Engaging Leaders at Scale (Banking)

The Client

One of the largest and most established players in the global banking sector, with a diverse portfolio and a global workforce.

The Complexity

For the top tier of group leaders and to reconnect with the company’s heritage, rekindle their pride in the group, and engage with the new strategy and ways of working

The Context

After a testing period for the sector in general and for the client specifically, our client was about to launch a group-wide transformation based on a new strategy, brand repositioning and ways of working that would permeate the business at every level. This event brought together the top 700 leaders and managers from throughout the group, incorporating them into the conversation and enabling them to leave as empowered advocates for the strategic direction and new ways of working.

Session Objectives

To extend engagement to a broader leadership base in order to provide clarity, drive momentum, create a sense of urgency, celebrate success and connect with the new group ambition.
To get feedback, to share concerns but also to explore the opportunities a new strategy will afford.
To ensure everyone leaves feeling engaged, empowered, involved and with a clear understanding of how they will directly influence, impact, and deliver the plan.

Outcomes

High degree of engagement and quality of participant work.
The collaborative work experience brought energy, engagement and lively debate to a usually ‘dry’ forum.
Exceptional participant feedback.

Key Success Factors

The fundamental value brought by co-designing the engagement with the top-level stakeholders
The significant return on investment of allowing the right amount of time to plan and coordinate in such a complex context
The stability and efficiency brought by having a consistent sponsorship team throughout the preparation process

Outputs

A comprehensive library of illustrated capture from the two days.
An event file structure containing participant outputs in a reusable format.
A video overview of the two days which was produced in real time and played at the close of the second day.

Collaborative Process

Innovation Arts worked closely with the Client to deliver a new way of working to a large-scale event (historically a series of presentations), to make a dramatic statement as a step change in the group’s history.

Initially our team faced challenges about the right level of client-specific content and the mode of transmission necessary for the participants to actively engage with the input of the session. Once we balanced the information to be pushed out to the client with the amount of creative work the participants themselves would generate, the secondary challenge was keeping 700 people participating enthusiastically over the short (2 days) duration of the event.

Working with the client sponsor team and event production companies over the course of three months in a highly complex, highly iterative preparation process, we explored several different options to maximize the collaborative and interactive nature of the event whilst integrating client models and tools into our processes.

To ensure all details were covered in sufficient granularity, a detailed playbook was employed consolidate information and track changes in one place.

Our experienced facilitators acted as coaches for the management team both during preparation and during the event itself.

We also engaged in the delivery of a two day, week-1 ‘Dry Run’ at the venue, incorporating parts of the main session into a smaller launch for the client’s marketing community (around 400 participants). This enabled us to gauge feedback and test out the venue in advance of the higher-stakes leadership session.

We put together a team of 14 graphic facilitators, six consultant facilitators and an experienced production team of six design professionals to support this critical event. Working with the venue staff and other event agencies we ensured seamless, coherent activity throughout the two days.

This is far and away the best offsite I have ever been part of.I would recommend Innovation Arts to any of you looking to engage your people properly.” - Bank CEO