Solution

Define the journey

To understand the journey that these exceptional talents and future leaders would be embarking on, we first developed a custom workshop based on the principles of the Hero’s Journey. The Hero’s Journey is a universal story framework that many films, books, comics, etc. use to create a deeper and more emotional relationship between the viewer / reader and the characters within the story. You know a great story when you empathize with the characters or see yourself in their struggle or glory. This framework follows a 10-12 step approach.

Explore solutions

The Hero’s journey would allow us to better understand what support, tools and communication our talents would need at every stage of their journey throughout the Hub, until their placement within a new leadership position. In essence, the Hero’s journey tells the “Hub Story” from applicant nomination, to Hub membership, to placement with a clear and consistent messaging strategy across all mediums and channels.

To enhance the workshop, we blended the Hero’s Journey with a design sprint approach, allowing the current cross functional / departmental leaders, talent management leads, and our MCL creatives to ideate together on the journey and then involve potential talents (that might be invited to the Hub) to test out prototypes of the new tools and communications developed during the 11 steps. This allowed talent management to immediately understand what tools or communications were welcomed and appreciated and which were out of place or disliked.

This process ensures that applicants trust the messaging of the Hub as they are authentically reflected in it. It also allows talent management to tell the story of the Hub in a compelling way to the C-Suite, board, managers, talent brokers (talent coaches), and all other internal stakeholders. Storytelling is a critical component of ensuring that applicants see value from beginning to end in a coherent, digestible and actionable format.

Outtakes from our full-day Hero’s Journey workshop with Deutsche Telekom.

Create the experience

Once we knew the journey we focused on building the nomination website for the Hub and larger communications framework. We used our learnings from the workshop and talents feedback to develop personas (The “Un-Executive” to be, The Expert Hero, The Digital Gamechanger), which informed the copy / CTAs we developed along with the tone and voice. This copy was also used in posters, emails and other promotional materials. After we refined the copy for the site, we started on UX and design, keeping the learnings from the workshop in mind throughout the entire process. To bring the journey to life we worked with our in-house illustrators to develop custom illustrations to showcase the journey to potential applicants. We then worked with our partners at Appico on the site build and QA.

System that scales

Within the development of the communications framework we also developed an essential checklist for all future Talent Management communications:

• Diversity - a range of people should apply and therefore messaging should be crafted to reach a broad group - show we understand everyone's challenges.

• Leadership - break down the stereotype of who a leader is - reframe leadership, potentially as activism and/or passion for change. Frame the Hub as a must for mavericks.

• Program - showcase that this is just the beginning of a journey - this is not for people that want to already ‘arrive’ (weed out entitlement). Furthermore, showcase the ease of the program.

• Attributes - weave in key thoughts around the characteristics of Ability, Attitude and Ambition, as these are the core determinants of the survey for admission.

We also modified the contents, copy, and design of the site for the internal Deutsche Telekom Intranet site.