At the same time, we have lost some of our people for various reasons over the past few months. It’s always sad to see a valued colleague and friend move on, but many left to pursue great new opportunities — and in a few cases, their dreams — and that’s something to be happy about.

When we look back at things, the change in our production philosophy was a catalyst to a change in our people. We switched from a waterfall method of production to an agile method in January. We also created smaller teams, each with about eight to ten people, that were focused on different types of work. We currently have teams dedicated to mobile, web apps and website development, and we’re looking to create more teams soon.

Using smaller teams and agile production helped us become more efficient in our work, though it also created some staff turnover as roles changed and we focused on building the strongest team possible.

Currently we are 45 people strong, which is about 10 fewer than our peak. But, we are also in a position to hire and grow our team with complementary talent. We’ve already hired a new HR Director and right now we’re interviewing  developers (web and mobile) and designers. We plan on having about 65 people by the end of this year and close to 100 by the end of 2012. Keep an eye on our careers page for new job postings in the next few weeks.

While the team is changing, we truly feel we are in a much better position as a company than we were a year ago. And we will continue to make smart business decisions that have a positive impact on both our people and our clients.

Essentially, the plan is to make zu a more profitable company. To get there, we have to take several steps.

As you know, zu is a website, mobile and web apps company. That’s not going to change. Our first priority is to take the great work we’ve been doing and make it even better. In order to do that, we’ve reduced our client roster so that we can focus on doing better work with fewer companies. This process started in July and should be complete by the end of the year. It’s always tough to end a relationship with a client, but it is something we feel is a necessary step if we are to produce truly world-class work.

Our second priority is to become more efficient. To help jump start this, we are introducing a profit sharing program that gives every employee the opportunity to literally take ownership of their work and be rewarded accordingly. It’s a win for our clients and a win for our staff.

As we continue to grow, developing great digital experiences for our clients, we will start to work with start-up companies as well. This will start in the next year to 18 months.

With these start-up companies, we will not only receive revenue for our services, but we’ll take an equity position. All of the staff working on these projects will have the chance to share in that stake. The reason behind this is that it will allow our staff a good mix of working with both new and established companies — each presenting their own challenges. This will keep our thinking fresh and allow us to share important insights across all of our clients. It also gives our team the chance to ride the wave of excitement that come with working on a successful start-up.

We have some long-term plans that involve setting up incubators for our own ideas as well, but I’m getting a bit ahead of things. For now, we’re concentrating harder than ever on our work and our clients, and that’s something we’ll keep doing for a long, long time.

Perhaps the biggest change has been bringing in Ted Hellard as a managing partner. Ted is the founder, former CEO and current chair of Critical Mass, the most-recognized digital agency in the world with about 750 employees in over half a dozen offices worldwide. Ted has worked with mega-brand clients like Mercedes-Benz, Nike, NASA, Dell and Proctor & Gamble.

For six years, he was also the co-owner, managing partner and president of the Calgary Stampeders. zu worked with the Stampeders on their digital strategy and website, which is how our relationship with Ted began.

When Tony and I had questions abut the industry or needed advice, Ted made himself available. We liked his no-nonsense and visionary approach to the digital world. We kept in touch, talking on the phone a lot and meeting several times. Ted taught us a lot, and we appreciated his business acumen.

When Ted stepped down from the Stampeders at the end of last season, the three of us started talking seriously about him getting involved with zu in some capacity.

Then in June, Ted had an idea about how to grow zu and our client base, while improving customer service and the talent level of our staff. We thought it was a great plan and have been working at it ever since.

Ted’s role at zu will be to help with the interactive strategy for our clients, to help open doors for gaining new clients and to help improve our internal systems.

We are in Saskatoon and there is a huge base of local talent to leverage. The developers and creatives here have the ability to do world-class work. The challenge is that they are young and need some mentorship.

Ted understood this and started to recommend senior people we could tap to come in and help develop our team. We’ve already hired JL Schmidt as our new COO. She has over 15 years of experience managing digital projects, and has worked with Adidas, Nike, Jugo Juice, Good Earth Cafe and many, many others.

JL’s role at zu is to make sure that our teams are operating efficiently and to ensure that we provide the best value possible for our clients. She’s already started implementing a number of positive changes that are reflected in our improved relationships with clients.

We’ve got a lot more work to do, but with Ted and JL added to our talented and dedicated staff, we are moving quickly in the right direction.

