Pranking the CEO to get the message across at Sun
Using April Fool's Day gimmicks to get employees back on side and improve understanding of the business strategy.
by Terry McKenzie, senior director,
global employee communications and communities, Sun Microsystems.
It was the winter of our deepest despair back in 2003. Our stock was worth a fraction of what it had been worth during our glory days, and employee morale was at an all time low.
Employees didn't understand where we were going, how we were going to get there, and what their role was in the recovery. Cynicism was high, and employees didn't believe they were getting the real story. It was time for a little shock treatment.
Employees didn't believe they were getting the real story. It was time for shock treatment.
Following a tradition
Fortunately, April Fool's Day was quickly approaching, and at Sun, it's an honored tradition.
We decided to prank the company, and in the process, advance our communication agenda – informing employees of our strategy, restoring credibility in our leadership, and engaging them in the turnaround.
Taking over the intranet
What if, we wondered, employees opened our intranet homepage to find a full screen story, featuring Scott McNealy, our CEO at the time, decked out in huge, orange mohawk?
We added photos of our executives in a variety of wild mohawks.
And what if Scott issued this challenge to employees: "All employees will understand our business strategy, or we're going to give a whole new meaning to the word 'branding'!"
With the help of some touch-up work, we put together the headline story, and then added photos of our full executive line-up in a variety of wild mohawks. See Figures 1 and 2 below:
Figures 1 and 2 (below): Crawford Beveridge, chairman, EMEA, APAC and Americas government relations (l), and Greg Papadopoulis, chief technology officer (r)
In the accompanying article, "Scott" explained that he would test employees on our strategy. Full compliance was expected.
Building a buzz
April Fool's broke bright and early, and our story started flashing around the world. Employees didn't know if it was for real or not, and there was a lot of laughter and chatter on our campuses.
Even our executives didn't know – Scott was as surprised as anyone. So we accomplished objective 1: We got people's attention, some positive press, and 
employees laughing and buzzing again.
Learning the strategy through fun
Objective 2 was to provide education. The quizzes started the following week. Each question featured a different executive, decked out in full mohawked glory.
If the employee answered the question correctly, the photo changed back to the executive's normal portrait.
A wrong answer added body studding to the executive's picture. (Yes, lots of people were answering incorrectly just to have a chuckle at the exec's expense!)
Achieving great business results
Four weeks of quizzes did the job. Our June employee survey showed a 14 point increase in strategy understanding.
We followed the fun with corporate and business group playbooks, and performance management plans linking individual goals to corporate objectives.
Our employee survey showed a 14 point increase in strategy understanding.
The work started with a chuckle, and ended with terrific business results.
Terry McKenzie blogs about Sun Microsystem's most recent April Fool's Day exploits at http://blogs.sun.com/tmac/
Have your say
What are your experiences of using innovative methods to engage and motivate employees? Discuss this and other communication issues with your peers by joining the Internal Comms Hub members' group on the Communicators' Network.
Other recommendations:
How to prepare for media encounters