Continue reading “Why Wednesday Is Ideal For Virtual Team Building Activities?”
Category: Remote Teams
Program 
Global Pharmaceutical Major | Virtual Learning Journey
Background
Our customer, is a leading global specialty and branded multinational pharmaceutical company. Their portfolio compromises of over 100 products and 5000 trademarks. They supply to more than 150 countries around the world. They have supplied more than 500 million packs of medicine worldwide. They manage more than 3500 SKUs, from 60 manufacturing sites and 25 active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) manufacturers.
The learning engagement that they were exploring with us was for a group of 12 to 14 individuals from different parts of the organisation (and at different positions in the hierarchy), including two employees already in leadership roles. It was a group that had demonstrated fairly high levels of potential. However, it was felt that their performance could be enhanced, by a targeted intervention.
Objective
The objective of the learning intervention was hence to craft an impactful and interactive learning journey around the themes of:
1. Execution Skills (how to do it individually and collaboratively)
2. How to better collaborate with others (with a focus on how to communicate ideas across clearly and influence others)
3. Self-awareness (how they can stay self-motivated and perform to the best of their abilities)
Solution
It is always a pleasure for us to design an intervention when a client is very clear about their ask. This was one of those occasions. The intervention had to be designed keeping the seniority of the participants in mind.
After much internal discussions and brainstorming on what would be the best way to deliver the results in an impactful and engaging manner, we crafted a comprehensive learning journey spread over 4 months. The nuances of the individual programs were tweaked and fine-tuned in discussion with the client. What attracted the client to us from the word go was the use of the Experiential learning methodology.
This entire learning journey was conceived as below:
The Stage 1 of the intervention was done at the client location, with our Facilitator flying down there for the workshop execution. “How does one build their own personal brand?” – this was a topic that enthralled the participants. They were completely engaged in the workshop and were looking forward to the next few stages of the learning journey.
And then corona virus made its entry into the world! Face to face workshops were not an option anymore.
For us, the question was “How do we help our customers in this learning journey now?” We couldn’t leave them high and dry. That took us back to the drawing board to rethink the execution of the remaining part of this learning journey, in a virtual mode! What we were clear was that even if the delivery was through a virtual medium, the 4 steps of the Experiential methodology needed to be followed: Act – Engage – Share – Reflect. This turned out to be a very important decision, since participants brought in their own work experiences from across different functions during each VEbinar. That enabled real-time application, reflection and hence learning.
ACT
ENGAGE
SHARE
REFLECT
Also in line with our core philosophy of Digital-U workshops, the workshops had to have the human touch, follow a holistic approach and have actionable insights for the participants. Hence along with designing the workshop flow, we also designed customized workbooks for the participants for different stages of the journey, so that all learning could be captured and revisited. Learning in this way, makes it meaningful.
HUMAN TOUCH
HOLISTIC APPROACH
ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS
What we finally put together was a mixture of different virtual engagement methodologies that made the whole learning experience a very impactful and memorable one for our clients.
These is how the journey now morphed to:
• Stage 1: Face to face workshop – Build your personal brand – Drive yourself!
• Stage 2: Digital-U intervention using 2 VEbinars – Influence without authority – Drive others
Leadership is Influence. But how can leaders influence others when they have no formal authority over them?
• Stage 3: Online simulation using Evivve – Drive Work!
An immersive and high tech multiplayer simulation that teaches participants the importance of collaboration in order to achieve anything meaningful
• Stage 4: Digital-U intervention using 1 VEbinar – Road to Accountability
Quitting the blame game and owning up the responsibility – how can individuals and teams achieve that?
• Stage 5: Group Catch-up
Learning is not just about knowing new things. It is about assimilating it, pondering over it, questioning it, challenging it and finally coming to a new understanding of the topic and seeing it with new eyes. Group catch-up helps learners see topics through multiple perspectives, accelerates motivation and enriches learners.
