MURProgram
Senior Team Virtual Engagement through a Keynote
Objective
How do we engage a group of 300 senior leaders virtually?
Background
AWS is a high growth dynamic organization and is one of the foremost firms in the world providing on-demand cloud computing platforms. It enjoys an exceptional talent pool that is used to a fast pace, strategic thinking and aggressive execution model of working.
With the advent of the pandemic, business everywhere was affected. The repercussion was felt on their customers’ businesses. And consequently, on AWS too.
It was an unprecedented scenario and there was a realization that guiding the leaders to cope with this situation – personally and also for managing their teams’ energy was paramount. Hence it was decided to organize an e-meet wherein internal leaders would share and discuss the importance of ‘Resilience’ as a leadership trait in current times.
Solution
When the client discussed this background with us, we understood the context of the session and hence proposed the idea of getting an external leader to share his learning, experiences and tools to build and display Resilience. Our insight being that, an external leader tends to bring in new perspectives and often helps give a unique worldview on the topic to the audience. The proposal thus was to have a keynote session by a well known personality, so that it would segue into the internal sessions being run by the client.
After some internal evaluation, we proposed the name of a legend from the world of sports (cricket) – Mr. Simon Taufel (Ex-ICC Elite Umpires panelist, Winner of a record five consecutive ICC Umpire of the Year awards and first ICC Umpire Performance and Training Manager) considered to be one of the best umpires in the world. We felt this to be a great fit to bring in unique viewpoints, experiences and tools from a different high-performance world. His own personal experiences in Pakistan when the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan team happened, added to the context of “resilience” in a seamless manner.
This idea was liked by the client. They appreciated the unique perspective that could be brought in by Simon. A catch-up with Simon was organized to share the business challenge and expectations. It also helped clarify Simon’s views on the topic and what he could bring to the forum.
It was an open, freewheeling discussion. Simon’s humility, energy, ideas and ability to connect were liked by the client instantly. That convinced them to go ahead with the Masterclass. The backend logistics of putting together a structure for the talk, doing a mock run to ensure we were on top of all the IT issues and ensuring there was a smooth hand shake between the FocusU & Amazon teams – was ensured in the next 2 days. Finally, a Masterclass invite was shared by the FocusU team – that was sent internally to around 300 senior leaders who were to be the audience.
On the day of the Masterclass, the client himself moderated the session along with the FocusU advisor. The 60 minutes session by Simon Taufel was extremely well received. The session was capped by an open Q&A session that saw great participation from the audience.
Impact
The session saw us earning another happy client! The Masterclass was concluded with the client appreciating both Simon Taufel and the FocusU team for the effort put in enabling an engaging and insightful session.
The client also mailed a letter of appreciation on receiving an overwhelming positive response from the leaders. Here is what Mr. Amit Jain, Principal HRBP, AWS had to say:
“Wanted to share that we got positive feedback about the session. (was speaking to one of the leaders just now so thought of sending you a note directly)
A lot of folks were very excited to hear you speak and learn through the real life examples from the cricketing world. As I am talking to more people, I am getting multiple such feedback. Thank you for a very engaging and insightful session.
Thanks FocusU for enabling this very well. Appreciate your support all through the process.”
