Sheffield Forgemasters
Sheffield Forgemasters · Facilitator, discovery lead · At Razor
- Asked for
- Show us what a modern steelworks could look like.
- Actually
- Before anyone would fund looking properly, the leadership needed a shared picture of where they might go.
200+
people engaged, shop floor to C-suite, in a three-month discovery. The proposal that followed didn't go ahead.
I ran a future-vision workshop with senior management, then wrote and narrated a playful story-style video of one possible future. That secured a three-month discovery with a team of six and more than 200 people across the business, ending in a future-state vision for the board.
- Facilitation
- Discovery
- Service design
- Leadership
- Client
- Sheffield Forgemasters
- Through
- Razor
- Team
- Six
- Discovery
- Three months
- People
- 200+
Selling the looking
Large, established organisations rarely fund a proper discovery on the strength of a slide deck. People need to be able to picture where they might end up before they'll agree to go and find out.
So I facilitated a future-vision workshop with senior management, then turned what came out of it into a short story-style video, which I wrote and narrated. It was deliberately a bit playful. A future you can picture is much easier to say yes to than a list of capabilities.
How the engagement grew
- Senior workshopA future-vision session with management
- Story videoWritten and narrated. One possible future in a few minutes
- Three-month discoveryTeam of six, 200+ people, shop floor to C-suite
- Board-level visionFuture services, applications and technologies
The video did its job. It secured the wider discovery.
Three months on site
The discovery was about the operating model: how work actually moves through a steelworks, and where software and data could help the people doing it. That meant as many conversations with steelworkers on the shop floor as with the board. We came out with a future-state vision of services, applications and technologies, presented at board level.
200+