Empowerment Case Study

 Client:

A large pharmaceutical company R&D leadership offsite. Due to a Confidentiality agreement with this client we are unable to divulge the name of the company..

Date: May 2019

Location: Philadelphia

FTM offering used: “Rock The House”

Theme: “Empowerment”

The scope of the summit was very focused: “Empowerment”.  Our mission was to provide a program that would capture the new direction of the internal communication of the company. After several calls with the client we decided that our “Rock the House” offering would best accommodate this goal. Our prep work included: Conducting a needs assessment call with key organizers and leaders to assure alignment with the event objectives, and to confirm the logistics with the AV staff and the FTM band members.

We also wrote a song for the leadership team to sing—to model empowerment—that included a sing along section for the audience.

There were roughly 300 participants consisting of scientists, doctors and some administrators in the business of pharmaceutical trials. There was an interesting mix of UK participants and American participants. 

Program start: 

Went smooth - we kept it upbeat and positive (which the client requested).

Just before the song-writing session, the leaders of the summit sang the song we wrote about empowerment, which was a great model of being willing to take a risk for the folks in the audience. We wrote the custom song so it was easily sing-able and our backup band make them sound great; well, the leaders weren’t exactly professional singers, but they delivered it with energy and enthusiasm, and the feeling was definitely there! THe energy level went way up, and it gave the rest of the participants direction and permission to dive in.

Songwriting:

The theme “Empowerment” was broken into 8 sub themes: e.g. Communication, decision making, risk, etc………..

300 people were broken down into 8 teams, one for each of the sub themes and each went to a break out room; each break out room had one sub theme to work with. The goal was to choose one song that best represented each theme. Once inside the breakout room, (the door was locked tight and lights were dimmed. Just kidding!), the team was then split into 4 groups.   Each group wrote a song about the room’s assigned theme.   Then each group performed their song for the rest of the room. After the performances, a vote was held to determine which group had the best song to represent their theme, and be performed from the main stage in the general session.

Showtime!:

Performances were smashing! Each sub theme was represented in a fun and musical way by the group that wrote it. Eight songs in all. All 4 groups that worked on each theme got up on the stage and sang and danced. The audience response was more than enthusiastic.  We wrapped up the evening with a sing-along of “Let the Good Times Roll”

Client Feed back: “Gave the meeting a very upbeat feel”.  “Great event, Great team.  The process was an embodiment of our empowerment theme for us all to take back to the job.”  “The Event was not only great fun but it also help recap and embed the message from the meeting.”