Less by design and more by force, due to the pandemic – this is one learning engagement like no other that we had ever run so far. It was one of our first learning journey intervention with a mix of physical and virtual learning methodologies. The final impact that we created was something that we are so proud of ourselves. If we had been asked a month before we went into a lock-down, whether we would suggest a unique mix like this, we would have perhaps said “No!”
Impact:
The client feedback for this whole engagement has been very effusive. We are thankful we could make an impact despite all the sudden challenges. Here are a few sample testimonials that we received:
From the stakeholders:
Thanks a lot. From my perspective, I found that you handled the face-to-face and virtual sessions with equal ease and dedication, and for that, thank you so much! It gives me great pleasure to see the team so energized.
Associate Manager – Talent Development, Human Resources
It has been a week of ensuring that the glass balls do not fall to the ground. I am really pleased to read the feedback – I would have loved to be part of the experience as well. Thanks a lot for the great work put in, and for ensuring high engagement levels of the team.
Associate Manager – Talent Development, Human Resources
Feedback for the Online Simulation (from different participants):
• Very dynamic and interesting :D, Great Collaboration with the team!
• Amazing experience – I was excited from the moment I read the briefing. Great platform and very interactive. It took us from our current roles and “forced” us to be in the others shoes. I wish i could play it outside of the training!
• Interesting and interactive session, really loved it and sad that we are not playing again on Friday!
• The simulation game was really interesting. It helped a lot in bringing the team together and putting all the “theory” in practice. Shoutout to the organisers – Please bring in more games
• Thank you so much FocusU for such an enjoyable session. First time, but big success
• Really great way to spark interest right from the briefing part. The motivation and collaboration really came through with the whole team. Thank you to the coordinators for ‘over’ delivering on the training- awesome job!! Thank you so much to each and everyone of you. @Organizers we need more games
Feedback for the Digital-U VEbinars (from different participants):
• Well, I will start by thanking you for the great training delivered. I really enjoyed all the sessions, which I found very interesting, interactive and highly informative.
• It’s the first time that I attended a training where there are so many interactions and games. I believe this is what makes your training so successful. From Day 1, you managed to keep me engaged so that I would look forward to the next session. The games were refreshing, while they also helped in getting me to think, instead of the usual listen and absorb. Keep it up!
• I only wish we could have the last trainings face to face, but I understand this is not possible with the COVID situation. I would not hesitate to recommend your team to my relatives and friends
• As mentioned during last session, this training has been very successful. I enjoyed the ongoing self-introspection, and constant reminder that you are indeed Focusing on U (us).
• I would say if for another program with your Team, this time perhaps spending more time to go through the phases in greater depth (and more live sessions).
Other Feedback:
This has been an incredible journey and I am genuinely very sad that the sessions are almost over. By far, this has been the best training module I have been through. Kudos to the whole team behind the preparation as we know you’ve been cooking up a lot behind the scenes to make the trainings so complete. Indeed, COMPLETE is the word as it has included fun, learning, vulnerability, building strengths, sharing, experience, discussions, memories and so much more.
It is clear for me, this training has set the bar very high in terms of my future training expectations be it in terms of the content, ways of delivering and most of all the continuous grasp of attention you’ve managed to have over all the participants throughout the training. I will definitely miss the Evivve game. Wish we could have one more session. Awesome job FocusU team.
Order Management Planner, Supply Chain
Sharing some feedback for the overall learning journey here:
• Honestly, this program is one of the best training I have attended so far.
• Very interactive and everyone is engaged for a common goal during the different sessions
• Very good collaboration within the group
• This program helped me to think and tackle issues in a different perspective which is better compared to how I handled such issues in the past.
• Very good learning curve and it has helped me in my daily routines and activities both professional and personal. Definitely, on a long term approach, it will be more beneficial.
• Less theory (which reduces boredom), more practical stuffs, more interactions => This is how we should be involved in trainings going forward as we are more focused and our takeaway is much more compared to normal trainings we had in the past.
