When it’s time to plan for the future, most companies don’t turn to a clairvoyant with a crystal ball. Sure, you can anticipate the future, but it’s up to every company to decide the direction it wants to take. Strategy is how you get there.
The new Nokian Renkaat internal strategy work was about to be released. The whole brand and company organization model had been shaken up. The next challenge was to find a way to get people to buy into it. The Global Leadership Event brought over 120 people together at Helsinki’s Kaapelitehdas to talk about shared goals for the coming year and the results of the strategy work.
”The goal was to get supervisors to embrace the new strategy, brand and organizational model. We also wanted this to be a prelude to the upcoming changes to our work culture. Today, work is no longer tied to a desk or an office. People can work whenever, however and from wherever they want,” says Nokian Renkaat VP, Marketing and Communications, Antti-Jussi Tähtinen.
Flexibility was also a big part of planning and designing the event. We wanted to give guests an experience to remember instead of just sore butt muscles after a day spent standing and sitting. ”We asked: What kind of experience would this brand be? The whole design process was based on this idea and we wanted to give participants the chance to really experience the strategy and change hands-on,” says Tapaus Account Director, Caroline Korhonen.
You can look and you have to touch
Kaapelitehdas’ industrial atmosphere gave the event some rough edges to work with. The space was transformed into an experience where the new strategy, brand, values and work culture were brought to life.
”Sure, we could have held the event in a typical hotel seminar space. But those fancy white tablecloths aren’t really our thing,” Antti-Jussi says.
Designed to reflect the changes happening in the company itself, the seminar space was designed to move and flow, and the layout was changed many times over the course of the day. Instead of standing around bar tables and between dividers, guests spent the day socializing and sipping coffee together and sitting on gym balls.
