The Millau Film Festival – A Movie Event for BT Global Partners

BT Global Partners required a kick-off event in the aftermath of a comprehensive organisational change for the 120 strong team, to galvanise and re focus the team for the business journey ahead. There was a need to celebrate the success of the previous period, but also to prepare the whole team for change. The event was introducing a step change in attitude that would enable the team to think and act differently in a global market and adapt quickly without being diverted by uncertainty.
The title of the piece comes from the internal change programme which had used the iconic Millau Bridge in France as a metaphor for innovative and successful change.

  • BT required a conference which was dynamic, interactive, motivating and ‘fun’
  • Purple Monster was charged with ensuring that this was a learning event, concentrating in particular on the key skills of partnering, collaboration, negotiation and leadership.
  •  The mostly sales-based team needed convincing that the day was worthwhile, since it was taking valuable time out of their diary just when they are facing challenging financial targets in an ultra competitive environment. They had to see it was of direct benefit to them and the business.
  • To develop concepts, models, interventions, and tools for supporting the leadership back in the workplace

THE SET UP - CONTEXT 
Based on the seminal work by Joseph Campbell, we introduced the concept of the Hero’s Journey as a means to consider their personal challenges and their collective future journey and then used the medium of film to explore how we react to and manage change. The venue for the event was a London Cinema. The leader of the business set the tone for the event by sharing his own personal leadership journey at the outset, which he shared powerfully using the Hero’s Journey timeline – a business tool developed from Campbell’s work.
 
 THE EXPERIENCE
Next, we placed the group in teams and used a combination of professional actors, facilitators and the delegates themselves to recreate a film festival during which, using a very carefully managed the process each team had to create their own film synopsis, put together a production team and then negotiate finance and distribution for their film. The level of participation was excellent and not just the surface fun of team working, but more significantly, everyone letting go of themselves to genuinely enter a new world outside their comfort zone and be able as a result to practice skills such as negotiation and collaboration in a new way. The level of creativity can be seen from the winning synopsis, written below.
 
REFLECTION
Time was given both individually and in groups to reflect on the activity, before a plenary debrief. During the feedback session, which was co-facilitated by the business leader and purple monster, the team members had many observations and insights to share, in particular about their skills and behaviours. This session was then used to challenge everyone to take their learning directly back into the business.

One month later, delegates were spoken to individually and asked for feedback. Here are just a few typical verbatim quotes.

Q:     How might you use this learning in your personal and work life?
“When taking this to clients and recognise that they have multiple agenda and we need to spot that and understand what their aims are.”
 
Q:    What's the main insight you've taken away from the event?
  “Meeting lots of people I’ve not met before, it’s really worth thinking differently, stepping outside my comfort zone gave me a different way of approaching how I can get things done.”

Q:    What did you think of the Purple Monster Training Company? 
“Very warm and funny – liked the way they improvised and their informal tone. They could also still be very sensitive and serious when needed. Excellent.”

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