Case Studies

A large media agency (Starcom) wanted to create a new planning process and train the whole agency in its use. As a budget had to found for this activity, Starcom were looking for ‘creative’ ways to achieve this with the limited amount of funding.

Make Yourself put forward a creative process to achieve this and won the project.

The following steps were put in place:

• Consultations and workshops with the four architects of the process to help them incorporate innovation tools, develop training materials and create exercises and presentations that would connect with their audiences and be memorable
• Train the Trainer sessions to teach the architects and co-presenters how to run training sessions and how to bring the new planning process to life with exercises and games
• Speaker training for members of the management team and staff to help them with the launch event
• A teambuilding process for the launch event

The process was judged a great success:
"Top line is the feedback from yesterday has been unanimously excellent. Everyone says it was incredibly interesting and useful for them". Richard Hartell. EMEA planning director, Starcom

As one of the main suppliers for presentation training, Make Yourself were asked by Google to help develop content and train speakers for the annual EMEA sales conference.

Make Yourself worked with a group of Google managers on one of the key themes of the presentation, helping them to develop ideas, insights and stories. We then helped them work their material into presentations and develop their objectives for the session. As a team we created an overall direction that brought the material together in a cohesive and entertaining session.

In the weeks before the event we trained the speakers face to face and by video conference to polish and deliver the material. At the event itself we ran rehearsal sessions and gave the speakers confidence techniques to help them with an audience of over 2,000 people (one of the speakers hadn’t ever spoken to more than a room full of people).

The event was judged a great success:
"To do the training on the job with a clear goal at the end made it the best training session I’ve ever had." Google conference speaker.

Make Yourself were approached by a large organisation to develop training to help managers navigate projects through a new matrix management system rapidly implemented to speed change.

Managers were interviewed individually and a bespoke process was created called 3C’s (Collaboration and Communication for Change). The process drew on modules of our communication, negotiation and project management training.

By using live project exercises we got the attendees to identify the need for better communication and motivational skills in their group. We then set them a goal for end of the course and got the attendees to develop individual projects to achieve the goal. They then pitched their projects to the group in order to recruit team members.

The teams had to plan the detailed execution of the project and pitch it to key stakeholders with conflicting needs. Through a process of communication, negotiation and mediation, they had to get the stakeholders to agree the objectives and then inspire them to fund their projects. The level of funding from these ‘dragons’ depending on how much they believed in the future success of the project. The level of funding also dictated the resources that they could ‘buy’ and use.

The teams then built a structure (in this case a suspension bridge) under time pressure, learning about team dynamics and fast team development. During the build several parameters were changed, testing the teams’ ability to adapt to change.

The event was judged a great success and we have since been asked to deliver the same process for a large fund management group in the City of London.