For: Application

Development
& Delivery
Professionals

How To Create A Knockout Social

Business And Collaboration Strategic Plan
by Philipp Karcher, September 26, 2014

Key Takeaways
A Strategic Plan Coordinates The Many Moving Parts Of Social Business
The strategic plan is a tool to drive alignment around the business and technology
objectives and coordinate work streams.
Develop Social Business Plans Using POST: People, Objectives, Strategy,
Technology
Forresters structured approach advocates selecting vendors only after understanding
stakeholder needs and setting clear objectives on where and how to deploy social
business and collaboration technologies.
Understanding People And Getting Them To Buy In Is Critical To Success
Social business success is almost entirely dependent on the network effects that come
from broad-based adoption by all employees.
Prioritize The Cloud, Mobility, And Integrations That Simplify Switching
Between Tools
A well-constructed information workplace simplifies access from multiple devices and
allows people to retain a consistent context while switching between applications.

Forrester Research, Inc., 60 Acorn Park Drive, Cambridge, MA 02140 USA

Tel: +1 617.613.6000 | Fax: +1 617.613.5000 | www.forrester.com

For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

September 26, 2014

How To Create A Knockout Social Business And

Collaboration Strategic Plan
Strategic Plan: The Social Business And Collaboration Playbook
by Philipp Karcher
with Rob Koplowitz, Art Schoeller, Stephen Powers, and Steven Kesler

Why Read This Report

Social business and collaboration programs can redefine work by changing the way employees connect
with each other and the information they need to do their jobs. However, programs fall flat when firms
approach them as purely technology solutions without clear business objectives and stakeholder support.
Having a documented strategic plan that all stakeholders agree on can make the difference. This report for
the collaboration leadership team is a how-to guide for creating that strategic plan using Forresters proven
POST people, objectives, strategy, technology methodology. This report was originally published on
August 24, 2012; Forrester reviews and updates it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy, and
this time found that only light changes were needed, and updated it accordingly as of September 2014.

Table Of Contents

Notes & Resources

2 Why You Need A Strategic Plan For Social

Business

Forrester recommends the following reports.

A Strategic Plan Will Help Unite The Social

Business Team
4 Follow The POST Methodology To Construct
The Plan
Step 1 People: Analyze Employees Needs
And Barriers And Get Stakeholder Buy-In
Step 2 Objectives: Agree On The Business
And Technology Objectives
Step 3 Strategy: Focus Efforts, Assemble
Resources, And Align Work Streams

Related Research Documents

Setting The Technology Foundation For Your
Social Business And Collaboration Strategy
July 29, 2013
Monitor The Performance Of Your Social
Business And Collaboration Program
March 11, 2013
Social Business And Collaboration Success
Hinges On Effective Change Management
February 4, 2013

Step 4 Technology: Implement And Operate

The Technology Platforms
recommendations

11 Make Social Business And Collaboration A

Business-Level Strategy

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For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

How To Create A Knockout Social Business And Collaboration Strategic Plan

Why You Need A Strategic Plan For Social Business

Social business technology removes barriers between workers and knowledge and between workers
themselves, making it easier for employees to access knowledge and people from many sources
when and where they need them to make decisions.1 A social business and collaboration program
is an ambitious technology undertaking with strong implications for business stakeholders and
technology management that requires a coordinated approach best captured in a strategic plan. A
good strategic plan for social business and collaboration increases the likelihood that you:

Understand the requirements and barriers. Sound strategies are grounded in an understanding
of what employees are already doing and what they need from social and collaboration tools to
be successful. Avoid false starts by kicking off a stakeholder intelligence-gathering process to
determine the needs of different business stakeholders and employee groups.

Align around shared objectives. Agreeing on what you will do is important. Agreeing on what
you will not do is just as important. It is the agreement as much as the objectives themselves
that will drive adoption and success. Use the plans development process to identify and get
agreement on the objectives of your social business program.

Coordinate all the work streams. Social business programs have many moving parts. The
strategic plan is a single place to name and sequence the things that must come together:
desktop, data center, application, security, policy, training, evangelism, and ongoing
optimization. The strategic plan keeps the team grounded as priorities change.

