The Relentless Pursuit | August 2020

Q2 ALL HANDS | SURVEY

Although we have all gotten really good at presenting virtually, we don’t want our upcoming All Hands to be just PowerPoints and Q&A’s. So, we’re doing something a little different this time.

SUPERLATIVES | Make sure to get your votes in by Monday, August 17! Click here to fill out the Form. Just as a reminder, winners of each Superlative will get a prize and there will be a random drawing for those who participate as well.

HAPPY HOURS | Next week, we will be running short happy hours to get your thoughts on how things have changed for you now that we’re working remote. We’ve developed some questions to get things going, and your answers may be featured during the All Hands! Reach out to Tina if you’d like to be added onto one of the happy hours.

PART TWO | In this second journey-building installment, Craig dives deep into Journeys and their capability with Kim Toomey from Lytics. You will get an excellent walkthrough into the system and best practices when using the tool. Watch the recording here.

If you have any questions about Journey Canvas or getting started with Lytics, please reach out to the Customer Intelligence team here.

OKR RESOURCES

The Planning and L&D teams have partnered together to create an Evolve workspace full of self-taught training resources regarding OKRs and Weekdone. Access the workspace for guidance or a refresher of objectives and key results.

WHAT TO EXPECT

VIDEOS

• How To Write Effective OKRs
• How To Track and Measure OKRs
• What Is Weekdone?
• How To Use Weekdone

ONLINE COURSE

• Introduction to OKRs Course
• Schedule an OKR coaching session, OKR/Planning Confluence with additional resources, and more!

Access OKRs Evolve Workspace Here

PUMA TEAM | WT MARKETING CLOUD UPDATES

LEAD-GEN | Beta testing has begun with NewMarket Group, Oxford Club, and Banyan Hill, as well as a demo of the product to Money Map. If you are interested in testing or going through a demo, please reach out to Matt Williams. You can read more about the MVP and Q3 priorities for Lead-Gen here.

E-COMM | We’ve put together the E-Comm MVP requirements after a great roundtable with Domestic businesses and are in the process of scheduling one with International affiliates. We’re planning to beta test with affiliates by September for features in the E-Comm MVP (except payment processing). We will develop and integrate payment processing as beta testing progresses, to give users time to get acclimated with WMC for creating order pages.

HELL YEAH | COACHING MODEL BOOSTS AFFILIATE CONFIDENCE

In an effort to provide targeted coaching and business insights for our affiliates when they dig into data, L&D’s Beth Oertel has been working with Bojo Bauer and the Customer Success team from Data & Analytics (formerly BI) to reshape the way they work with affiliates.

We’re happy to say this pivot has paid off and so far, we have been getting rave reviews from the affiliates as we used this new approach to help them build their own Lead Gen pinboards in ThoughtSpot. Immediate insights recognized through this approach has created a buzz of excitement and a feeling of confidence with the data in ThoughtSpot.

DATA: DRIVE WITH CONFIDENCE | NEW COURSE NOW AVAILABLE!

Our latest Data Literacy Awareness course will help you understand the importance of data literacy when it comes to your role within The Agora Companies. This interactive and exploratory course provides awareness of how data literacy impacts your role and sets expectations for a data literate workforce. We encourage everyone and anyone to enroll in the course in Evolve. Enroll directly from the Announcements page in Evolve.

For any questions is help accessing Evolve, please reach out to the L&D team here.

SKETCHY EMAIL? THERE’S AN APP (AND TEAM) FOR THAT

For as long as anyone can remember, emails have appeared in our mailboxes that we’ve either marked as spam into Junk E-Mail folders or deleted outright. They can range from annoying to potentially dangerous for users and the company as a whole. Our email security filtering system, Mimecast, keeps these emails out. However, the senders of these dangerous emails will always be looking for ways to circumvent mail filters.

No matter how good our defenses are, some will always slip through. That’s why we need to be prepared for when these cases arise by knowing what to look for and what we should be doing. We have a team who manages Information Security, but it’s everyone’s responsibility to understand how to report these emails and why.

SPAM VS. PHISHING

The first thing to recognize when receiving a message from an unknown external sender is whether the message is a “marketing” email (otherwise known as spam) or a phishing email with intentions of stealing information or compromising systems.  Spam emails are not dangerous, just unwanted, and typically feature unsubscribe links to remove yourself from their lists. In the cases where an unsubscribe link is not present, or if they are requiring an email response to opt out of the lists, the best scenario is to block the sender through your preferred platform (Outlook, OWA, etc.) which will automatically send the messages to a junk email folder or deleted items.

