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Posted on by naren@hybreed.co

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

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Posted on by naren@hybreed.co

Program

Cook-off Challenge session done virtually

Objective

To run a teambuilding session for the team virtually!

Background

IndianOil Institute of Petroleum Management, or IiPM as it’s popularly known among IOCians, is the apex learning & development institute of IndianOil, the nation’s flagship energy major and the largest commercial enterprise in the country. The only one of its kind in the petroleum sector, IiPM aims to create a vibrant bridge of knowledge managers to lead the Indian energy companies.

Over the years, IiPM has grown from strength to strength and helped the Corporation in developing the leadership required to steer the company ahead with clarity, confidence & courage.

Solution

The idea to do this was triggered off by the ED of IiPM, Mr.C.K.Tiwari. “In the current scenario of the lockdown, how can we engage with employees in a manner that brings them together and also ensures they have fun together?” that was the question posed to us.

Various activity options were evaluated by IiPM. Finally, the Cook-Off Challenge was chosen, since it was thought that an activity that engaged both the employees and their spouses at home was required.
The key idea of the activity was for the participants in their (virtual) teams to cook a full course meal with a main course, dessert, starter and a mocktail, and of course in the process to feel connected with each other.

Execution of the activity:

Time – 20 mins
• At the scheduled time, participants logged in to the session via Zoom
• The facilitator started the session by welcoming the participants and kicked off the session with a few fun virtual energizers!
• The lead facilitator then briefed the participants about the activity, along with objectives, instructions & end goals
• One of the main objectives included that the teams prepare an entire meal, from starters, to main course, also a dessert and a mocktail.
• The group was divided into 5 teams of 5 participants each, at random.
• Once the activity started, teams could discuss, plan and strategize as to what each individual would cook

Time – 60 mins
• Every team got 60 mins to complete the challenge.
• Each team was also given two recipes (from another group) by the FocusU Faciitators. The ask was that the teams cook, in addition to the full course meal, at least one of the recipes from the two in order to gain bonus points.
• Family members of the guest were also a part of the challenge. They were encouraged to take pictures of the dishes being prepared and also capture the overall action in their kitchens and share the pictures too.

Time – 30 mins
• After the stipulated time for the challenge, came the time for the debrief.
• 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, collaboration, team morale in times of social distancing and working from home.
• The session was brought to a conclusion by announcing the winning team and the first and the second runners up. To do this, the pictures of the dishes were put together by the FocusU team and were shown to the participants, who decided on the winning teams through a simple poll based on creativity and presentation.
• The participants logged off with not just a great virtual experience and team memories to cherish, but also winning certificates and certificates of awesomeness!

A few points that emerged in the debrief discussion:
1. Team bonding – Participants shared that they had a good time connecting with their colleagues and their family informally and that it was a refreshing experience.
2. Coping with ambiguity – Several guests mentioned that when they decided on their recipes, they were under the impression that they would be required to prepare the same. They were taken by surprise when they were asked to cook something entirely different. It took some helping, problem solving and collaboration to decide who will cook what.
3. Helping each other – One of the behaviours that emerged was leveraging different people in a team in figuring out what their strengths were and dividing responsibilities accordingly.
4. Fun needs to be optimally challenging – Participants enjoyed figuring out which team member could prepare a certain dish taking into stock the availability of resources in the respective homes!

Check out the video from the program out here.

Impact

Here is what some of the participants had to say after the workshop (verbatim):

Dilip Kumar This challenge proved orderliness is possible in chaos.

ED, IIPM: Shri.CK Tiwari My sincere compliments to FocusU for energising the IOCians and their family members in a different, one of its kind competition. Surely, they would have sharpened their team skills.

Ratna Singh This garland of amazing memories will be cherished throughout our lives. Mirth and joy was at the zenith directly from the heart of hearts!!!!

Urvija Bajai What wonderful team spirit displayed by all! Am sure this would transfer to the workplace setting too. Great!

Vineet Kumar Thanks to everyone I really loved it.. you made my lockdown My first such event and it was really goooooood and scintillating, you guys gave me a new cocktail drink- “The Heaven’s Call”, which I will cherish for a lifetime… Keep rocking

Vaibhav & Kashish Mathur It was awesome and a fabulous idea of involving all family members in this cook off challenge, making it quite some fun and innovative.

Ajay Kumar I was excited, then surprised, engaged and now amazed. This was a fully packed competition. Like it and want to live it again.