I would like to thank you for your time and energy invested on such programs. For me, it is definitely a success ☺. Special mention to the FocusU team. Guys, you were amazing, committed and passionate about what you do. Keep the same vibes ☺
Junior Quality Associate, Pharmaceutical Affairs
Thanks for sharing the video!! Amazing memories and to be honest I felt quite nostalgic when watching it during our last session (had to hide some tears). I want to take the time to share my most honest THANKS for the full journey! The training was amazing, with both physical and virtual structures. The support, communication and guidance of the full team was just awesome. And it was quite deep from a personal level – this should be mandatory for all individuals to get to know themselves better!
I would definitely recommend FocusU (10/10!) and hope we keep working with the team!
Senior Quality Associate
Download this Case Study
Program
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.”
Download this Case Study
Objective
To plan a virtual team building session for the Marketing team of Beiersdorf Nivea (Dubai) with the objective of team bonding and having a fun time together
Solution
The opportunity was brought to us by the Marketing Manager of the team, who reached out to us. This was a team comprising individuals who were well travelled, well read and intellectually sharp. The ask was clear – to engage this team in a manner that they also have fun together!
After exploring different options, we narrowed down to the ‘Map the City’ Challenge. This activity was chosen since it was intellectually stimulating and created an opportunity for the teams to discover a different city sitting in the comfort of their homes. The city of London was chosen, due to its many historical, famous monuments and places to visit. The virtual platform to run the session was Microsoft Teams as per the preference of the client. The activity was hence customized so as to run smoothly on it.
The key idea of the activity was to explore London by answering questions using Google Maps. The team with the maximum right answers would earn the maximum points and win the challenge
Execution of the activity:
Time – 20 mins
• At the scheduled time, participants logged in to the session via the MS Teams link
• The facilitator started the session by welcoming the participants and kicked off the session with a few fun virtual energizers!
• The group was divided into 5 teams of 4 participants each (as was pre-decided by Nivea).
• The lead facilitator then briefed the participants about the activity, along with objectives, instructions & end goals
Time – 60 mins
• Every team got 45 – 60 mins to complete the challenge.
• Every team was provided a list of questions that they had to answer in a google form shared with them. In all, there were 20 questions with 1 additional bumper question.
Time – 30 mins
• After the stipulated time for the challenge, all the teams we re-congregated.
• The Facilitator invited participants to share their experience about the session – the challenges of working together as a team virtually, while having fun together.
• The discussion was guided towards intended outcomes of team creativity, team morale in times of social distancing and working from home, team morale & team collaboration.
• The session was brought to a conclusion by announcing the winning team – the team with the highest points from the challenge
• The participants logged off with a great virtual experience and team memories to cherish.
A few points that emerged in the debrief discussion:
1. Team bonding – Participants shared that they had a good time connecting with their colleagues informally and that it was a refreshing experience.
2. Attention to detail – One participant shared that one of the main insights from the activity was the need to focus on details of a problem. “As we searched deeper in Google Maps, we got the answers.”
3. Missing the obvious – One person shared that though the clues were right in front of them, they still missed it because they were busy doing other things.
4. Helping each other – One of the behaviours that emerged was leveraging different people in a team in solving clues.
5. Fun needs to be optimally challenging – Participants enjoyed thinking, brainstorming and answering questions. They had fun playing a new game and experiencing a new online workshop together, because the difficulty level was “just right.”
Impact
Here is what Ajay Simha,Marketing Manager, Beiersdorf Nivea had to say after this workshop:
“Thank you for the great experience yesterday. Overall, I would give a rating of 9/10 and would also recommend FocusU to everyone I meet. Some qualitative feedback received from others:
– The program was very nice
– Didn’t know how the 2 hours went by
– It took our mind off work – created an #escapemoment that all of us need
– The FocusU team was very enterprising, with high passion and energy levels
– The application of zoom in and zoom out done at the end was sharp and very relevant
Thank you once again for organizing this so smoothly and helping us boost the team morale, have fun and drive engagement further. Look forward to more such sessions in the future.”
