To be a pilot of a company vision, you must first believe in it! Commitment represents the level of involvement of an employee to achieve an objective. The American Gallup Institute reports on the figures of commitment among employees: 6% in France, 9% in the UK and in Spain. In the best-case scenarios, such as in the United States or Romania, 33% of employees say they are committed. While engagement represents the level of involvement of an employee in achieving an objective, these figures underline the importance of collective involvement: members of top management among themselves, and ownership of objectives at all levels. How can we define a vision, understand an organization, and achieve objectives collectively?
To nurture our thoughts, this article features contributions from Carole Peraste-Vernes, consultant and head of Strategic's training division.
What is the purpose of a corporate seminar?
To refine a strategic vision, to align top management, to define objectives... The seminar responds to the needs of a company on a specific topic. This context must determine the work to be undertaken to achieve an improvement, the paths that will allow movement in the desired direction. This approach can include a seminar, but also other formats such as in-house workshops, in order to provoke a moment of rupture, questioning, and new paths.
"The seminar is too often limited to a format: a large gathering, a workshop, a team building day... But this moment should be thought of as a means to an end. Why choose the seminar format and not something else?”, shares Carole.
Bringing about change.
Organizations are constantly evolving, with employees arriving and leaving, the appearance of new market constraints and a lot of unpredictability. Even if your company's course remains the same, your competitive environment, your teams, and all the stakeholders around you, force you to constantly renew your approaches.
"The objective of a seminar should not be limited to a deliverable (such as an action plan) but rather be a trigger for the participants: to set in motion an order of action, an awareness, a desire to do things differently, along with the first steps to get there," explains Carole.
Overcoming individual and collective reluctance.
The sincerity of the seminar process can be questioned by one or more members of the group participating in it. When a seminar is unprepared or poorly explained, it will not succeed in transforming the announcements and promises into real change. And for the detractors, it is a great opportunity to consider this moment as wasted time or a recreational day.
"To encourage participants to join in, you have to get them on board even before the seminar, share the objective and explain the role they have to play in the process. To ensure that the benefits of the seminar do not fade over time, you must ensure that responsibilities are assigned to the actions deemed to be priorities and that they are followed up - this is called 'quick wins'," explains Carole.
Transformation comes from the inside.
Application of tools, methods, solutions... An effective seminar is not there to impose an external framework on your teams. Individuals have to move forward to build their own dynamics, to find the synergies they need themselves. A seminar is also an opportunity to question the levels of trust, commitment, and alignment of an executive leadership team, a team (among members) and the company.
"The seminar is a tool for collective emulation, a call for contribution and also for internal communication. It must be coherent for an organization to use this tool in their general operating system" explains Carole.
As you can see, if cohesion is always necessary during a corporate seminar, it must be consistent with a strategic approach, and not the other way around. It is a key moment of reflection and methodical co-construction. Adjust your positioning, deploy your vision, but also your company's capacity to adapt to new scenarios. A seminar is an invitation to take a step back from your work to allow you to move forward differently. This leads the group to (re)discover its place in order to carry out a corporate strategy that makes sense for everyone: an engaging project.
The people of your organization at all levels have the power to achieve its ambitions. If the corporate culture is a driving force, it must be fed and maintained so that it benefits the top management, the teams and the structure. Strategic's consultants address the challenges of today's entrepreneurs and employees, in order to build a sustainable society for all.
