Client interview: Ideas for Leaders

Organisation Ideas for Leaders
Who Daniel Chadwick
Role Creative Editor

What is Ideas for Leaders?

We are a corporate learning service, providing the best ideas from the world’s leading business schools. Our site is www.ideasforleaders.com

Why did you decide to work with Deeson Online?

We were looking for a Drupal agency, and a digital publishing expert contact recommended Deeson Online as the best in field for Drupal developers, so it was a pretty simple decision.

How have you found working with Deeson Online?

There's been a learning curve, of course, with learning outcomes more so for ourselves than vice versa.

The relationship has evolved so that we have a sole point of contact at our end which has made communication very smooth.

We've also learned the ropes on Basecamp, the project management tool, and understood the need to be more thorough in our briefing and speccing work. Early on we were perhaps too free and loose in that respect!

In fact, I feel that on a personal level I've gained a whole education in terms of understanding UX and the utmost importance of it to web design and development. Whereas before I might have worked from the cosmetics backward, now everything has to be pinned to usefulness to the user.

I've picked that up from open, honest discussion with the Deeson Online team – particularly Graeme, Tim, Chris and Paula – and greatly appreciate it.

What has the feedback been on the site?

"Looks great!" is the most common response! More importantly, in terms of UX we are seeing good engagement with our ideas, and that's the Holy Grail for us.

What are your future plans for Ideas for Leaders?

Ideas for Leaders has evolved fast from a basic subscription offering to a service model where our research ideas act as the kick-off point to live events, roundtable discussions, webinars and virtual classrooms.

That progression capitalises on our strengths as publishers and editors because we work to curate ideas that can help meet the particular needs of our clients. In turn, we use those ideas to spark conversations within organisations about the way people not only work together, but how they can work better. A new free-to-access site will help open up our work to a wider audience and help promote our partner business schools.

What are your future plans for the site?

We have a raft of new product development ideas for the site which Deeson Online are helping us think through and prioritise.

The developments are focused around community and making the user-experience as conducive as possible to discovering useful ideas and sharing them with colleagues.

How does Deeson Online help with this?

As an SME in its early years, we need to pick our battles carefully with new product development. Deeson Online have been perfect for us in this respect, encouraging caution where needed plus research and discovery where possible.

They've also gauged user appetite for each and every piece of development work we look at to ensure minimum wastage. In short, they reigned us in when we needed it, when other developers, sadly, might take the money and run!

What are your future plans with Deeson Online?

Deeson Online understand our long-term business goals and share them too. That has led to a very honest, trusting relationship.

Testimony to that, we will be engaging Deeson Online for a new build site for our parent company: IEDP Developing Leaders.

It's a free-to-access website and magazine covering the latest developments in the world of Leadership Development and we're very much looking forward to the project.

Describe Deeson Online in three words

Thorough, diligent, long-termist.