Deploy the right technology platforms. Ultimately, the technology is what people will touch

and either love or hate. The social business program must have a view of what Forrester calls the
information workplace a set of integrated applications and services to facilitate collaboration,
communication, and content access available on the platforms and devices of choice.This
requires a cogent and achievable technology blueprint and a clear road map to get there.

A Strategic Plan Will Help Unite The Social Business Team

Because social business programs touch every employee, they can be highly charged initiatives.
In the decade of strategic planning work we have done with clients, we find that different lines of
business, departments, and even individual employees have varying motivations for using social
and collaboration technologies. Often, they point a finger at technology management, insisting that
standardized platforms like SharePoint are ill-equipped to meet their needs. Just as frequently, we
find discord within technology management. Technology management shops defined along regional
or business-unit lines often engage in religious wars over the types of technology platforms theyll
use to support social business objectives.

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How To Create A Knockout Social Business And Collaboration Strategic Plan

A strategic plan focused on business outcomes can help defuse these tensions. This means the plan
must acknowledge and support different stakeholders objectives while focusing on measurable
business results (see Figure 1). To go beyond technology tools to a pragmatic social business and
collaboration program, you must pull together a team dedicated to success over the one to three
years a global program can take, including:

Business stakeholders to establish the goals and sponsor the changes. Sales executives,

human resources (HR), communications, marketing, and product development are examples of
stakeholder groups that should be involved in identifying specific initiatives and assessing the
business case. Their participation is critical to sell the value of collaboration to the business and
to overcome politics and funding hurdles for projects.

Technology management-business liaisons to audit user needs and coordinate efforts.

Successful social business programs fund a new role that Forrester calls the social business
analyst to work closely with business groups and process owners. At Cisco Systems, 12 people
have this job. At UBM, a lone social community manager handles the load. At Electronic Arts,
the role is housed in learning and development. At IBM, its a massively distributed volunteer
organization. A social business analyst can be very process-centric or very people-centric,
depending on the culture of the firm.2

Technology management stakeholders to draw up and implement the collaboration

architecture. Enterprise architects work with technology management service owners

including the desktop, data center, and collaboration applications to review existing
strategies, evaluate technology solutions, and ensure adherence to integration standards.
Network analysts address performance/latency issues, and security analysts pay attention to
protecting assets and privacy.3

Owners of customer-facing processes when integrating customer data into employee

systems. If the program includes empowering employees to act as brand ambassadors,

then clearly the customer service process owner must get involved. Likewise, if customer
communities become part of the product development process, then the knowledge gained
should be incorporated into the product planning processes. Technology management
increasingly plays a critical role in these endeavors.

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How To Create A Knockout Social Business And Collaboration Strategic Plan

Figure 1 Social Business Initiatives Arise From Multiple Sources

Example source
Example initiative Business objective
of initiative
Sales

Social listening

Accelerate deal flow by electronically monitoring government RFP

sites.

Marketing

Facebook

Engage customers to drive brand loyalty and evangelism.

PR

Blog

Improve customer and investor communications to influence buying

behavior.

Customer
service

Twitter

Initiate faster response to customer difficulties and improve customer

support to increase customer satisfaction levels and improve brand
loyalty.

Division X

Online customer
community

Increase sales by engaging with potential customers through an online

community, helping them answer product questions.

R&D

Ideation

Track ideas in a simple system that allows employees to submit

suggestions on how to improve products.

Division Y

Product feedback
and ratings

Encourage customers to provide feedback and product ratings

through online sales channels.

HR

Recruiting

Reduce hiring costs by using social networks to source talent.

IT

Collaboration
platform

Increase productivity by allowing employees to easily share

information and stored content.