PHISH ALERT PROCESS

Even with spam emails, there are cases where you see an email that appears suspicious and you don’t want to click anything in it (including unsubscribe links).  For cases like this, we have had a system in place to report these emails to the InfoSec team. That system is known as the Phish Alert, which is located at the top of your received email messages. Here’s what happens once you click the Phish Alert button:

1. The Phish Alert button sends an email to security@14west.us and our PhishER compilation system, with the suspicious message as an attachment for review.
2. The InfoSec team will then analyze the message and determine if it is safe to click or interact with.
3. After analysis has completed, you will receive a direct response letting you know the results. If the responses appear automated, they both are and aren’t.We have crafted almost 50 different responses depending on the types of emails that come through.  The PhishER system allows us to send these emails directly to the users, completely personalized, and addressing the reported message.  It also gives us high levels of insight and reporting into the attacks we are receiving on a daily basis.  While we can’t predict the potential attacks, PhishER allows us to be as proactive as possible and can quickly quarantine malicious messages from mailboxes so our users don’t even have to read them.

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT (OR JUST MORE PROACTIVE)

When you receive an email that you are suspicious of, the initial action should be to immediately report the message using the Phish Alert.  This will notify the correct engineers on the InfoSec team quickly and ensure the issue is resolved.

Also, as you may have noticed at times during the year, we use the Phish Alert system to run simulated attacks. The best way to defend against attacks is to prepare our users with similar attacks and see how they respond. We are able to get full reports on clicks, responses, and many other categories so we can determine if further training is needed.  While the simulations can be scary because everyone is receiving suspicious looking messages, they are nowhere near as scary as actual attacks that can hit all of our users within seconds.

UPCOMING TRAININGS AND WEBINARS

Our goal moving forward is to have everyone become more aware and mindful of the emails they are receiving. When something appears out of place or is obviously an attack, we will know exactly how to handle it. In the next month or two, the InfoSec team will be reaching out to all of the teams to setup virtual phishing webinars covering the information presented here, as well as more advanced techniques and examples. These webinars will be short but extensive, while offering time to ask as many questions as needed.  If you would like to get a webinar setup immediately before we reach out, please contact the InfoSec team (security@14west.us) and we will be happy to set something up!  And, as always, please let us know if you have questions regarding the information provided here or processes moving forward.

FEEDBACK NEEDED | INTEGRATED PLANNING ROUND ONE

You may have heard from Kevin Woest recently on our Q3 Integrated Planning Sessions and how we’ve officially closed out our first time working to execute an enterprise-wide planning process. It was encouraging to see the level of enthusiasm and collaboration across teams to work towards one common goal. So if you were able participate in these sessions, it is crucial to get feedback (the good, bad, ugly, etc.) to allow us to create a stronger process.

PLEASE TAKE THE SURVEY HERE

Feel free to reach out to Kevin if you’d like to know more about these sessions and take part in the next round.

GETTING TO KNOW THE OKR COMMUNITY IN BALTIMORE

OKR Baltimore, an online community run by Think’s Jeff Welch, was created for those who use or are considering using Objectives and Key Results to help align their teams to top-priority business objectives. This group runs a virtual First Friday series that allows a guest speaker to share their knowledge and experience with OKRs as well as members to discuss and ask questions.

Jeff has been following along with Brian and WesTech’s OKR journey since we started last year, and due to our rapid progress incorporating OKRs, he wanted Brian to share our story. During the event, Brian was able to share 14 West’s OKR journey, adoption process, success stories, and solutions to our struggles throughout the process.

The focus of Brian’s presentation was how we are able to increase focus and navigate rapid change with OKRs within our workplace – from testing portions of OKRs in Q4, 2019 with a focus on two products… to fully rolling out OKRs in Q1, 2020, and navigating through the adoption process. Huge shifts in progress and alignment are due to hard work, creating integrated roadmaps and cross team dependency management processes.

Once we enter 2021 and beyond, we are set to enter the refinement process, where we will hope to operate in a silo-less environment with robust dependency management, continuous improvement each quarter, and begin to integrate OKR training to all onboarding processes. After Brian presented, the floor opened up for a Q&A session where the attendees were able to pick his brain.

The event was a home-run; the audience learned a great deal from Brian. Think even mailed a hard cover copy of Measure What Matters written by the OKR expert, John Doerr, to the attendees as a thank you.

ABOUT FIRST FRIDAY OKR-BALTIMORE | This group is designed for those interested in starting an OKR structure at their workplace and for like-minded OKR practitioners to get together and share experiences, tips and tricks on OKR usage at the workplace. It’s a relaxed and welcoming atmosphere for all levels of OKR enthusiasts. If you are interested in joining the First Friday OKR-Baltimore discussion at 4 PM ET today, you can sign up here.

JULY AFFILIATE SPOTLIGHT SERIES | MONEY MAP PRESS

Last month, we welcomed Money Map’s Katie Melchor and Danni O’Dell to the latest edition of the Affiliate Spotlight Series. If you missed it, you can find the recording here.

On Tuesday, August 18, we will welcome Banyan Hill’s Aaron DeHoog to the virtual stage. Details are still being put together on what he’s going to cover, but since he asked for past presentations in an effort to “make the best one”, you might not want to miss it! If it’s slipped from your calendar, please reach out to Tina.

ALM OFFICE HOURS

The Learning & Development team wants to remind you that ALM Office Hours are back and have been poppin’ lately. If you want to become a Confluence or Jira pro and learn how to navigate these systems straight from the experts, you should consider joining a session.

They start at 1 PM ET every Friday. Join the Zoom here.