weather here. So we're using it year round. We had the chef that was like beloved by the company who would make, um, breakfast and lunch four days a week.
[00:33:39] It was just a wonderful place to be in an awesome experience, working out of that office and not having that definitely puts a much bigger burden on internal comms on HR and the people leaders at the company to figure out a way to provide that feeling, to kind of bottle that feeling and transmit it [00:34:00] over.
[00:34:01] Luckily, we have Becky canteen, Mary who's been with the company for 10 years now, who is a true visionary people leaders. So she's our chief people officer and early on in the pandemic, she said, We're going to lean into this. This is going to be the future of work. This giant experiment that we're running right now is proving that people can do their jobs from home.
[00:34:25] Can you do their jobs from anywhere? We can hire people from anywhere and it's going to work out. So she started this re-imagined work initiative. Where we really questioned all of these assumptions. We worked with CVRE as kind of an outside, in perspective to help us shape what we were going to do for the future, with offices, with how we were going to hire what our location strategy was going to be.
[00:34:49] And we came up with what I think is a really interesting and progressive model called choice. So. Every year in open enrollment, we're about to head into open enrollment. All of our employees [00:35:00] get to opt into one of three options. You could be fully remote. You could be hybrid where you could be in the office committing that you want to be there four to five days.
[00:35:09] Even within those other categories, there's a ton of flexibility. So hybrid doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be there Tuesday and Thursday. It's really up to your team and your manager, how you want that to work. But in doing so then we were able to give people who want the in-office experience, a dedicated desk, people who might be hybrid might be categorized more into neighborhoods.
[00:35:29] So there's a marketing neighborhood where you could sit and be, have a space, but you don't necessarily need a dedicated workspace. And then remote folks are gonna need, you know, a stipend to support building out, uh, an at-home workspace. That's going to work for. So all that to say, I think we have been really innovative and really creative in how we approach this problem.
[00:35:51] And I think what's critical is that we just don't forget to have a little fun at work and our team, again, German [00:36:00] Lohan runs all of our internal events and she has had some amazing speakers like Larry, brilliant, who is a truly incredible epidemiologist who just brought the team so much. Knowledge and faith that this was all going to be okay.
[00:36:15] In the early days of the pandemic all the way up through, we actually surprised Zander and had his mom join one of the town halls to ask him some questions and do a little interview. And I tell you, we've had some amazing speakers over the years, but Xander's mom is like the number one most requested repeat.
[00:36:33] I think we're going to have to bring her back because of the team incorporate her that they loved it so much or like a couple of weeks ago. We were rolling out a new collaboration tool kit. So a new updated set of guidelines for what great meetings look like at the company. Especially as we have a mix of hybrid folks.
[00:36:51] So people who are on zoom, people who are in person together, how do you make that a good experience for people? And to roll that out, Becky or chief people, officer [00:37:00] Antwan, who's our chief diversity and social impact officer and the woman running the project Deepa. They all got together. And as, almost like a cold open on Saturday night live, they just started our town hall as if it was a meeting.
[00:37:13] And Becky was like, what's this meeting about? Anton's like, do I really need to be here? You know, all these things. And it was so cute because the whole team in slack, we're trying to get their attention. Like, no, no, this is a town hall. We're all here now you're on here. And then once they caught on. I've been in that meeting before, and that's a terrible meeting and yes, you're right.
[00:37:32] We should look at this tool kit that you're now talking about and try to make sure that our meetings aren't like that going forward. So I think there's a, there's a combination of really true visionary leadership on the team, in the form of Becky, really pushing the team and Zander obviously supports.
[00:37:49] And then this combination of the technology, the tools that you need and not forgetting to just have a little bit of fun because we're, we're still spending a ton of time together [00:38:00] in this virtual environment. And we want to make sure that's as fun and engaging as it can be. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:38:09] Amanda: And then yeah, it's like you pointed out is going to be a choice going forward for a lot of companies.
[00:38:13] So it's, it's here to stay. Um, so thank you for sharing that. I'm going to move into our last segment. Just some sort of rapid fire questions, but I'd love to get your advice. Um, it's called asking
[00:38:23] Katie: for a friend. Cute. He's destined for a friend
[00:38:30] asking for a friend.
