Organizational Change
Client need: bringing ethics to life.
A Fortune 100 company wanted to bring all 21,000 of its employees worldwide into alignment around its core ethical principles. Internal educators had crafted a half-day ethics training to be delivered across hierarchical and geographic lines. But one challenge remained: how do you capture the attention of a diverse, results-driven population with a discussion about ethics? How do you reposition ethics — from abstract philosophical concept to a bottom-line business imperative?
Our method: scripted vignette (live and video).
We interviewed stakeholders at the company and teased the interpersonal and emotional issues out of their stories, pinpointing the technical, legal and financial dilemmas. This raw material was very rich, but something else was going on. When we discussed ethical questions in the client's day-to-day business, everyone knew the "right" answers legally, financially, or according to company policy and the conversation ended quickly. But when we broadened the discussion to the world outside of the business, these very same issues sprang to life. The "right" and "wrong" answers were much less clear, and the conversation became deeper and more exploratory.
We wrote a three-scene, 18-minute play with a cliffhanger ending. It dramatized several of the key ethical issues at the company, and was located in a setting deliberately distant from the company's industry. We cast actors, rehearsed, and on the morning of the program's launch, performed the play live at global headquarters in Houston, Texas, in front of the company's 35 most senior executives. When the lights came up, the company's lead internal facilitator waited a moment for the scene to sink in, and then began a discussion.
And the room erupted. Participants passionately shared their opinions, and within minutes were enthusiastically engaged in the work of the day: asking hard questions of one another, working together to find consensus in the face of ambiguity, and talking concretely and candidly about issues that in today's rapidly changing business environment often don't have a clear right or wrong answer.
Pleased with the success of the launch, the client requested additional versions of the vignettes, revised for cultural specificity, to be delivered in Europe and South America, as well as video productions of each version, to be used worldwide as the program and the company's ethical vision cascades through the organization.
