How a consumer technology company used Synthetron to build support for the new strategy and management agenda.
Situation
A multinational consumer technology company wanted to engage their employees worldwide to build support for their strategy, goals and management agenda over two consecutive years.
They needed a way to engage all these stakeholders efficiently.
Approach
In 3 virtual workshops each lasting 1.5 hours the employees of three Regions (Asia Pacific, Europe, Americas) were welcomed personally by the CEO in a conference call. Next was a short presentation of the new strategy.
After the presentation all employees returned to their PCs and engaged in an online synthetron discussion with 100- 200 colleagues of their Region.
They discussed topics such as: the general strategic direction, alignment of employees, and several selected components of the management agenda on how to achieve the objectives.
During the 3 discussions more then 2500 opinions were shared of which over 400 became a synthetron (judged by the participants to be important).
After a quick analysis of the top synthetrons the employees received feedback on the session within an hour from the CEO in a second conference call.
The analysis report, together with the agreed actions by the management team, was shared with all staff by local management.
Results
The management realised the following significant benefits of the exercise:
- Collected insights and used the knowledge available throughout the organisation.
- Quantified degree of alignment with the intended strategy.
- Received quality insights, action list , prioritised by several levels of importance.
- Engaged a large proportion of staff directly in a way that would have been impossible to do physically.
- Demonstrated modern leadership based on a true dialogue.
- Interacted with staff worldwide in a conclusive, open, cost effective and environmentally friendly way.
How an Italian multi-partner loyalty program involved its customers in co-creating new initiatives with the biggest ever virtual focus group.
« Synthetron has proved to be extremely effective in listening to our customers and in getting feedback and new ideas from them. I would have never imagined collecting so many insights in real time, directly from our customers in just 60 minutes! »
— Head of Marketing & CRM
Situation
The Marketing team of an Italian multi-partner loyalty Program with > 10 million consumers and 80+ partners wanted to identify new insights for new initiatives and to improve the user experience. They were looking for a way to actively involve their customers in this.
Approach
The team learned about Synthetron online dialogues and decided to use this innovative form of virtual focus group to actively involve their customers, listen to the ideas and suggestions and co-create with them new initiatives.
The Synthetron Italy team organized one session with 1300 customers – the biggest (virtual) focus group ever! – and carried out an in-depth analysis of the results.
Results
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- The discussion enabled the Marketing team to validate quantitatively some of the actions already in their pipeline and to identify other new initiatives to put in place.
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- The discussion also confirmed the relationship and the expectations clients have towards the Program – not just from a rationale / features point of view, but also from a more insightful perspective.
- And, last but not least, consumers really appreciated the Program’s willingness to listen to their thoughts:
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- « I appreciated the possibility of giving advice to improve the program. »
- « I enjoyed to be able to express my ideas and see what others think about it. »
- « I like being an important part of business decisions. »
How a Multinational aligned the 100 top managers on a strategic change program leveraging Synthetron online dialogues.
Situation
The leadership of a multinational decided to investigate the alignment of its top 100 managers with the strategic change program launched 4 months earlier via a cascading communication process.
Approach
All 100 managers were invited to join a one hour online, anonymous Synthetron online meeting to respond, discuss and validate their views.
- How urgent was the change program?
- How far had the change program been adopted, and translated into action?
- What were the bottlenecks?
Finally, they were asked to identify how the strategic change could be accelerated and suggest improvements.
Results
The outcome was richer and clearer than any classical interview round and generated new and actionable insights.
How a multinational organization used Synthetron’s crowdsourcing method to address disappointing HR survey results.
Situation
The annual internal employee satisfaction survey produced disappointing results for “leadership” and “trust” measures.
Management discussion led to the idea that by reorganising the organisation, most of these issues would be solved. However, they wanted to hear from the floor if this was really the case.
What really matters to the employees?
Approach
Synthetron held a series of 8 Synthetron discussions segmented by management level and business unit/country.
In the discussions participants were first asked the same poll question as in the survey for calibration, followed by a discussion of why to identify root causes.
Next, the focus was on identifying the solutions and Key Success Factors. During the discussion, the hypothesis of re-organisation was tested.
Discovery
Synthetron identified a surprising set of root-causes. The main root cause was the decision making process in the organisation. In none of the discussions did the participants confirm that reorganisation was the way forward. 4 actions surfaced repeatedly as higher synthetrons (broadly supported statements) in all the discussions.
The report gave management insights into what actions would have most impact and which were perceived less important.
Management shared the report openly with the participants and held a set of global web meetings to share what actions were identified through the Synthetron session.
In the end, no reorganisation took place. Rather, the decision process was streamlined and a campaign to strengthen empowerment was launched.
The following year’s survey showed significant better results on trust and leadership.
