When BT Group revised their strategy, the Enterprise business turned to us to help localise the narrative and cascade it effectively to their 9,000-strong employee base. We crafted a narrative that was relevant for Enterprise, created a guide for people leaders to run virtual, interactive sessions, and developed a suite of social media assets, ensuring that we engaged all employees, through all channels, with one overarching message and design framework.
Having received a revised strategy from BT Group, Enterprise faced a pressing need to cascade their own localised version of the narrative to their 9,000 employees at pace – due to local teams starting to create their own strategies that were potentially not aligned to the overall direction of the business. What was key was to ensure that employees not only understood what the strategy meant, but also, most importantly, their role in helping to deliver it. BT Enterprise turned to us to help define their own point of truth and subsequent cascade that was interactive, inspirational, and relevant enough to resonate with colleagues across the business.
Key to our response was creating a strategy with one overarching message and design framework. We began by taking the BT Group strategy, and crafting a narrative and strategic framework pack that was relevant to Enterprise, and gave leaders the confidence to talk about the organisation’s future. In addition, we created a toolkit giving managers understanding, and enabling them to localise the updated strategy and cascade it through interactive, virtual sessions in which teams could engage and commit to their participation in the organisation’s goals. To ensure we gained ultimate engagement and awareness, we also built a suite of marketing assets allowing all employees could connect with the strategy and become advocates of Enterprise’s future.
Creating a strategic framework pack enabled leaders to understand their role in and champion the new strategy, speaking about the direction of the organisation with confidence. Meanwhile, the toolkit boosted managers’ understanding and engagement, helping them to make the strategy relevant and relatable for every team within the business, sparking discussion and commitments at all levels, and putting the strategic pillars front and centre of team planning and goal setting. Finally, the social media campaign raised awareness across the organisation, consistently reinforcing the one overarching message using one design framework, and ultimately building employee advocacy in the future of Enterprise.
Feedback from the line management population was overwhelmingly positive. Many noted the materials were a significant step change to what had come before. One manager said:
‘I mentioned yesterday how helpful the strategy materials were in running an effective session with my team, she said you were behind them. Thank you!
‘I don’t think I’ve ever been so well prepared for sharing strategy with my team! The materials helped me make it relatable and relevant, sparked lots of great discussion and put the purpose and pillars front and centre in our team planning.’