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Follow The POST Methodology To Construct The Plan

Forrester developed the POST people, objectives, strategy, technology approach as part of
Groundswell, our book on social marketing. Using a structured approach that begins with a careful
look at the audience is the best way to avoid jumping straight to technology choices that may or may
not work. Take each step in turn:
1. People. Analyze employees needs and barriers and get stakeholder buy-in.
2. Objectives. Agree on the business and technology objectives.
3. Strategy. Focus efforts, assemble resources, and align work streams.
4. Technology. Implement and operate the technology platforms.
Step 1 People: Analyze Employees Needs And Barriers And Get Stakeholder Buy-In
The biggest obstacle to success with any social business initiative is underestimating how hard it
is to get people to change the way they work. This is particularly important with social business
and collaboration. Unlike projects with a limited audience or an audience compelled to use the

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How To Create A Knockout Social Business And Collaboration Strategic Plan

application like ERP or CRM social business success depends almost entirely on the network
effects that come from broad-based adoption by all employees. Kick off a stakeholder intelligence
process, and:

Determine the needs of employees to identify and overcome barriers. You want information

on what employees are doing today, what they might do differently given the chance, and what
would motivate them to change. Analyze asset databases and activity logs to get aggregate data
on adoption, or host focus groups to identify cultural and motivational barriers.4 But to really
understand what people are doing and need, borrow a page from the market research handbook
and survey a representative sample of employees (see Figure 2).

For social marketing projects, focus on the needs of customer-facing employees. Focus on
the needs of employees who use community tools, social analytics, and listening platforms.5
Interview stakeholders in marketing, customer service, product development, and sales to
gather their requirements. Often, the collaboration leadership team can identify quick-win
opportunities to better integrate social marketing tools with core CRM systems to capture
customer insights.

Recruit business stakeholders to drive adoption and change. Strong executive sponsorship
(at the vice president level or higher) from the outset is critical to getting participation from
stakeholders. Our research suggests that winning the support of middle managers who
are typically saddled with day-to-day operational performance objectives is also critical
to changing frontline employee behaviors involving processes or practices that require more
effective collaboration.

And of course, factor in the needs of technology management stakeholders. In some ways,

this should be the easiest part of the program getting the technology team onboard with
the changes needed. But of course, that isnt always the case. To create a burning platform for
technology change, lead with your employee intelligence on whats broken or your business
stakeholder agreement on whats important in the program. Dont be afraid to make social
business your CEOs problem: CEOs are looking to get the most out of employees, and a great
social business and collaboration solution is an important foundation for that productivity.

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How To Create A Knockout Social Business And Collaboration Strategic Plan

Figure 2 Choose The Right Techniques For The Accuracy And Turnaround Time You Need
Traditional needs
assessment techniques

Quantitative
technique

IT
interviews

Business
interviews

Employee
focus groups

Workforce
surveys

Key stakeholders
Business liaison
staff

Managers and
employees
Include
enthusiasts and
laggards

Identify likely
segments
Find
representative
employees and
managers

Conduct
statistically valid
surveys
Include all
relevant groups

Best for

Quick
assessments
Tough political
situations

Quick
assessments
Key issue
identification

Validating
segments
Turning
segments into
personas

A fact-based
conversation
Bias-free analysis

What it
misses

A business or
workforce point
of view

Details on each
group, scenario,
and employee
type

Facts from
employees and
groups not
included

The personal
context

Techniques

More fact-based, less opinion-based

Lower cost, faster turnaround

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Step 2 Objectives: Agree On The Business And Technology Objectives

Social business strategy must focus on helping the organization achieve its goals and objectives.
Political, organizational, and regulatory factors might limit the scope, but the team must come to
agreement on the objectives and measures of success. The collaboration leadership team should:

Articulate and socialize a compelling, achievable vision of the future. Start with high-level
objectives like making it easy for employees to find and connect to experts and expertise
and giving them what they need to have excellent internal and external meetings (see Figure
3). With these objectives in mind, document a high-level vision of the desired end state,
and affirm what social business and collaboration means for corporate, business-unit, and
functional business strategies.