Download this Case Study
Program
Consumer Healthcare Major | Engaging a large team virtually
Background
Our customer, is one of the largest players in the consumer healthcare industry. The company’s principal activities are to manufacture and distribute a wide range of healthcare foods drugs and pharmaceuticals.
The company in recent times has done remarkably well with products – that have moved from the No.10 to the No.2 slot in their category. The mood in the company was naturally upbeat. To celebrate this fresh new start as a recharged and reinvigorated organization, they had planned a kick-off on 1st April, 2020.
Objective
The objective was to keep the upbeat mood of the team going and inspire team members to hold on to their leadership mindset. A strong kick off activity was needed, to mark the occasion.
Solution
While discussing various options with the client, it was mutually agreed that it would be best if the team comes together and creates an anthem for themselves which can keep inspiring them amidst the major changes as they transitioned. And from there the agreement to do “The MusoMagic Challenge” emerged.
As we knew the “MusoMagic Challenge” then, it required the whole team and the facilitators to be present together and work closely in smaller groups to help participants in writing, singing, and dancing to produce the anthem! As we started to plan for resources, the lockdown happened!
Did we give up? No! Crisis sometimes sparks innovation like nothing else does. What emerged from our brain storming was the first-ever “Virtual MusoMagic Challenge!”
The roll-out involved different steps:
Step 1: Ideation
How do we get 250 employees virtually together to write, sing and act to create an anthem! This was like asking, “How do we eat an elephant?”, and the only answer was “one bite at a time”. We worked with an extremely supportive client to get people on a virtual platform twice – once for creating the lyrics and then for recording it. We further divided the participants into smaller groups to make each virtual session interactive, involving and fun!
Step 2: Planning & Preparation
Ideas are dime a dozen. At the end of the day, it comes down to the rigor in planning and preparation. We played out various scenarios, with some of us working as a “devil’s advocate”, challenging each one of the ideas and suggestions around execution.
Step 3: Getting our co-conspirators on board
To begin with, each day would start with client asking us, “Will this really work? Are you sure the outcome would be inspiring enough for the leadership team to bless it?” Every day, we learned to overcome our own “butterflies-in-the-stomach” to say, “Yes, we can!” Our belief came from the fact that we have always turned around even the most difficult projects successfully. Why would this be different? The fact that the client stakeholders were very supportive was the icing on the cake.
Step 4: Actual Execution
We tapped onto the client’s expectations by asking them to share some existing songs which they liked. This helped us get a cue as to what was there in their mind. From that initial point, we created the “anthem tune”, the skeleton around which the anthem would be fleshed out. Once that was done, the work with 250 participations begun!
It took three full days of working with multiple smaller groups to get them to ideate, write, sing, and act out the song in from of their computer screens!
On Day 1, just the writing happened with people writing down their “stream of consciousness”, which provided the raw material for their lyrics. Each smaller team was tasked with voting and selecting their top three lines and sharing with us. As the day ended, we had enough good lines to turn it around into an anthem lyric. We diligently worked with them translating few into Hindi to make it jazzy!
Day 2 and Day 3 was sheer hard work of working with each smaller group on the virtual platform to get their singing right, record it and make them dance to the tunes! Truth be told, it was not an easy task by any measure – staring at a screen for such long durations of time. But the energy of the participants kept us going and coming back with greater energy next day!
The final output that we created was something that we are so proud of ourselves. If we had been asked a month before we went into a lock-down, whether we could create something like this, we would have perhaps said “No!”
Impact
Here is what Sumi G, (TL&OD Manager) from the client side had to say after this workshop:
“FocusU has been a truly wonderful partner to work with and our experience in collaborating with this fabulous team has been consistently brilliant! At a critical juncture for our organization, we were hit by the onset of the pandemic requiring us to truly be agile to convert our planned engagement from a F2F format to a virtual one connecting almost 300 colleagues. The FocusU team embraced this as a challenge and their sheer efforts to develop a virtual solution that would be eventually run for the very first time in our organization – the MusoMagic challenge – are praiseworthy and actually one in a million! So thank you FocusU!”
Download this Case Study