The Sandman comic series was the first big one that really turned me on to the true nature of stories and the power they wield. Then I read All-Star Superman and delved into the crazy mind of Grant Morrison, who opened me up to the idea that ideas themselves can affect our reality. When codified in language and symbols, ideas leave us operating within the programming language of the universe and effectively hacking our consciousness—and consequently, our reality.

It may sound a bit “New Age,” but these concepts were discussed and utilized thousands of years ago. We lost the concept of the magic and power of stories, words and symbols sometime around the Industrial Revolution. During that time, we began deconstructing our world because we wanted to see what our reality was composed of. We dug down to the atomic, subatomic and quantum levels, hoping to make sense of everything. And, the deeper we dug, the more we realized how intricate and malleable our reality is and just how much story powers that reality.

Comics went through a period of deconstruction recently, and one of the most notable works was The Watchmen. Authors—in this case, Alan Moore—started to pick apart what it meant to be a superhero. This was in stark contrast to prior stories, when authors would run with wild ideas, hoping something would stick. While some amazing work was happening, the insanity of the stories was reaching farcical and unsustainable levels. And once deconstruction hit a point of diminishing returns, authors began to reconstruct those worlds into something greater.

We’ve gone through a similar cycle at zu, where we are now hitting the end of our deconstruction and are rebuilding ourselves into an even better company than we were before. But as we put it back together, we need to be clear about the rationale and the direction in which we’re headed so our talent and clients understand what we are doing. To accomplish this, we have to do more than just communicate our ideas. We have to connect on a fundamental level. And what better way to connect and drive change than with stories!

“The world is composed of stories, not atoms.”

To truly change the paradigm of an entity—in this case, our company—you have to first change the narrative. We see this sort of reality hacking going on all the time, particularly at a political level. So we began by analyzing the underpinnings of zu—who we are, what we value and what we do. We came up with five company values and three company themes that form the overarching plot of our company story.

The 5 values are:
› zu innovates
› zu executes
› zu empowers
› zu cares
› zu has soul

The 3 goals or themes are:
› Efficient
› Consistent
› Outstanding

Finding these words was an important step, and now we need to continue to unfold the whole story. We have to embody these concepts in ourselves and let it permeate the company’s consciousness. But to allow this to really take us over, we also recognized a need to break them down one step further and connect at the department level.

Each department was tasked with defining an overall theme for the year that would set their narrative. We asked each department to come up with an archetypal concept that would embody the improvements they are striving towards. This would allow the people in each department to better understand the role they can play within the Company Epic.

The narrative concepts each department came up with are:
› Admin & HR – Smooth
› Accounts & Marketing – Love
› Strategy – Clarity
› Design – Collaboration
› Programming – Passion
› Production – Unity
› IT – Open
› Process – Fun

We have begun to tie every change, every meeting and every action back to these departmental concepts and narratives. And the narratives themselves tie back into the corporate themes, laying the foundation for a cohesive company story to begin to unfold. It’s a story of improvement, enlightenment, and a quest to be the best at what we do.

Based on the screenshots below, which organization are you more likely to trust?

The truth is that you would receive the same educational experience from either website above because they are the same institution. The first screenshot is their old site, and the one below is their new site. At a first glance, which one would you have trusted to be a credible educational experience? This quick exercise was to show that a strong web presence is not about manipulation, it’s about accurately reflecting your true self and your business online.

Every few weeks I find myself making the trek to different corners of the city: north for K&M Sewing, east for the Centre Mall SportChek, and south for Salon Twist. I’ll even tolerate downtown parking for The Cupcake Conspiracy.

Why? Because of the amazing experiences the experts at these businesses consistently deliver. I trust these experts because of what they do, what they know and how they understand that customer service is more than just fulfilling a need. They get what it means to be totally frickin’ amazing.

• Kim at K&M Sewing measures both leg lengths each time and delivers perfect euro jean hems – always with a huge grin on her face.
• Kris at SportChek patiently spends 2+ hours discussing running shoe arch, size and even colour, all to ensure my satisfaction each time I wear the chosen pair.
• Melissa, owner of Salon Twist, uses her UK training and sunny persona to craft precision cuts and ensure a pampered, relaxing escape.
• Christin, co-owner of The Cupcake Conspiracy , sells delectable treats within a lush décor. Her cheerfulness and mouth-watering cupcake goodness create an amazing indulgence that keeps me coming back for more.