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How To Create A Knockout Social Business And Collaboration Strategic Plan

Define the scope of the social business and collaboration program. How much are you going to

tackle? If its an overhaul of the entire email, collaboration, and content delivery systems, be prepared
for a long slog. But if its to add social collaboration on top of a set of existing services consolidated
or not then the program might move faster. Similarly, if you need an enterprise deployment before
getting anything out of it, that can be hard to justify. But if you can bring teams up piecemeal and
show success early via pilots, you might build support faster. There is no single answer, but a strategic
plan must still define the scope of each project and how success will be measured.

Identify and agree on the objectives. There are two kinds of social business and collaboration

objectives to focus on: 1) productivity objectives that apply to all information workers, and 2)
process objectives that improve a core business activity. Productivity objectives finding experts
and expertise, holding great online meetings, and locating relevant content matter to most
employees using computers and smart devices. Process objectives are more nuanced; examples are
eliminating a bottleneck in a customer onboarding process, accelerating a sales proposal timeline,
or optimizing product launches in a global marketing organization (see Figure 4). Social business
analysts must look at the key points where knowledge is transferred, where employees need
information to make decisions, and where the snags are in those workflows.

Set up metrics for adoption and use. Adoption and frequency of use are clear indicators that

employees find value in the tools. Set goals against baseline adoption benchmarks to ensure that
stakeholders expectations are appropriate. Work with business sponsors to determine what other
metrics are important and how you will measure them. If your program is targeted at improving
a specific business process, then use outcome metrics. At a consulting organization, the metric
might be the close rate from putting forth better proposals faster. At a loan processing center, this
might be faster exception handling by using social tools to find the right expert.

Figure 3 Examples Of Collaboration Vision Statements

Employees are empowered by technology to solve
customer problems.

Workers can find and access the information they

need to take the next best action.

The need to share not the need to know is the

driving force in our business culture.

Employees can find and connect with each other

across geographies, business units, and ranks.

Employees communicate, share knowledge, and form Remote workers and distributed teams can
collaborate as effectively as teams in a single office.
relationships within and across the extended
enterprise.
Communication and collaboration tools are
accessible on every device from every location.

Employees do not find technology to be a barrier in

getting their work done efficiently and effectively.

We relentlessly eliminate bottlenecks in processes

that involve people by monitoring and optimizing
the information flow.

Our employees are strong advocates for our

organization, products, and services.

Customers are part of our product development and

customer service processes.

Our close partners find it easy to work with us using

collaboration and communication tools.

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How To Create A Knockout Social Business And Collaboration Strategic Plan

Figure 4 How Objectives Lead To Strategic Analysis

Table of contents
1 Project staff
Whos involved and what their roles and
responsibilities are

7 Mobile support
Devices, apps, and delivery approaches

2 Employee requirements
An assessment of the needs of different
employee groups

8 Security and compliance

Security implications, policy requirements,
agreement process

3 Business objectives
A catalog of the goals and desired outcomes
with business sponsorship

9 Social collaboration evangelism

New roles and responsibilities for community
leaders and social analysts

4 Business case and metrics

A description of the costs and financial or
business benefits; along with outcome metrics

10 Training and change management

A formal description of how employees will
learn about and master the new tools

5 Technology work streams

Desktop, data center, security, network,
applications, etc.

11 Communications strategy
Communication plans for employees and for
business and IT stakeholders

12 Schedule and road map

6 Technology architecture
Timing, workstream dependencies, phases,
The core technologies, including the role of cloud
financing timing
and platforms
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Step 3 Strategy: Focus Efforts, Assemble Resources, And Align Work Streams
With objectives agreed on and a vision for success, you need an action plan to achieve it. Here are
the critical elements that go into the strategic plan (see Figure 5):

Prioritize social business and collaboration initiatives. Having identified various

opportunities to improve how employees work collaboratively and access information to make
decisions, some scenarios will float to the top as having the greatest output (impact on achieving
objectives) for the least input (risk, investment, effort, and complexity). Start categorizing
initiatives along these two axes. This will help you drive social business and collaboration with
both big-picture solutions and small but high-impact fixes.

