Employee communications · Engagement · Systems
Every organization asks the same questions.
Here are five, the kind communications teams hear at a utility with thousands of employees and at a nonprofit with a development office of one. Open a question to see the work behind it.
- The ask
- The real problem
- What I built
- What happened after
The same four steps, every time.
Five questions
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Saturday’s storm brought down lines across our service territory, and our people answered.
Line workers, field supervisors and contractor crews worked through the weekend to get customers back on safely. Leadership is grateful for your skill, your stamina and your commitment to safety.
Thank you for everything you do.
Intake
Warm, short and grateful. Most reviewers would approve it.
Intake records the draft, its audience, its timing and what that audience has heard lately. Then six roles are seated from a library of 20.
Pass 1 · sealed
Each role reacts alone. Nothing is shared until every reaction is locked.
Field supervisor
22 years
“My crew will ask why the call center isn’t in here.”
Corporate support
5 years
“Reads warm. Leadership sounds grateful.”
Call center rep
6 years
“We took the calls all weekend. We’re not in it.”
Three of six panelists shown.
Pass 2 · the room
The roles hear each other. The gap between passes is the finding.
Field supervisor
22 years
“My crew will ask why the call center isn’t in here.”
“Give me one sentence I can say in the yard.”
Anchor · held positionCorporate support
5 years
“Reads warm. Leadership sounds grateful.”
“I hadn’t thought about the call center at all.”
Moved by the roomCall center rep
6 years
“We took the calls all weekend. We’re not in it.”
“Is the make-up overtime on next week’s schedule?”
Silent dissentThe call center rep stopped raising the gap and asked something smaller. A concern that goes quiet in the room comes back in the hallway.
The verdict
Send as writtenSend with fixesDon’t sendMust fix
Name the call center. A message about the weekend leaves out the people who took the calls all weekend.
Should fix
Give supervisors one sentence they can say in the yard when the question comes.
Consider
Say when make-up overtime will be scheduled, or when people will know.
Revised opening
To the line workers, field crews and call center reps who worked through Saturday’s storm: thank you. Customers got their power back because of the people on the poles and the people on the phones.
Illustrative run on a sample message. Panelists are roles and tenure, never real people. A behavioral projection, not employee feedback.
The method is fixed. The context is a layer.
Swap the organization’s baseline, role library and channels, and the same method reads messages somewhere else.
Small business · where it started Regional utility · in use Your organization · nextThe ask
Nobody asked. It started as my own question: could a small business get the same focus-group testing a big corporation pays for? I built it independently, then adapted it to test all-employee messages and campaigns at a regional utility.
The real problem
Most of what we learn about a message arrives after it’s sent: in the hallway, in the question a supervisor can’t answer, in the concern nobody raises out loud. By then it’s on the record.
What I built
A library of 20 workforce roles and a two-pass protocol: sealed first reactions, then a room where roles hear each other. Every run ends in a verdict with tiered fixes, packaged at executive, standard or deep-dive length.
What happened after
Its read informed a live send decision reviewed by a communications director. It’s versioned and recalibrated after real events. Honest limit: it’s a projection, not employee feedback, and its accuracy isn’t yet measured.
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The confusion to solve first
Three organizations share one name. Donors couldn’t tell them apart.
The Centerscare for the children.
The Friends groupssupport each individual Center.
The Chaptertrains the professionals who make all of it work.
The one-liner from the playbook, built so no group sounds like a competitor.
Then, one pitch per situation
Quick version20–30 seconds · opens the door, no askStandard pitchAbout 60 seconds · events and introductionsMajor donorOne-on-one · leads with leverage, names the numberThe ask
An elevator pitch for the Hawaiʻi State Chapter of Children’s Justice Centers.
The real problem
A half-time coordinator and a volunteer board, running on a reimbursement-based federal grant, needed every board member to say the same thing, and to separate the Chapter from two closely connected organizations.
What I built
A core message and one-liner, three situational pitch scripts, a donor conversation guide, five email and letter templates, proof points and five marketing recommendations, preceded by discovery questions sent before the first call.
What happened after
The coordinator wrote back after that afternoon’s board meeting:
“We just had a Board meeting this afternoon where we were talking about how to formulate our campaign and you just laid it all out for us.”