Driven by a love for what they do, Kim, Kris, Christin and Melissa combine their expertise, consistent service delivery, and unique selves to craft an intangible magic that makes each interaction amazing.

At zu, we strive to not only deliver this same level of service to our clients but to also extend that experience to an interactive presence. We help businesses create amazing online experiences for their customers and that deliverable begins with our own customer interaction.

We want to give our clients the entire ‘zu’ difference, and to wow them each and every time with our expertise, consistency and passion for the interactive world. This helps build trust in what we do and in what we deliver. It’s all part of the magic that happens at 303 Pacific – we strive to achieve Job One so we can help you be totally frickin’ amazing.

The navigation drives home SIAST’s primary messages of diversity and workplace rewards suited to individuals. The primary needs of site users—viewing current opportunities, and finding SIAST careers—are also addressed at this top level.

With the site as part of SIAST’s “Total Rewards” campaign, the accompanying content was put at the forefront. Integral to the campaign are the stories and testimonials of current employees. Knowing that pages titled “testimonials” get very little traffic (users see them as inauthentic and overly promotional), we instead designed the site’s architecture around providing the stories as a primary part of the site design, available on every page. The implementation keeps the stories close at hand and avoids constantly overwhelming the user with text. Typical user apprehensions over testimonials are lessened by the sincerity of the stories, which focus more on personal growth than on marketing catch-phrases, and are augmented by the photography, which is professional but not polished and uses actual employees rather than unrealistic stock photo models.

SIAST’s stories of Total Rewards have been worked consistently throughout the site, with the diversity of experiences in the testimonials tying in to the overall message. Unlike many corporate careers sites, SIAST has kept the content fresh by adding new testimonials regularly, ensuring that anyone repeatedly checking career postings will see a new story every time.

Common to many institutions, SIAST is tied to an existing careers system that has been outside the scope of the website work to date. Job postings are currently viewed as PDFs, creating problems with searchability and reuse. An eventual reworking of this system will facilitate the spread of job postings to aggregators and allow individual job postings to be dynamically pulled to relevant areas of other SIAST websites.

In zu’s webcast Tuesday, Another Brick in the Interactive Wall, we discussed best online practices using a wide array of Canadian examples. But the interactive options – ranging from enhancing online services to incorporating social media – can be overwhelming. So where to start?

Here are some zu recommended engagement exercises your team can explore to build an interactive strategy to attract and support your students.

Complete application process with students: Walk through the online process with high school and current students. Are there any hiccups? Any reoccurring problem areas causing the students to quit? Do you have an online application or do you ask your potential customers to download a PDF, fill it out, then fax it back?

Encourage feedback through social media: Whether it’s setting up a Facebook Page or using a Twitter feed, open the discussion doors to allow student feedback. Ask students what they want you to deliver in an online presence. Then, when you launch a new initiative, you’ll already have buy-in from the same audience who provided you with the ideas.

Ask students to rank online services: This will help you leverage online assets that currently work and prioritize areas where there is opportunity for improvement. Again, this will help create early buy-in from valuing your students’ input.

Create blog-based student employment / projects: Hire students part-time to administer your social media accounts, such as a Facebook Page. Your students are already deeply involved in social media – why not use their online experience to promote your school? Also, consider substituting student blogs for required course reports? How can you transform course requirements into engaging, online assets that can be used to attract other students to your school?

Provide cameras for student lifestyle stories: Have students depict their personal school experience through photos or video. Post the photos on Flickr, the videos on a YouTube channel, and tag each asset with your school name. Through engaging students, you’ll create trusted and credible assets for your school’s online presence.

Conduct a website or online presence audit: Consider where your school’s online experience currently is and where you want it to be. Look at competitor schools and best online practices. zu can help you with this engagement exercise as we can provide a complimentary website audit for your school.

The school industry is increasingly competitive, considering the program, location and overall experience options students can choose from. Your main audience is online – that’s where you need to both reach and serve them. What can your school start exploring today to attract and support your targeted students?

We spent 18 months renovating a brick building located in Saskatoon’s old warehouse district. Originally built in 1929, the challenge was to bring it up to modern standards while still maintaining its original bricks, beams, ceilings and the like.