Identify which technology stakeholders and work streams must come together. Social

and collaboration technology touches many parts of the technology stack. Look at where
investments fit into the timeline with existing initiatives already in flight and discuss any
technology dependencies and issues you foresee. One federal government agency CIO learned
late in the strategic planning process that they couldnt proceed without first upgrading the
identity management systems, thus delaying plans and disappointing stakeholders. Dont
overlook the unique security, privacy, and compliance considerations that need to be addressed.

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Hire dedicated people to support social business and collaboration workloads. Were seeing

more organizations create full-time community leader positions. If you dont have certain
necessary roles, youll need to retrain existing resources, solicit involvement from resources
outside of technology management, or hire to fill the gap. If you dont have the right resources in
place, focus on other areas of social business and collaboration functionality and hold off on an
enterprisewide social strategy until you can do it right.6

Plan change management programs that incorporate communications and training. Social

business done right changes the way people work. Your strategy should involve executive-level
communication of the vision and why the success and growth of the organization depends on it.
This includes formal communications as you roll out the technology and direct involvement of
senior executives. Have a plan to generate employee awareness of the tools, convince employees
that the benefits of the new tools are worth the effort to use them, and provide them with
training on how and when to the use them.7

Figure 5 Social Business Strategic Plan: Table Of Contents

Table of contents
1 Project staff
Whos involved and what their roles and
responsibilities are

7 Mobile support
Devices, apps, and delivery approaches

2 Employee requirements
An assessment of the needs of different
employee groups

8 Security and compliance

Security implications, policy requirements,
agreement process

3 Business objectives
A catalog of the goals and desired outcomes
with business sponsorship

9 Social collaboration evangelism

New roles and responsibilities for community
leaders and social analysts

4 Business case and metrics

A description of the costs and financial or
business benefits; along with outcome metrics

10 Training and change management

A formal description of how employees will
learn about and master the new tools

5 Technology work streams

Desktop, data center, security, network,
applications, etc.

11 Communications strategy
Communication plans for employees and for
business and IT stakeholders

12 Schedule and road map

6 Technology architecture
Timing, workstream dependencies, phases,
The core technologies, including the role of cloud
financing timing
and platforms
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Step 4 Technology: Implement And Operate The Technology Platforms

With a solid grasp of stakeholder needs, clear objectives on where and how to deploy social business
and collaboration, business sponsorship secured, and resources aligned, its now time to pick the
technology foundations for the information workplace:

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How To Create A Knockout Social Business And Collaboration Strategic Plan

Determine the core platform technologies. Forrester groups collaboration technologies into

four areas: email, document-based, real-time, and social. A broad offering of pre-integrated
technologies represents a compelling starting point, particularly if some of the relevant
technologies are already in your portfolio. There are likely a limited number of vendors that
youve already made a big bet on in your enterprise. Discuss which products you plan to use and
where youll need to augment the best-of-breed platforms with point solutions (see Figure 6).

Take advantage of software-as-a-service (SaaS) and the cloud to improve collaboration.

Besides their economic benefits, cloud solutions are well suited for access via multiple devices
and for intercompany and Internet-based communications all important considerations for
improving collaboration among partners and mobile employees. Weigh these advantages against
the tradeoff of losing the ability to highly customize the environment and integrate with backend line-of-business systems today. Some categories like email, webconferencing, and file sync
and share are more readily suited to the cloud than others.

Mobilize everything. When your most productive employees use three devices or more to get

work done, you need to source from vendors that support the most important mobile platforms
with native apps and cloud services. Also, consider the strength of your vendors mobile apps
whether their breadth of functionality allows employees to be as productive as possible when away
from their computers, and whether they take full advantage of mobile device capabilities like touch
and location awareness to deliver a great user experience.

Start with better integration of existing tools. One of the benefits of a well-constructed

information workplace is that people retain a consistent context even while switching between
applications such as email, document management, and chat. Pursue integrations that improve
this click-through success, and implement collaboration technologies within core line-ofbusiness applications like CRM. Integrate social technology outputs or analytics into customer
service, marketing, and sales systems.

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How To Create A Knockout Social Business And Collaboration Strategic Plan

Figure 6 Which Of These Do You Need The Most?