[00:38:35] Amanda: What is one
[00:38:36] Katie: resource you would recommend to anyone who wants to
[00:38:39] Amanda: be successful in their career in communications like you about.
[00:38:42] Katie: Just one, one or
[00:38:44] Amanda: three, one to three. If you've got, if you've got something to share, I know
[00:38:47] Katie: I'd love to hear them. I don't think there's really a one resource being a communications person.
[00:38:55] You benefit from casting a wide [00:39:00] net, whatever you're interested in. I would say, read about it. Think about it. Listen to podcast. Go really deep. I think you build these connections. So as communications people, first and foremost, we're dot connected. And the more you can just practice applying, let's say so.
[00:39:17] Like my husband and I, for a long time, we were really into martial arts. That's what we did for fun. It was like our date night was going to the movie Thai gym and there would be principles in martial arts. For instance, you, if you are in hand-to-hand combat, now, this is going to grab you. You want to crowd your attacker, get closer to the person who's attacking you because.
[00:39:37] They're out of range. They can't hit you anywhere like that. For me would spur sometimes like, man, so-and-so's really upset. I'm going to go get closer to her to understand her experience and see what's going on there. So I think there can be when you're a dot connector, you work in communications. You're thinking about how to translate things into ways that people can understand it.
[00:39:56] There are all these examples for stories and the things that you're [00:40:00] already interested in or ways to make stories interesting. And if you. Divulge in or indulge in your own interests. I think that's actually going to lead to better communications for you and for your company. Awesome.
[00:40:14] Amanda: Yeah. That's, that's the thank you for
[00:40:16] Katie: sharing
[00:40:16] Amanda: that.
[00:40:17] I I'm the same way, you know, I think about different books. I'm reading, even if it's not about communications, right? How can I apply some of those
[00:40:24] Katie: learnings? I was just reading an article. Restaurants during the pandemic. And this chef was like, I shifted my communication style from, you know, the typical, you know, Gordon Ramsey.
[00:40:37] This is what I think of as a chef in the kitchen barking orders at people. He's like, I want my communication to be timely. Let's see. It was timely, honest, direct, and kind. And I was like taking a note because that's exactly what I want all of our communications to be like, right. So you can find these nuggets anywhere.
[00:40:54] I would say, just keep looking for them and opportunities to correct. Yeah,
[00:40:58] Amanda: thank you. [00:41:00] You've we've talked a lot about Sheryl Sandberg, just the inspiring experiences you've had with these different women panels and meetings for women across the country. Can you maybe
[00:41:11] Katie: help
[00:41:11] Amanda: share some barriers as a woman that you've encountered in your career and how you've worked through them or gotten past
[00:41:18] Katie: them?
[00:41:19] Yeah. Before coming to Momentive. I was a, I was running my own little consulting shop, so I would go and I would support the Israeli entrepreneurs, as I said, I've always loved that time where there's ton of chaos and ambiguity. And so there's a lot of opportunity. And I remember, I remember meeting with one entrepreneur who.
[00:41:42] Had this funky office that had a basement. And so he's like, oh, come with me. It's quieter in the basement. And we're going to go talk down there. And I went down in the basement and he was pitching me, you know, or talking to me about his company. I was kind of sharing how I could support on the internal communications front.
[00:41:58] And he said, you [00:42:00] know, I'm, so-and-so who referred you to me, told me a lot of great things about you, but he didn't, he didn't tell me how pretty. And I'm like alone in a basement with this man I've never met. Um, I don't think that's relevant to the conversation that we're having right now. So that's probably why he didn't mention it.
[00:42:16] And then he's like, relax, relax. I'm married. Like it was wildly uncomfortable hearing to pick up a date. Wow. Yeah. And I just say that because you know, here we are in San Francisco in this incredibly progressive liberal town where we like to think that. Opportunities equally distributed and it's just not.
[00:42:37] And in that moment, you know, I was an entrepreneur trying to win business. I have to make this decision between working with someone who's giving me the creeps and, you know, potentially paying rent that month. So. I think that if you are having experiences like that as a woman and you're listening to this, you're definitely not alone.