Terri L., Chapter Coordinator
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About 900 rows of GA4 data plus an agency media report. Accurate, complete and unreadable to most of the people who needed it.
Schematic. Campaign figures are internal and not shown.
A six-page analysis built for two readers: the person running it, and the manager it gets forwarded to.
Top layer · reader two
The summary at a glance
Self-contained, so it still makes sense when forwarded on its own.
Underneath · reader one
The full analysis
Six pages, used for the campaign postmortem.
Six limitations a user found 5 fixed in the next version · 1 kept, because it couldn’t be fixedThe ask
Nobody asked. I proposed it, and scoped it to what plain Microsoft 365 Copilot could actually run.
The real problem
The report had two readers, not one: the person running it, and the manager who reads whatever gets forwarded and wants the summary at a glance.
What I built
An agent inside Copilot’s hard limits: one shot, an 8,000-character instruction cap, uploaded files only. Three documented versions, each with its reason for changing.
What happened after
A user in another department built an 11-slide deck about it without being asked and credited me by name. Their critique became the next version.
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Pick a partner
Same hook
The founder, the award-winning podcast and a global community.
The angle for first contact
Broad appeal: authentic connection with an engaged, diverse audience traditional marketing often misses.
The angle for sewing machine brands
An authentic user’s endorsement, and a podcast that plays while people are at their machines.
The angle for fabric, notions and tools
A passionate, underserved audience, and endorsements that carry weight because they’re rare.
The angle for brands with DEI commitments
A way to live stated values by partnering with a community rooted in social justice.
The angle for creator programs
A platform that archives and supports the work of Black women makers.
The angle for media and publishing
Content collaboration and cross-promotion with an award-winning show.
Same ask
A short follow-up meeting, not a deal on the floor.
Only the middle changes. Six one-minute variations, one story.
The ask
A one-minute pitch for Black Women Stitch’s founder to use at h+h americas 2025, a major craft-industry trade show.
The real problem
One pitch can’t serve every booth. Success meant names and follow-up meetings with partners who each care about something different.
What I built
A founder voice profile, a tiered partner target map, value-proposition framings, six pitch variations by partner type, delivery coaching and a conference engagement plan.
What happened after
Instead of a single script, the founder took a guide that adapts to each partner conversation.
“What Derek delivered went far beyond our expectations… not just a script, but a dynamic guide tailored to different scenarios.”
Lisa W., Founder
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11years of giving history5,161donor households$27.1Mlifetime giving7screens · runs offline
Portfolio overview
What does the whole donor base look like, year by year?
Schematic. Donor records are the client’s and are not shown.
Retention
Who gave last year and not this year?
Schematic. Donor records are the client’s and are not shown.
Top donors
Which households carry the most weight?
Schematic. Donor records are the client’s and are not shown.
Segments
How do donors group by how and how much they give?
Schematic. Donor records are the client’s and are not shown.
Campaigns & giving
Which appeals actually brought gifts in?
Schematic. Donor records are the client’s and are not shown.
Forecast
What is the coming fiscal year likely to bring?
Schematic. Donor records are the client’s and are not shown.
AI findings report
What should a one-person development office do first?
Schematic. Donor records are the client’s and are not shown.
The ask
Donor data analysis for The Lamb Center’s one-person development office.
The real problem
Eleven years of CRM history sat in a raw export. Seeing it whole meant consolidating households, counting soft credits and reading it on a July–June fiscal year.
What I built
Seven screens, from portfolio overview to a forecast model and an AI findings report. The data is pre-computed and embedded, so it opens offline with nothing to install.
What happened after
The engagement stays open for quarterly data refreshes.
“Exceeded my expectations… responsive, happy to make revisions, eager to help.”
Wendy Baird, Director of Development
About
I'm a senior employee communications specialist at a regional utility, working across internal, change, HR and executive communications. I build the tools that make that work repeatable, from behavioral simulations to reporting agents.
Before that: content and communications roles at Ansell, Edward Jones, EY and KPMG, with bylines in Harvard Business Review and CIO. I also take pro bono engagements with nonprofits through Catchafire, where the same questions come up at a smaller scale.