Supermarket Retailer Case Study
The brief
The brief was to design a series of activities and inputs that would enable these leaders to intellectually and emotionally experiment with and engage in the new values so that they would in turn be able to cascade these values to their teams. A core philosophy underpinning these values was the extent to which leaders of the business were effective at creating the environment where their colleagues could do their best work.
The challenge
We needed to represent the voice of the colleague so that leaders could really understand and engage with what was important for them. We considered doing vox pops but discounted them because we wanted something that touched these leaders in a more emotional way. And yet we knew that we could not ask first line employees to come into these senior sessions without being intimidated. We engaged the VerbatimPlayback™ team to create a dramatically compelling solution.
The solution
The VerbatimPlayback™ team developed a set of “verbatim dramas”. They interviewed real colleagues, finding out what was important to them and what they wanted from their leaders. The use of “verbatim dramas” was particularly effective because they literally acted as a voice-piece. They listened to the colleague’s interviews through earpieces and then simultaneously relayed these to the leadership audience – with the same words, intonation, even pauses and stumbles. Actors delivered these interviews facing the leaders as if engaged in a two-way conversation – simply sitting on a chair just feet away from their “audience.” The impact was incredibly powerful.
The result
With a group as senior as this, it was easy to get a response of “been there, done that”. The talent of the VerbatimPlayback™ team and the power of the solution meant that even the most cynical and jaded manager was touched and challenged in equal measure and looked into their own conscience to really ask themselves whether they were doing all they could to do best by their teams.
There were about 80 events often run concurrently. In order to meet this challenging rollout schedule, there needed to be a large team of actors who could all represent the views of the colleagues in a consistent way. The quality, consistency and commitment of the whole team was exemplary from the very first event to the very last. These events would undoubtedly have been less impactful had it not been for the hard work, talent and determination of VerbatimPlayback™ team.
“We had never before experienced this level of engagement and change.”
Supermarket Retailer
VerbatimPlayback™ Supermarket Retailer Case Study