[00:42:57] Everyone knows that now with the [00:43:00] me too movement. Um, but I would say just, you know, reach out to other people who you can talk to about these kinds of things. In that instance, I had actually been referred to that company by a board. And so I called him immediately upon leaving. And I said, this guy's a liability.
[00:43:15] And as a PR person, I want to let you know, you need to handle this. Um, because the, you know, as a board member of this company, you're going to be held responsible for this guy's behavior. And I'm happy to say, well, maybe not for the people who work there, but they did go out of business and weren't able to raise a second round.
[00:43:31] So I think all that stuff ends up coming out in the wash, hopefully. But yeah, the story is like that. I think are still far too common in our industry and you're, you're not alone if you're feeling that.
[00:43:44] Amanda: Yeah. Yeah. I know. Every, everyone, every woman I know has a story like that and it's, it's, it's hard to, it's heartbreaking and I'm glad to hear you overcame that and how that worked out for him.
[00:43:55] That's that's pretty creepy. Last
[00:43:57] Katie: question. What do you think are the [00:44:00] biggest
[00:44:00] Amanda: challenges internal communication professionals are facing now, and then we'll
[00:44:04] Katie: face in the future. I think right now, the challenge is really the burden that's been placed on internal comms teams is higher than ever. We're all trying to make our cultures go digital and.
[00:44:19] I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of folks listening to this are facing resistance on increasing investment there. So whether it's in new tools and technology, updating your intranet, bringing on, you know, some kind of, um, somebody like Axios HQ, which helps you track internal metrics, right on your newsletter sense.
[00:44:39] I can see a lot of companies being hesitant to before. That capability. But I would say that the most important thing you could be doing is just keep pointing people at the changes in the industry. The changes in your employment brand is recruiting. You know, having trouble, getting referrals, all of that could be signs that you need to strengthen that internal function.[00:45:00]
[00:45:00] And if you ground folks in that business need, you're going to have a lot more success in unlocking some of that investment that you need to keep growing your program. So in the old days, I would say people. Thought of internal comms, the whole function as just inform people. So give people information, they need to do their job.
[00:45:18] Do they need to know? And you know, open enrollment is coming. I think our job has changed and the inspire and engage piece of what we do is higher than ever. And as a result of that increase in scope, I think it's totally reasonable that teams would go out and try to secure more funding and more investment to grow their, their function in the field.
[00:45:39] I think in the future, I can see internal comms professionals getting really close to it and continuing to, in, to stay abreast of changes in technology that are going to enable us to do this hybrid work thing better. Right. So everyone's on. Some form of slack [00:46:00] zoom teams combination, right? Everybody has an intranet who knows what's around the corner, what innovations these companies are going to come out with.
[00:46:08] And so I think it's actually on the job requirements for internal comms folks to have an interest in this technology and to continue to stay up to date with. The changes and the things that are coming out that are going to be really meaningful to businesses going forward.
[00:46:25] Amanda: Thank you, Katie. Well, this has been a lot of fun, uh, before I let you
[00:46:29] Katie: go, thank you for joining.
[00:46:31] I really, really,
[00:46:32] Amanda: really appreciate it. Uh, before I let you go, um, let us let our listeners know where they can find you. And is there any other topic or piece of advice you would like to put out there that we didn't cover today?
[00:46:45] Katie: Well, I am, um, my title used to be communications and social media, and I'm the worst at social media.
[00:46:51] So definitely don't come looking to me for any thought leadership. If you want to know what the company's up to. I sometimes tweet or post on LinkedIn. I'm [00:47:00] at Katy, Missouri uni, in terms of advice, final pieces of advice. I would say for anybody listening, who's in comms or internal comms. Your job just got a lot more interesting.
[00:47:13] You're a lot more in demand. Everybody's hiring for this right now. So I would say, just go out there with swagger and confidence, ask for what you need to do an amazing job. And if your company isn't going to meet you in that, there are a lot of people hiring right now who will, so you're important.
[00:47:29] You're doing important work. Keep at it. Thank you, Katie.
[00:47:33] Amanda: Thank you for joining me. This has been
[00:47:34] Katie: fantastic. Thank you. Appreciate it.
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