Juliana Haloi Cooking is just more than food. It’s the whole family bonding over good food, fun conversations and togetherness. Thank you Sir. I am indeed privileged and humbled to receive this certificate. I am grateful to IiPM for providing us the platform for showcasing our culinary skills and I also thank my team members for their combined efforts and coordination

Deepika Soni We came…..we got together……it was an endlessly-delicious journey.

Mayurika Patwari Working towards common goal, building strong teams & coming out with delicious results. This was it.

Rizwan Ali My first ever such participation. Lots of enthusiasm, fun and interaction with people from different location. It boosted my interest on cooking. Thanks a lot for making this wonderful event IIPM & FocusU.

Neeraj Kr Singh These Garland of amazing memories will be cherished throughout our lives! Mirth and laughter, ecstasy & joy, inspiration & motivation, zeal & passionate quench for excellence and above all team play was at its zenith which made the show one of the most brilliant, liked family engagement program ever organised by IiPM under the creative & dynamic leadership of our beloved ED & IIPM Head, Shri C K Tiwari Sir and team FocusU making it a grand supreme success!!!!

K K Chandra Thanks to the IiPM team for organizing this kind of innovative exercise.

Dilip Kumar Thank you Sir and team. Hats off to the entire IIPM team to conduct such a great event in this pandemic time. Thanks for the opportunity and looking forward for such events in future

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Posted on by naren@hybreed.co

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.”

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Posted on by naren@hybreed.co

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.”

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Posted on by naren@hybreed.co

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!”

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Posted on by naren@hybreed.co

Program

SMOLLAN | Blended Learning Journey using Microlearning

Objective

The objective was to develop the competencies of two teams of SMOLLAN :
⦁ GDC (Global Delivery Center)
⦁ Head Office Team which included

The targeted competencies were identified as follows :

⦁ Strategy and People Development
⦁ Team Alignment
⦁ Accountability
⦁ Empathy
⦁ Stake Holder Management

⦁ Operational Excellence
⦁ Planning & Organizing
⦁ Continuous Process Improvement
⦁ Agility
⦁ Problem Solving

⦁ Leadership Excellence
⦁ Fostering Creativity
⦁ Adapting to Change

Solution

Competency development is a long-term process and a one-time intervention is unlikely to make a lasting impact. Keeping this is mind, a blended learning journey was designed for SMOLLAN with the following elements:

⦁ Self – Report Questionnaire
⦁ 2 – Day Experiential Workshop
⦁ 90 – Day reinforcement through mobile microlearning

Below is the snapshot of the Learning Journey:

Details of each element of the learning journey:

Self – Report Questionnaire:
In discussion with the SMOLLAN Learning & Development team, we identified the targeted behaviors for each competency. We also had a round of discussion with the leadership team to identify the critical incidences where these competencies come into play and the challenges faced by the team in demonstrating the expected behaviors.

Through a survey, participants self – reported their level of confidence of working with each behavior. We leveraged the insights from the survey and leadership discussion to customize the experiential workshop and mobile based microlearning challenges.

2 – Day Experiential Workshop:
Through the use of experiential activities such as Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine, Blind In – Tent, First Strike and the Domino Rally challenge, the key learning objectives were brought to surface.

90 – Day reinforcement through mobile microlearning:
Through challenging mobile based microlearning modules, participants were encouraged to apply the concepts and behaviors to real life work scenarios. These 10 to 15-minute modules were made available through an app so that participants could complete them on the go, anytime, anywhere. Through regular dashboards and emails, learners were encouraged to continue the learning process.

Below is the list of the 10 mobile learning challenges designed :
⦁ An App with odd features: Aligning the team
⦁ The Accountability Challenge: Applying the various steps of the OZ Principle
⦁ Draw an Empathy Map Challenge: Stakeholder Management
⦁ Use Influencing Currencies Challenge: Stakeholder Management
⦁ The Mousetrap Challenge: Reframing the problem
⦁ The Explorer’s Challenge: Sourcing ideas creatively
⦁ The Green Bullet Challenge: Micro – experimentation with an idea
⦁ Move with Your Cheese Challenge: Anticipating and managing change
⦁ The 8 – Step Change Challenge: Leading change using Kotter’s model
⦁ The Agile Sprint Challenge: Designing projects to be more agile

Some important microlearning metrics :

Pics :

Impact

This is what Mr. Vijay Varshney, Head of Technology, MESA – SMOLLAN Had to say about the blended learning journey :
“Thank you FocusU team and Smollan L&D team for designing such a wonderfully continuous learning program, it acted like small and effective doses to look for what next…and what more coming once way to improve. Case studies chosen were all relevant for my Global Development Team & I could not ask for more. Let’s plan for some monthly 1 hour on premise confluence sessions. Thanks once again.”

