It’s 9 a.m. Monday morning. On the calendar you reserved several hours to finish a market analysis for a presentation to the executive team at 9 a.m. tomorrow (Tuesday).

During this executive meeting, you will discuss the market opportunity for a new technology and services offering that could expand your group’s business by 10x over the next 3-5 years.

How can you possibly complete a market analysis for an opportunity this large? If you really want approval on the recommendations you present, executives expect your report to include:

• Current state data on the competitive landscape for this type of technology/services offering.
• Strengths and gaps in the market.
• Opportunities to provide technology and services that address the gaps.
• Prototype options for consideration and review.
• Recommendations and next steps for the team.

Pretty typical requirements, right?

There’s just one problem. This market analysis assignment focuses on products and services different from what your team delivers today.

To make matters worse, after doing a search on your company’s intranet, you discover there is no intuitive way to find information that will help you execute this analysis.

Does this scenario seem a bit unrealistic? Perhaps it’s a bit exaggerated. Unfortunately it does illustrate the disconnect between end user needs and C-Suite understanding. This scenario is a glimpse of the problems users actually experience.

A Gartner digital workplace survey found less than 50 percent of workers (both IT and non-IT) believed their CIOs were aware of the digital technology problems they faced. 

How can you as a corporate CIO, uncover the secret to personalizing the digital workplace experience?

The secret to solving this particular problem requires you to include employees as stakeholders.

Now that you know including employees as stake holders matters, what would it look like if you actually built a personalized employee experience that works?

Below are examples of  5 questions to ask yourself:

• Do people in our company have relevant information that might help me with this report?
• Has anyone in our company successfully completed a similar type of market analysis?
• Does the company have tools and technologies available to help me quickly connect and collaborate with people who can help?
• Are there people in our company who can share relevant insights and lessons learned about their market analysis experiences?
• Would I benefit from receiving important updates over the past 2-3 days about this potential new market?

Assuming the answers to all the questions above are “yes,” why might you value a personalize digital experience?

In a perfect world, this new type of digital workplace experience would allow you to search your enterprise content management system to locate people who completed a market analysis.

The intranet would alert Learning Leaders about this assignment and provide access to the digital skills development needed to be successful.

You would receive notification in an email with links to digestible chunks of personalized learning on “how to complete an intranet enterprise content management search.”

Can you imagine offering workplace practitioners this type of approach to personalized learning?

According to a Deloitte 2019 Human Capital Trends Survey, “Rapid and ongoing changes in the nature of work itself are changing the relationship between learning and work…”

 “The result will be people who can consume information and upgrade their skills in the natural course of their day-to-day jobs.”

What challenges and successes are you experiencing in building personalized employee experiences?

What advice can you share that would add value to others in this community?

Please post your comments and questions below.

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