CONTEXT
After a difficult FDA outcome, the team still believed in their mission, but the sense of shared momentum had started to fade. There was a purpose, but also fatigue & there was pride but also doubt.
What they needed wasn’t a message, but something that could create motivation, rebuild momentum, and restore meaning across geographies, functions, and teams. We began with a story that could hold all of it.
APPROACH
NARRATIVE FRAMEWORK
The framework was built to change how people across the organisation think about the journey ahead, and what they do about it. In this engagement it worked in two ways:
1
As a story, it gave all 2,500 colleagues one picture of where I&I had been and where it was going. Because it follows an emotional curve, it spoke to how people felt about the change as well as what they were told.
2
As a tool, it turned that picture into everyday conversation. Leaders and their teams used it to talk through what each chapter meant for their own work and to agree what they would do differently. Behaviour changed through those conversations, which is why it kept being used after the launch rather than ending with the event.
ACTIVITIES
1. Co-creating the story.
Once the Executive Team had aligned on the framework, we tested it with a wider group of colleagues who hadn't been involved in shaping it, through a series of co-creation and iterative focus groups.
2. Building the visual identity
The same notion, energy building momentum, ran through the event's visuals: a backdrop built around emotion and pace, kept simple enough that the story stayed the focus rather than competing with it, with the idea that the whole organisation needed to move at the same speed, together.
4. The leaders' toolkit
The materials included exercises to help each leader find their own connection to the story, along with guidance on introducing it to their teams in their own words, with their own examples, rather than reading from a script. That way the narrative could travel through the organisation instead of staying with the people who wrote it.
launch EVENT
IMPACT
1
2,000 I&I colleagues connected live across 15 global locations, many meeting the new senior leadership team, and each other, for the first time.
2
Nearly 40% of attendees rated the experience a perfect 10/10, with an average score of 8.4 out of 10 across all 2,000 attendees.
3
Senior leaders now use the narrative routinely to shape team communications.
4
Over 120 people from across the unit enrolled in a habit-tracking platform tied to the narrative during the event itself, reporting an average 52% improvement in narrative-linked behaviours within 30 days.
5
Within six months of launch, I&I acquired a new dermatology business — a sign of the confidence the turnaround had restored.