This is what Ketki Desai, one of the participants of the learning journey, had to say about the use of microlearning in the journey :
“It forced me to learn and grow in spite of dealing with my busy schedule of juggling between work and a new-born back at home… you not only helped me understand new concept in merely 15 mins span to 30 mins., but also challenged me to think through different issues I feel, I should deal with. I should get them sorted mentally in my mind first than in real life… Thank you for helping me GROW my knowledge…”

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Posted on by naren@hybreed.co

Program

HUL Market Immersion And Team Engagement Workshop

Objective

To engage 120 professionals from the Homecare division of HUL in an activity that serves the purpose of both team building and spreading brand awareness.

Solution

The opportunity was brought to us by one of our favourite event partners – Shobiz, who were working closely with HUL on this engagement. The brief they came to us was as stated above.

While exploring various options along with Shobiz, we figured that in our discussions about the home care products and how they get used, the word ‘housewife’ cropped up several times. This led to a question – How can we make a difference for the housewives belonging to lower-middle-class families? And from there was born “The Home Make-over Challenge”.

The broad idea was this: To identify houses in the city from the lower middle class strata and challenge the team, broken into smaller units to give them a make-over using mostly (but not restricted to) HUL Homecare products.

The roll-out involved different steps:
⦁ Step 1: Ideation
How do we deliver to the client brief and yet bring something more to it? Some fizz as like to call it. In this case, it came from the CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) angle of the whole engagement.

⦁ Step 2: Planning & Preparation
Ideas are dime a dozen. At the end of the day, it comes down to the rigour in planning and preparation. We set out on the streets of Jaipur, where the HUL team offsite was scheduled to do a recce of possible households who would be amenable to an engagement like this. It was a revelation of sorts. The trust levels in our society is so low because of people always trying to pull a fast one, that we had to contact 3 times as many houses to shortlist and identify 10 houses, which the teams would work on.

⦁ Step 3: Getting our co-conspirators on board
At home, the wife is generally the boss. To be able to pull off something so audacious, we had to first get the husbands to secretly collaborate with us. Brave husbands are few and far between. And yet we did finally manage to find this intrepid species. Their role as co-conspirators was to find plausible reasons for sending their wives out during the make-over of their homes. From visits to beauty parlors, shopping, to complimentary coupons – which were arranged by the HUL team.

⦁ Step 4: Actual Execution
Vision without action is fantasy. So it came down to the D-Day execution. On the day of the workshop – the session started with some interesting energizers to get the ball rolling. Once the team was sufficiently energized we randomly split them into 10 groups and handed them their challenge for the next 4 hours. Jaws dropped in awe and anticipation. But the excitement was palpable. We knew that this would be one of our most joyful experiences so far.

All the teams had pre-designated houses and were shown pre-captured video of the house that further helped them broadly plan all that they needed to procure for the makeover.

Each team was handed a virtual budget, which they used to buy the material from the shops we had set up with all the household material that was pre-purchased. This included curtains, flower vase, lamps, bed sheets, cushion covers, plants, cleaning mop, Vim, Rin, Domex, etc.

After the procurement, teams headed out with a mission to transform someone’s house. The next 3 hours saw the teams getting their hands dirty in the execution of this holistic activity and giving their best. The time pressure was real here because the woman of the house can be kept away from her kingdom, but only for a limited period of time. Work happened at a frantic pace, with everyone working as a team.

Finally, came the moment of truth. The housewives knocked on the doors and the sheer look of surprise, delight, and wonder on the faces of the women when they entered the house made this challenge worth all the effort. All this was of course recorded discreetly by our team with handycams.

Impact

Here is what Mayur Thakkar, the Account Director, Shobiz Experiential Communications had to say after this workshop:

As the name says F-Fantastic, O-Outstanding, C-Confident, U-Useful, S-Safety – I have been working with this Team from the past 4 years and trust me they have surpassed the Quality & the way Team Building Activities that are conducted. They get into the minutest details at all times, they plan well in advance and manage the entire event with so ease, they you really don’t have to ask anything what’s going to happen next. An amazing Team with brilliant concept and assured outcomes.