People would often ask why we put so much effort into the building’s restoration. The answer is partly because we needed more space as the company has grown substantially over the past ten years, but part of it was to contribute to the ongoing improvement of the Saskatoon community. The location suited zu because we wanted to be downtown close to our clients, close to transportation and close to amenities for staff. What we’ve brought to the downtown community is a staff who spends money in restaurants and shops, a smaller environmental imprint, an increase in property value and the transformation of an eye-sore building.

When we talk about community these days, it seems to be about social media communities. These social media communities are the new way to network, build brand recognition, increase sales and improve your company’s profile. These communities are growing faster than any form of media has in the past. You need to be using these tools to survive as a business.

As society continues to develop these electronic communities, we have increased our need to “be in touch”. Which brings me back to the Heritage Awards. zu, by moving closer to our clients and friends, has increased our participation in old school communities. You know, the communities where you meet in-person for coffee, lunch or a drink. This in-person community takes more time and effort to develop relationships than the electronic community does. But in-person communities are more rewarding both personally and professionally.

So, while you ask yourself what you should be doing with social media, make sure that you have the fundamentals of your business down. Remember that the community around you is important and will be affected by your presence and outreach. As your company moves forward, keep in mind that social media has a social aspect to it. Call up a few clients and meet them for a coffee in the neighbourhood before trying to reach them electronically.

CN, a North American railway, brings its business closer to its customers by providing live, updated information on every operational facet of customers’ shipments. It is an evolutionary approach in websites for customers who want it all.

About CN
CN is a leader in the North American rail industry. More than just a railroad, CN is a transportation company offering integrated transportation services including rail, intermodal, trucking, freight forwarding, warehousing and distribution.

Situation Analysis
The previous site design and architecture was outdated and cluttered. There was no existing database or content management system (CMS) and all content was built and updated in HTML. A current inventory of 2,500 pages was taxing to manage so content had to be condensed to 1,500 pages while maintaining multilingual communications in four languages. The functionality of the existing online customer tools (eBusiness) also required upgrades to establish a positive customer-centric experience. The CN website was mainly used by customers to carry out tasks regarding their shipments. However, it provided a confusing architecture to find information regarding how, what and where things could be shipped.

A complete redesign, reengineering and implementation of a third party CMS (RedDot) was required.

Goals
Due to the complex nature of the inherited assets in the existing site, the CN project required initiatives to be rolled out in phases. The infrastructure, navigation, appearance and usability of the website required immediate attention. Secondary goals addressed recruiting needs, investor relations reporting, corporate information and news, and customization of relevant target marketing messages. And finally, the eBusiness site required a redesign to better integrate with the new public site design.

Challenges
The true challenge of this project laid in the need for trust and transparency between parties in order to reach a common goal.  The zu team worked diligently with CN on coordinating a seamless project. Because the content was provided by CN, and the CMS integration was done by the CMS vendor, this created a need for zu to develop a strategy that would support third party CMS integration by acting as an intermediary between the CN web team and CMS vendor. zu Systems Analysts developed functional specifications that were  complex in nature and zu Developers had to undergo extensive training in order to clearly define the third party CMS requirements. Converting 5,000 pages of content required editing and proofing resources in four languages.

Solutions
The design and information architecture solutions were developed by zu and applied to the frontend of the new site. In order to create an intuitive user experience, simple and clean design enhancements were implemented and the information architecture was rebuilt to facilitate typical customer tasks and information needs. zu provided CN with the tools to update specific real estate in the website by assisting with the configuration of the CMS. This created more autonomy for CN to craft custom messaging when required and further eliminated HTML updates that once fell on IT. Customization tools were applied to the eBusiness components in order to create a customer-centric website which would enable the CN ecommerce sales channel to better achieve financial targets. zu created a strategy that enabled marketing users to insert tailored banners to communicate key information to investors and analysts.

Solution Summary

• New site design
• New site information architecture
• Technical strategy
• Functional specifications
• Development of cascading style sheets (CSS)
• Integration and support for third party CMS (Red Dot)
• Integration of third party data feeds and components
• Functional programming
• Reintegration of web analytics
• Content editing, proofing and insertion of 1,500 pages in 4 languages
• Integration of Google Search

Result
Despite an economic downturn in 2009, CN’s public website page views increased 25% year-over-year compared to its previous website. A service-oriented site allowing visitors and customers to quickly determine how, what and where they can ship was achieved.

Where You Fit In
The CN case study is an example of what zu values in a client-business relationship. The process of evaluating needs, providing strategic advice and working together to reach collective goals is what zu does best – regardless of a project’s size. With some of the freshest minds in the game, zu will find innovative ways to take your business to new heights. Combining captivating design with effective online tools will give your organization a fresh, new appeal.

