Are you ready for fast, high impact culture change? https://nicemedia.co.uk/services/drama-for-change/
Drama for Change pairs video with storytelling and supercharges it with a powerful campaign. The three elements combine to get teams engaged and active in a workplace culture – working together to improve it. Let’s quickly review each element and then look at the synergy.
Video in the workplace
Nowadays, the use of video in corporate communications is a commonplace. That’s probably because it’s so popular and effective. In 2023, we watch an average of 17 hours of online videos per week, we are 52% more likely to share video content than any other type of content (Hubspot), and 59% of senior executives agree that if both text and video are available on the same topic on the same page, they prefer to watch video (Forbes).
During the isolation of the pandemic, Zoom and then Teams came into their own as video communications helped us all to feel connected. Pre-pandemic, it used to be just international organisations that needed to link up like this, but nowadays, there is consistent demand for people to work remotely. We live and work in a video world.
Once upon a time…
Storytelling, while tough to master, is a key tool for managing a modern workforce.
It works because it taps into our deepest psychology. It is one of three evolved behaviours that allowed us to generate group-binding endorphins without spending inordinate amounts of time grooming one another. That’s how homo sapiens became the dominant primate. Storytelling is literally what separates us from other animals.
Unwritten rules
In the workplace, we tell ourselves stories to justify our not-entirely-compliant behaviour. Or to rationalise how we behave in relation to aspects of workplace behaviour that have not been legislated. These include everything from attitudes to racism right the way through to, “Is it acceptable to turn up late for a meeting?”
No one likes to be micromanaged, but it’s important for management to interact with an organisation’s grey area behaviours, especially with a more remote workforce. From how people deal with stress to why they fall short of best IT security practices, storytelling provides a key.
Storytelling is objective
Drama for Change’s work with story begins in confidential focus groups where we delve into the stories people tell themselves to make sense of their world. This gives us everything we need to determine the role story plays in the workplace behaviour you want to focus on.
Embodying elements of identity stories into short, dramatic videos makes it possible to talk about tricky issues at one remove. Watch a fictional character grapple with a relatable problem, and you can’t help but think all around that problem for yourself.
The campaign
Whether it’s winning an election or selling a product, a campaign can achieve it. A campaign is a way to distribute a story far and wide. When you’ve made a movie, you need a campaign to get people to watch it. So, that’s what we do.
What communication channels do you already have available to you? Can you send out some digital fliers by email? Can you share a trailer on Blink? Can you distribute the videos on Slack and moderate the discussion they stimulate? Can you have town hall-style meetings to talk about the films? Can you get some of your audience to be filmed reacting to the dramas, share the reaction videos and keep the conversation going?
There’s no campaign more powerful than word of mouth, and that’s what we’ve got going here. The videos that feature characters navigating a challenging grey area are designed to get people talking. “What’s the right thing to do here?”
The Great Resignation
A survey published by PwC suggests that nearly a quarter of UK workers expect to change jobs over the next year (https://www.pwc.co.uk/press-room/press-releases/quarter-of-the-uk-workforce-expect-to-quit-in-the-next-12-months.html). While the cost-of-living crisis is one motivation for people to seek to move on, another is discomfort within the corporate culture. There is a widespread desire for work environments that feels safe, where people can express themselves and feel fulfilled.
Meantime, leaders know that their people are their best source of ideas and innovation, but legacy top-down corporate culture is getting in the way.
Video x storytelling x a campaign = kaboom!
Drama for Change is the perfect tool for management seeking to be more inclusive and make a significant impact. Video is a popular and effective medium; storytelling is literally built into our brains, and campaigns combine the power of marketing, spaced practice and nudge learning.
The three elements work together for a synergistic result that’s more than the sum of its parts.
Comments
6You and 5 others
Add a comment…
Open Emoji Keyboard
No comments, yet.
Be the first to comment.Start the conversation
Are you ready for fast, high impact culture change? https://nicemedia.co.uk/services/drama-for-change/
In my previous article, I explained why story is so important for managers. Story is a tool that has evolved as humans have evolved to bind us together in large groups. Story is one of the key reasons that homo sapiens is the dominant primate. Story is the water in which our thoughts are swimming. It’s the very stuff of human perception.
Let’s get the party started
Coming into a new organisation is like travelling to a foreign country and joining an enormous drinks party. There are currents running through this place of in-jokes, hierarchy, and desire. It’s tough to fit in, let alone manage this shindig.
The atmosphere that runs through an organisation, the story that weaves around and binds it together, is powered by the staff, not the management. Meantime, staff look to you as leaders to guide the narrative. What’s needed is a respectful way to participate but not to dominate.
Just the facts
When there are pressures from compliance to get stuff into people’s heads, to protect the organisation from those failures that can cost it most dear – like IT breaches, health and safety failures or harassment cases – it can feel right to bear down with clear, box-ticking directives. Facts feel so sturdy, undeniable and safe.
But our brains register a factual challenge to our belief system in the same way as a physical threat. As Chip and Dan Heath say in Made to Stick, ”The problem is that when you hit listeners between the eyes, they respond by fighting back. The way you deliver a message to them is a cue to how they should react. If you make an argument, you’re implicitly asking them to evaluate your argument — judge it, debate it, criticise it — and then argue back, at least in their minds.”
On the other hand, story circumvents the brain’s defences against change. It bypasses the analytic part of the brain.
Party animals
To return to the party metaphor – when you meet new people, the easiest way to put them at their ease is to ask about their lives. This is your way into the big narrative to make sense of what’s happening in the room.
In a large organisation, a Drama for Change project starts this work with focus groups, listening to the private stories that people are telling themselves. Why is compliance poor? How do people justify it? Stories that define the group’s attitude to a workplace problem or concern. There will definitely be some behavioural problems in the mix. And the focus groups – conducted confidentially by outside observers – also uncover small but significant practical ways management can improve things for staff.
The focus group output is a mish-mash of complaints, anecdotes, and insights. But it’s the best raw material you could wish for to create a story that gets people focused on what’s important.
Making a drama from a crisis
We take this raw material and use it to make a video drama. The real pressures that people feel around an issue are used to articulate the workplace conflicts that are always bubbling under.
Now the problem has been made objective, and when shared, it becomes like watching a relatable TV show. Something people love to talk about: this talk is the basis for a campaign around the dramas. There are posters, trailers, and a staggered release of drama clips on the company’s social media or in live events. Wherever we can legitimately expect to stimulate conversation.
You’ve disrupted the narrative with a narrative of your own. But one that speaks the audience’s language. It bursts into the party and demands attention.
When you watch a drama of a character facing a challenging conflict or dilemma, you can’t help but think of yourself in their shoes. You think about how you might solve the problem if you were them. You think in and around the problem.
Down the line, we follow up with Gogglebox-style videos in which staff react to the scenarios, which are also shared, super-charging the discussion.
Encore!
Now the organisation is alive with the issue the campaign is focussing on. And you have successfully joined in and led the narrative.
The impact of this intervention is strong, and it provides opportunities for you to run with it. Those dry trainings that weren’t getting traction are suddenly more interesting. Your stimulating discussion offers innovative answers to the problems you’d not considered. Your staff are beginning to feel empowered as problem-solvers.
What workplace problem would you like to apply Drama for Change to?
Comments
Add a comment…
Open Emoji Keyboard
No comments, yet.
Be the first to comment.Start the conversation