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Posted on by naren@hybreed.co

Program

TAPMI Train The Evaluators Program |Behavioral Assessment During Admission Process

Objective

The T.A. Pai Management Institute, fondly known as TAPMI is located in the city of Manipal in Karnataka. With academic rigour and experiential learning at its core, TAPMI’s Post Graduate Diploma in Management Programs are approved by All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) since its constitution.

Established in 1980, it is one among the 7 institutes in India and 5% of the top business schools worldwide to have been accredited with the illustrious Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) accreditation, the oldest and toughest accreditation in the world of business education. It is also the 5th institution in India to have both the AACSB as well as Association of MBAs (AMBA) accreditation.

It is hence one of the much sought out institutes for students not just across India, but also across the world. The annual admission process for the institute starts in February. The need articulated to us was to evaluate around 3000 students in the month, in batches of 70 per day. Being big believers in Experiential learning themselves, TAPMI reached out to us to help them devise a way by which behavior assessment of the students could be done in a fairly rapid manner. They three key behaviours they were looking for included:

⦁ Being a Team player
⦁ Taking up Ownership
⦁ Communicating Effectively

One of the core tenets of Experiential learning is that “The way people play is the way people work.” This makes evaluating students through experiential activities a good lens for a quick assessment.

The task for us was to design and train TAPMI evaluators on two activities that bring out these behaviors clearly, so that the evaluators could in turn, conduct those activities for the students participating in the admission process.

Solution

We got to the drawing board and started ideating on, what is the best way to achieve this objective? While exploring various options, we had to keep in mind that the activities should bring out the objectives effectively yet should be comprehensive enough for the evaluators to understand. Also we were acutely aware that it should be fair to all the students who go through the process – and should not lend itself to ambiguity.

The other key challenge was that the activities needed to be of a short duration of maximum 10 minutes so that the whole process could be done rapidly, leaving time for the evaluators to also run their other evaluations.

Two activities were curated for this purpose that met all these criteria. One was called “The Tower of Brahma” and the other was the famous “Marshmallow Challenge.” There were around 8 evaluators who needed to be trained on the activities.

The program was conceived in 4 steps:

⦁ Step1: Understanding of the Experiential learning cycle
This was important since TAPMI themselves use the Experiential methodology. It was important that we were on the same page before we got into the activity itself.

⦁ Step 2: Experiential learning
The 8 evaluators were put through the both the activities, followed by an in-depth debrief. This was followed by a rigorous discussion between our Facilitators and the TAPMI faculty (the evaluators) where we dived deep into all the nuances of the activity and the possible different behaviors it can throw up, with the implications of each. To help prepare them for doing a dry run by themselves as the next step, FocusU also helped the evaluators with a detailed activity script. We also co-created an assessment form that they could use while running the activity. The assessment form detailed out the positive and the negative behaviors that the evaluators needed to watch out for.

⦁ Step 3: Learning by doing
Once the evaluators had no more questions, it was time for them to run these two activities themselves. For this, we called students volunteers. Multiple runs were done, followed by debriefs and discussions, so that the essence of the activity was preserved. This hands-on dummy run was a critical piece of the whole experience in ensuring that during the actual run, it was done extremely professionally by the evaluators

⦁ Step 4: Actual usage in the admission process
On Day 2, the FocusU team was there to overlook the evaluators conduct the activities by themselves. This time actual students applying to the MBA program in TAPMI were the participants. Truth be told, we had to do very little hand-holding or intervention at this stage. No wonder that TAPMI has such a good reputation!

Impact

The TAPMI evaluators went on to do the same activities at different locations in India for their admission and evaluation process. Since they had done the activities under the supervision of FocusU team, they were fully aware of the process and how to identify the behaviors during the activity.

This is what Jeevan J Arakal, one of the Professors had to say about the whole collaboration:
TAPMI deeply values teamwork among program participants, this is reflected in our team-based activity evaluation during the admissions process. In line with this focus we run team building and outbound activities as part of the induction process. These activities focus on collaboration, team building and informal bonding, creating a culture of trust among program participants. Program participants are encouraged to go outside their comfort zone, by actively participating in a combination of indoor and outdoor activities.

As mentioned earlier, we wanted the following outcomes as part of the induction process:
⦁ Teamwork
⦁ Collaboration
⦁ Informal bonding

In consultation with FocusU we devised several activities focused on the following aspects.
⦁ The importance of planning in a team, leadership and clear communication with feedback
⦁ The importance of prioritization in the work that we do
⦁ The contribution that different people in a team bring into a team task
⦁ The impact that each member in a team makes to the overall team
⦁ Success & trust have a domino effect in organizations: success breeds success! And trust given begets trust
⦁ The role of teamwork – and importance of leveraging every single person in a team

@FocusU Engage (India) Private Limited is clearly one of India’s best training organizations. Students greatly benefited from an intensive and high energy collaborative environment.