“zu’s dedication, flexibility, creativity, and expertise made our project successful.” -Paul Clarke, CN eBusiness

Avoid big committees
Outside of jury duty, I don’t know where else these are genuinely useful, but they can be devastating to a website project budget. Long meetings combined with a dominant voice with little to say make it difficult for important information to be extracted to form any sort of web strategy.  If committees can’t be avoided, try to select one point of contact that interfaces with the agency, while bringing in committees during the early discovery phase and for major presentations.

Be committed
Understand that this is a team project and you are a part of it. Don’t be surprised if managing the website project is a full time position (or more).

Trust the team you hired
If you find yourself researching solutions or micro-managing the process, it’s probably because you don’t trust the agency or team you’ve hired. Do your due diligence to find a team that you trust in order to avoid second guessing during the project. Understand that your agency should be experienced in this sort of project and they might be suggesting solutions that will help to avoid cost overruns in the future.

Client experience matters
Having someone on your end who understands web development—or has experience on a previous redesign—will keep the project closer to budget. The more you can hit the ground running, the less time is spent on explaining and training. Rarely will an agency budget an exorbitant amount for hand-holding during a project, so these costs (i.e. additional meetings) usually come at the client’s surprise.

Rushed deadlines and last minute updates
Rushing a deadline for any reason will usually result in cost overruns. Whether from premium rates or pulling new people onto the project, you will have to evaluate the marginal benefit of a quick turnaround as opposed to working out a more realistic deadline. Last minute updates should also be avoided as much as possible. Even a seemingly innocuous change can require additional documentation, programming changes, and quality assurance checks that could be avoided if known in advance.

Details, details, details
The more details at the beginning of the project—even in the discovery stage—the better. Though many project details are preconceived before picking a vendor, most agencies will agree that being part of the initial planning stages and assisting with overall strategic planning and visioning results in a stronger end result.

Be an organized client
This is a simple piece of advice, but seems to always happen. From easily overlooked protocols like inconsistent labelling of files and lazy folder structures when submitting content, to arriving late for meetings, disorganization can turn the project into a puzzle.

Focus on doing a few things right
Scope creep is inevitable, so keeping it to a minimum should be your goal. It’s common that once the ball gets rolling, the client suddenly ‘gets it’ and new features are suggested late in the game. Ask yourself, ‘is it a deal breaker if we launch without this feature?’ Understand that there is life after the launch, so don’t be afraid to plan for and release new features later on.

Save up your changes
Good things come in bunches. That holds true for changes. If you can, save up your changes or updates and send them to your agency all at once. Sending a series of changes (and changes to your changes) in a combination of phone calls, meetings and emails results in reduced efficiency, and increases the chance that something could be missed, or that one change will unexpectedly effect another.

Keep the flow
Long breaks between approvals hurt the momentum. When projects restart after dormancy, it takes a while to get everyone back to working as well-oiled as before, which generally leads to things taking longer.  Your agency team may need to reacquaint themselves with the documentation on your project, review old code or design work to get their groove back, or may even be tied up with something else if the delay was unexpectedly long.

Understand what you’re in for
This isn’t so much a tip as a mindset you need to be in when starting a web project. Developing a website is an IT-style project, following much the same workflow process.  And while the IT manager mantra of ‘it’s going to cost four times as much and take four times as long as anticipated’ might not hold true for most web projects, it’s important to understand how quickly the entire process can unravel when the client and agency don’t have a consistent vision, clear strategy, and an understanding of what causes cost overruns.

Firstly, are you looking for a product company or a service agency? There is a difference and it may help to narrow the scope of your decision.

A product company will provide you with an entry level website solution. You can indentify a product company when the organization provides you with a quote without taking the time to understand your business as a whole. For a product company, the focus is usually placed on pre-designed templates and where your logo will be placed. They will not ask for your branding guidelines or about your long term objectives, or provide you with a maintenance schedule. The designer may also be the programmer. It would be like hiring your mechanic to be the interior designer of your home. I’m not saying mechanics can’t do interior design, I’m just saying they are not as specialized if they are a jack of all trades and experts at neither.