How often do you use the following communication tools or services for work?
Daily

Less than daily

83% 10%

Email
58%

Calendar
30%

Instant messaging
Web meeting or webconferencing

11%

20%
33%

Team document sharing sites

15%

21%

File sync and share

14%

21%

Social networks

14%

21%

Video chat 9%

23%

Internal blogs or wikis 10%

Microblogging 9%

22%

20%
13%

Base: 4,791 North American and European information workers

Source: Forresters Forrsights Workforce Software Survey, Q4 2013
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R e c o m m e n d at i o n s

Make Social Business And Collaboration A Business-Level Strategy

Social business and collaboration is a business strategy with a strong technology component.
Therefore, technology management and the collaboration leadership team responsible for the
strategy must go beyond understanding collaboration technology to developing skills in selling
ideas, counseling others, and influencing business decision-makers:

Present a rock-solid business case. Its no longer sufficient to portray the generic benefits of
collaboration technologies. Gather input from business stakeholders on business priorities
and from employees on what they need from the technology toolkit to be successful. Gather
input from business analysts and applications professionals about processes or practices
that are broken, ailing, or costly to execute. Understand the cost of inefficient knowledge
processes by analyzing cycle times, lost opportunities, and/or financial impact.

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How To Create A Knockout Social Business And Collaboration Strategic Plan

Design for integration. The information workplace vision is about providing knowledge

workers with the right information at the right time in the right context. Under this framework,
social business and collaboration touches the broader portfolio of workforce technologies. Pick
applications designed for integration from the outset, but dont hinge your strategy on creating
a horizontal platform that will meet the needs of everyone. Pursue big-picture changes as well
as more narrowly scoped projects that still help the business advance toward its goals.

Make continuous improvements. Becoming a social business is an iterative process, not an

overnight transformation. Some social and collaboration technology solutions will redefine
the way employees work. Others will be a disappointing failure. Dont look at them that way.
Treat every pilot as an experiment, structuring the experiment so you will know why it failed
and accounting for the obstacles that came in the way when you repeat it next time. Make
the intelligence-gathering process and talking to business stakeholders and employees a core
component of your social business strategy.

Endnotes
Social technologies are more than just tools to simply connect employees. Social software plays a much
bigger role as part of what Geoffrey Moore calls systems of engagement context-rich apps and smart
products to help a business employees, partners, and customers decide and act immediately in their
moments of need. These systems make it easy for knowledge workers to use information while working
with others to address business and customer issues. See the August 24, 2012, The Social CIO report.

For a description of roles that go into a social business staffing plan, see the August 24, 2012, Staffing For
Social Business And Collaboration Success report.

For a description of roles that go into a social business staffing plan, see the August 24, 2012, Staffing For
Social Business And Collaboration Success report.

Stakeholder intelligence efforts should include analysis of the four barriers to social and collaboration tool
adoption: technological, motivational, behavioral, and cultural. See the August 24, 2012, Analyze What
Your Social Business And Collaboration Stakeholders Really Need report.

Forrester has been helping marketers with social marketing since 2007. For more information on this
important work, read Forresters book Groundswell and the related research. Source: Charlene Li and Josh
Bernoff, Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, Harvard Business School
Publishing, 2008 (http://www.forrester.com/groundswell).

When clients broach the question, How many people will be required to support collaboration? the
inevitable response is, What do you intend to do with it? Depending upon the breadth and complexity of
the deployment, staffing can vary wildly. For advice on how to map roles to functional areas, see the August
24, 2012, Staffing For Social Business And Collaboration Success report.

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How To Create A Knockout Social Business And Collaboration Strategic Plan

Many organizations tend to focus on formal planned instruction online or face to face, but most learning
actually happens informally on the job with employees asking their co-workers for help or searching for
information themselves. Employees can benefit from training that shows them how to use the tools, but
they will look to their peers for help applying those tools in their jobs. Make sure your program accounts
for the roles of coaches, mentors, and also communities as a way for employees to teach each other and
share best practices.

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