How to Measure Leadership for Web Managers

Author: Kathy McShea
Published: December, 2008

It is said that leadership is one of the essentials in scoring whether Web governance is working at your organization. But how do you measure what is normally seen as such a soft skill?

For Web managers and public affairs officers in charge of Web sites, my belief is you must look to your stewardship and communication systems as significant factors in your capacity to lead an organization. Both of these have structure and systems – proven winners – that forecast whether you are positioned to be a strong leader. If you have them, you are ready to thrive. In their absence, you are swimming upstream.

Think of this article as a cookbook. It describes the recipe for Web manager leadership. It has essential ingredients for strong stewardship mixed together with four proven communication systems put into the stew as the secret sauce. Putting it all together requires skill and patience, but done well it means your cake rises.

Building Stewardship Structure

In my view, durable stewardship translates into three things:

Clear decision-making authority and formal structure must exists to set program direction, policy and operations:
The organization’s leadership must be mobilized and aligned with Web program; and
A culture of consultation, review and challenge exists – free of freelancing or benevolent dictators

When your leadership is mobilized and aligned with your Web program, it means that foundational agreements that are critical to program success are built. A critical foundation agreement that demonstrates the maturity of a Web program is a written charter that spells out roles and responsibilities for the organization.

When this document is signed out by the highest person in your organization it assures buy-in and “official” status which aligns your organization’s leaders with your program. During the phase where you seek support, if you discover hidden issues that require you to make changes in your original plans it is all the better. Surfacing problems and getting them out in the open will make you stronger and assure an alignment that is long lasting. The signed-out charter also provides you air-cover if you encounter problems at lower levels of the organization moving forward.

The charter document does not need to be long or complex – but it does need to be signed out at the highest level and distributed to all stakeholders. Then, like the lifecycle of any documentation in your program, it must be used, enforced and evaluated. Baking this lifecycle into the program supports your culture of review and challenge.

What are the Elements of a Charter?

A model charter addresses the committee’s name, as well as the organization’s objectives, scope of activities and duties and any termination date. It also spells out the time period necessary for the committee to carry out its purposes and which program office is responsible for providing necessary support for this committee, and who chairs the organization.

The charter also should include a description of who is a member and a description of duties for which the committee is responsible.

Details about its activities should include the estimated number and frequency of committee meetings, and if there are any standing subcommittees. For a Web organization, some elect to designate one standing subcommittee to be experts on advanced applications. Another may be involved in being the voice of the customer, with a charge to bring information about public feedback and audience focus to the at large group. Another standing subcommittee might be in charge of reviewing and recommending policy issues. And a mechanism for creating further subcommittees should exist.

A best practice is to also use the charter to document the plan for reports and transparency. The charter itself should require the committee to submit an annual report to the top of your organization. This report should look back at the performance of past initiatives and look to the future for what is on the horizon. The report can become a vehicle to get actionable recommendations in front of the organization’s leadership on a routine basis so you can get executive support for funding and visibility.

Four Tactics for Strong Communication

A Web manager must assist leadership in knowing what they can do to support the program. This underscores the need for strong communications systems both upward and downward. There are four essential tactics to assure your communications are strong.

First, it is the responsibility of the Web manager to build program awareness and understanding by using a core message set to build program awareness and understanding.

Looking up the food chain, senior leaders across the organization must be charged with delivering critical correspondence down their chain of command. Unfortunately, in many organizations, it is not uncommon to have senior executives attend meetings and fail to return to their organizational unit with a plan to disseminate the information learned at the meeting and let staff know what occurred and what it means to them. One way to combat this failing is to flatten the structure and create a unified online hub of information exists to share program documentation, best practices, a glossary of terms and lessons-learned in real time.

Secondly, the Web management team must have a strong sensing mechanism for receiving info from all parts of the organization. The larger the organization, the more critical this is and the harder it is to accomplish. There are several good ideas that have crossed my radar which can help you get an early warning system.

One idea involves having organizational units or departments regularly report a calendar of public or soon-to-be public events 30 days out, 60 days out and 90 days out. These so-called 30-60-90 day reports give visibility to what is perking – good and bad – so you can provide support to the good ideas and kill the bad ideas before it is too late.

A second idea involves an awards and recognition program. If you put some seed money together and put out a call for good ideas matching certain criteria, it is phenomenal to watch what can come out of the woodwork. People self-select from all parts of the organization to promote their pet rocks. Some of these ideas have been languishing on the shelf looking for a sponsor, and others are pure inspiration that can blossom into something bigger with your help.

Third, to manage risk adequate emergency notification protocols must exist and be exercised. Do you have alternates in place for all your key roles in case something happens that prevents the lead people from participating? Is there a plan to operate outside normal working hours? Are there systems in place to report and document problems to the right place so they can be fixed promptly?

Finally, sub-organizations have a redress mechanism in place. This last point is one of your leading indicators of whether your governance structure is sufficient and mature. If people in your organization don’t feel like there is a fair appeals process, it is likely they will hold you at arm’s length and your structure is vulnerable to trust issues. At best this means participants may shut down and not contribute their best ideas, and at worst you could be attacked for lack of “fair play”. Once you have a written policy that spells out how conflicts are resolved, it’s my experience everyone settles down and is ready to work because they can anticipate how the game is played.

Conclusion

I’d challenge you to measure yourself and your organization against these leadership attributes. Do your systems for stewardship and communication match up with these best practices? If not, what are you willing to do today to start your transformation? When your systems are mature your team is poised for strong Web governance.

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