A service agency, such as zu, will take the time to understand your business. They will take the time to collaborate with your team, review all aspects of the marketing material, online and offline, and provide you with a phased approach for long term growth. A service agency will have teams of dedicated talent to ensure your story will provide the best results based on your desired outcome. However, they are more likely to cost more and take longer than your uncle’s nephew to build a site.

Secondly, what does your budget look like?

It might also be fair to say you just need an economic solution. You might simply need ‘something’ to get going and that is fine. But remember not to refrain from thinking big as your true focus should be the size of the impact needed to see results. Don’t underestimate the value of your website and what an exceptional user experience can provide to your bottom line. Finally, don’t underestimate how long it can take to roll out a successful project. Anything worthwhile takes time and if you rush the project you will be spending more money by repeating the process sooner than you think.

Thirdly, how is your website enhancing your marketing and communications strategy?

Websites have evolved to be much more than just a logo with business hours – although some companies still forget to add them. Whether it is selling sweaters, attracting investors or competing for tourism, making your website an effective tool for communicating your story should be a number one priority.

I would like to share a story which to this day surprises me. I was having a conversation with an individual who mentioned they had spent $20M on renovations to become a world-class destination in the tourism industry. They proceeded to tell me they allotted $6K to their website. That is a 0.0003% investment online to best reflect the entire renovation project. As many as 80% of their guests will determine if they should visit this world-class destination by viewing their website. If I were the owner of that company, I would want to ensure the renovation was best reflected online to maximize results. I don’t know of any top-notch web companies that could provide a great online solution with a $6K price tag. Yikes, sounds like a missed opportunity to me.

So before you run off to phone ten companies and request proposals, ask yourself what you want from an interactive agency. Take the time to research the companies you are interested in, compare portfolios, the size of staff, how long they have been in business and the differences in services. Compare apples to apples. Those comparisons alone will be key indicators in determining which agency is the right fit for you.

One of my favourite management books, John Heider’s Tao of Leadership, describes the importance of process. Here is a partial reading:

“Do not lose sight of the single principle: how everything works. When this principle is lost and the method of meditating on process fails, the group becomes mired in intellectual discussion of what could have happened, what should have happened, what this technique or that might do. Soon the group will be quarrelsome and depressed…When a person forgets that all creation is a unity, allegiance goes to lesser wholes such as family, the home team, or the company.”

This is a good description of how the client-contractor team will tend to lose unity and become quarrelsome should it lose focus on the process by which sites are created.

This is why the process must be respected.

This was apparent to Lao Tzu in the 5^th century B.C. and still makes sense today.

So that’s why I find the new Domino’s Pizza campaign so good. It was genuine enough to pass through my B.S. filter, yet the message was bold enough to make me curious about what they were selling. In short, they said “you hated our old pizza – our bad. We took it personally, now try this”. I agree wholeheartedly. Having gone through four years of being a starving student, like many others I detested yet still depended on Domino’s Pizza for their cheap and stale pies.

Their new Pizza Turnaround campaign is backed with a simple but effective web strategy, complete with the extended commercial and refreshingly unfiltered tweets. Another thing I like about this campaign is that it’s not funny, proving that you don’t always have to use humour to make your point in advertising.

What’s the risk of admitting your old pizza was comparable to chewing on a used Band-Aid? Not as much as there is to gain. People love when companies admit their mistakes and will only look forward to better pizza in the future. It’s quite a bit different than Ford pseudo-admitting they made bad cars – there are still millions of people who own those ‘mistakes’. I’m curious to see how this campaign is received, but more importantly I’m interested to see if we can get the new recipe in Canada. I’ll keep you posted.

Then I recently came across a short but great blog post from Chas Grundy that discusses how this can effect your culture. “If people want to do something great but don’t have the tools, support, processes, or resources, that’s an infrastructure problem. If people don’t want to do anything great, or change at all for that matter, that’s a culture problem.” This employee had what normal organizations wished upon all their staff: pride – which is a side effect of culture. He wanted to do great, but couldn’t.

How should something like this be handled? I don’t have a definite answer, but for starters I think everyone can agree that it’s wrong. I can understand enforcing policy to reduce corporate misbehaviour or abuse, but cases like this should be reviewed separately as it effects culture and client satisfaction. Don’t expect to get it right the first time. Social media and its uses are always changing, so expect your policy to adapt while you actively monitor the costs and benefits of social media in your organization.

After the session, one manager from an unnamed government department came up and admitted that he just “does it” and deals with the wrath of breaching policy (or the non-existence of policy) later. I like his style.