Offering a low-lift, high-impact L&D solution for uncertain times.
Call it a vibe shift, call it market realities, but the last year or so hasn’t exactly been easy for several industries. Tech, entertainment, publishing, marketing, they’ve all experienced multiple lay-offs, bad news cycles, and C-suite shake-ups.
Leaders are stressed, so their teams are stressed. And ongoing stress often leads to disengagement, siloes, and fear-based decision making within organizations.
During times such as these, it’s tough to view ideals like teamwork and good communication as bottomline necessities. It’s even harder to implement the critical L&D resources needed to help teams row into the storm, together. Instead, panic often leads to inaction, slowly sinking everyone left stranded in the boat.
However, despite market uncertainties and obvious vibe shifts, BookClub continues to drive communication, build teamwork, and help align the goals of our clients.
But how?
By employing key lessons and practical applications from today’s leading authors and industry thought-leaders – creating a low-lift, cost-effective, high-impact solution.
For clients who’ve had to tighten their belts as of recent – BookClub is an L&D game changer.
BookClub creates, curates, and aggregates content to meet teams where they live.
During market upswings, companies often invest more in development, training, upskilling, and coaching resources for their employees. This initiative tends to materialize as an extensive content and learning library.
But a library is only as impactful as the person – or organization – that utilizes it.
“We want to learn, we need to change, but we don’t have time.”
How often has this sentiment been shared on client calls? Way too much.
By addressing clients’ concerns around time poverty, we sharpened BookClub’s product into a more lightweight, yet impactful, offering.
Here’s how.
Powered by technology and human expertise - BookClub creates micro-lessons to address a team’s most pressing issues. We call these micro lessons “Sparks”.
Sparks are derived from and inspired by books - but are in no way a replacement for the actual book. We view them more as “trailers for ideas.” And much like a trailer can inspire someone to see the full movie; Sparks can hopefully inspire further readership.
Next to all BookClub content, we prominently feature a “buy the book” button.
Not only that, but we work closely with authors and publishers, and encourage clients to read the actual book. Think of BookClub as the bridge to greater learning and exploration; not the original source of water.
Once a book is added to the platform, we then identify and extract its main ideas and key concepts, re-contextualizing them for a micro-tailored, targeted approach to L&D.
Fighting words: when a leader needs to be heard.
“In the age of knowledge, ideas are the foundation of success in almost every field. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can’t persuade anyone else to follow your vision, your influence and impact will be greatly diminished. And that’s why communication is no longer considered a “soft skill” among the world’s top business leaders.”
- Carmine Gallo, Harvard Business Review
A potent use case that BookClub has continued to identify is one of a leader struggling to communicate to an increasingly remote workforce.
Rallying the troops at crucial, make-or-break moments can seem nearly impossible when up against a daily barrage of information and distractions.
So how can today’s leaders broadcast their strategies, core values and beliefs in a more meaningful way?
BookClub might not have THE ultimate solution, but we certainly have a good one.
Take, for example, a company-wide email from Degreed CEO David Blake. This particular email had many jobs to accomplish: inspire, motivate, and align the organization around a core tenant of his leadership philosophy.
- Book Idea/Framework mentioned: 20 Mile March
- Title of Book: Great By Choice
- How the idea/framework can be applied: What does it mean at Degreed?
Blake hoped Degreed employees wouldn’t just read the email to tick a box, and actually put the framework into practice – believing in its fundamental effectiveness.
Problem number one? The format and word count of the email itself.
Data, coupled with anecdotal evidence, points to a steep decline in engagement when employees - especially younger cohorts - open up an email with long blocks of text.
A recent article in Forbes claims, “workers are drowning in communication — up to 71% of employees don’t even read company emails.”
Whereas Axios argues, “whether we’re reading 10 words or 10,000, if our eyes hit a big block of text, we zone out. Shut the email. Star the tab.”
How can a leader like Blake see a key concept achieve widespread buy-in and be adopted into daily and weekly workstreams? Through more engaging, curated, visually dynamic, and social means of communication.
The BookClub solution? Our playlist feature.
We’ve already discussed Sparks, and playlists are the way we share Sparks via a multimodal platform feature.
Instead of explaining Jim Collins’ big idea through a long, mass work email – the “20 Mile March” concept is animated through bursts of text, visuals, audio, and video that feels more social media break than homework assignment.
Not only that, but playlists can be easily shared across multiple platforms, not just limited to workplace comms.
Most importantly, however, users can take big ideas from authors and turn them into something that feels more tailored and personal, as a way to broadcast their own core philosophies and leadership DNA.
In a world where everyone from the CEO to the most junior member of a team is struggling to be heard – platforms of engagement like BookClub are the necessary signal to cut through the noise.