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Posted on by naren@hybreed.co

Program

IOCL | Induction Programs

Objective

Conduct the Induction programs for multiple batches of MT (Management Trainees) and GET (Graduate Engineer Trainees) joining the organization. The key objectives defined for the intervention were:

• To get to experience the core values of the organization in an immersive way

• To get the participants to move from a ME-thinking to a WE-thinking perspective

• To make participants aware of how to flex their thinking and put forth their ideas

Solution

The workshop was designed as a 3 day intervention that the organization branded as the Campus to Corporate Induction Program and was structured as below.

Day 1 started with the question, “Why have you been hired by IOCL?”. Most new employees thought it was because of their marks and performance in the interview process. The insight that they were actually hired for their “ability to think” – was something that was expanded on through the day. The day was structured around the theoretical construct of the “Creativity Cycle” as expounded by Roger Von Oech.

Ideas can be dime a dozen – the important thing though is the ability to communicate the ideas successfully ahead. Day 2 hence was constructed around building the confidence of the participants in projecting their ideas ahead.

Unlike in campuses where individual talent, knowledge and skill is appreciated, in an organizational context, most work gets done in teams. The ability of individuals to subscribe to the values of an organization – and then work together collaboratively in teams to achieve common goals, is often what leads to organizational success. This is what was targeted on Day 3.

The workshop designed as an immersive experience for participants, wove in the core values of IOCL in an experiential & fun way – as a series of challenges that the team must overcome. Teams could succeed only when they worked together collaboratively. By keeping just the right mix of competition and collaboration, the importance of becoming a better team player was brought out to all participants in a very memorable way.

The 3 day workshop was then brought to a close by sharing fun snippets and moments from the 3 days – that brought a lot of laughter & smiles – and in the process, brought all the participants closer together as a group stepping into the portals of IOCL.

Impact:

Here is what a few participants had to say after the whole intervention:

“After the workshop I felt like, FocusU had made me see what actually was inside me and what actually I am. I think now I know myself better and why I am here!”

“We had a great time. Those 3 days were most memorable and informative ones. Everything was just right :)”

“It was just a wonderful experience with FocusU team. We learned a lot but enjoyed a lot too. FocusU has given us so many lessons to learn for life. Everything was perfect, each team member, each one of you put your whole effort to make us learn and enjoy – we just want to say Thank you guys!!!”

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Posted on by naren@hybreed.co

Program

Novartis | Leadership Immersion

Objective

Stage an experience in the local environment of Mumbai city, through which a group of Country heads can be coached to pick out leadership lessons and insights, by their Global CEO.

Solution

To get an immersion into an authentic Mumbai experience, two experiences were suggested – of which the engagement with the legendary Dabbawallahs of Mumbai was chosen for its learning insights.

On the day, the team was first given a brief introduction into the Dabbawallahs and the incredible fact that they actually run a six sigma operation, despite having very low levels of education. A HBR article on the same was also shared for them to munch over the details. Immediately after, the teams were split into two groups and taken to the modest headquarters of the Dabbawallah organization in Dadar. There they were addressed by the secretary of the organization and given some insights into their operations.

Then began the challenge. Each of the teams, equipped with handycams were to trail the Dabbawallahs through their entire route from the collection points to the delivery points. This involved getting a sense of the busy routes, the crowded stations, the special wagons on the local trains reserved for Dabbawallahs, understanding the coding mechanisms and finally actually meeting up and interviewing an end customer to check his experience!

When all this was done, the teams then needed to come together to tease out the leadership insight from the whole experience. All this was shot and put together as a small documentary. You could see one of these out here on our website: https://focusu.com/the-dabbawala-challenge/

Impact:

Here is what Aarti Mudaliar, the HR Business Partner of the team had to say about the whole intervention:

“It has been a pleasure and fun to collaborate with Team FocusU which has always resulted in a WOW experience for my business team across levels coupled with a lot of learning and memories to cherish. Their passion for the work they do and strong execution ensure that Ideas are brought to Life and interventions are impactful with a real-life relevance to the business context. All the very best to you and look forward to opportunities to collaborate with you in the future.”

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