What if you have drafted a beautiful new vision and strategy, but need to implement it in an organization of over 5000 employees?
As the world was changing, OM drafted a bold vision on how they could move their organization and mobilization efforts forward. This was described in their strategy paper, which was sent out to the whole organization. Sending and reading a paper is one thing, but how do you ensure the bold vision is actually implemented?
The challenge: Implement the Strategy Paper
And this formed the challenge – designing a new way to implement the strategy paper better in the organization.
As obvious as it sounds, to design a good solution we need to understand the essence of the problem. In this case, it revolved around two parts. What is the essence of the strategy paper? And how do we change human behavior inside organizations?
The solution: A serious game
We first started tackling the challenge by interviewing people in leadership roles on their take of the strategy paper. Subsequently, we researched the latest findings on organizational and behavioral change, also in the context of an international, intercultural organization.
This resulted in a set of graphics that summarized the essence of the paper and the recommended steps that the client could take to change behavior in the desired direction. Since we are designers, however, a recommendation is not enough. It’s the difference between consultancy and design. We not only want to give good advice but create something that actually changes behavior.
That’s why we designed a couple of game-like concepts. Each of these games incorporated the principles of the strategy paper and helped teams to implement these principles in practice with concrete assignments. Moreover, each game had engaging features to keep a team hooked and incorporated aspects that help to change behavior. We also redesigned the actual strategy paper into a more engaging layout, highlighting the key aspects of the paper.
One game was developed further into a final game, that is now used by teams of OM all over the globe. This game was shipped and played during their annual leadership conference, and distributed over teams worldwide.