Format: Zoom Call with 3 top leaders of Learning
The problem presented to me by the Chief Learning Officer was that workers needed a place to upskill within Best Buy, but the enterprise learning team needed to make a case to the CEO that serious funding was needed to create what my client initially called a “Learning Factory”. After I facilitated their conversation over 3 hours, they found new shared language away from a factory floor analogy which we all agreed could be seen as condescending to workers, toward a bolder vision for an internal Best Buy University (an idea they knew the CEO had been dreaming of already). I re-created several slides from the pitch deck that the CLO then brought to the CEO the following week where approval for funding was indeed granted.
Slide Deck Before:
Slide Deck After:
By Re-imagining the triangle symbol in the first slide as a pyramid with four sides, visualized from above, each of the four quadrants could also be seen as 3-dimensional. Additionally, this design allowed the walls to unfold and represent different facets of learning. From the side, the pyramids could be seen in a landscape surrounded by a “yellow-brick road” re-imagined within the Best Buy brand as a “yellow-tag road”. The client liked this since they wanted to avoid making each employee think they needed to climb a ladder to succeed.
Digitally Facilitated Conversation
This image to the right is the original graphic I illustrated in Procreate over Zoom. I borrowed from master illustrator, William Wallace Denslow, who made the drawings for Wizard of Oz when it was first released as a book. The client had been excited by the metaphor, so I ran with it as a way to improvise together during the call. You see how our conversation moved into a more creative journey from the original concept of a factory floor. (Note the Lion wondering how to convey a road, lattice, pyramid, and target all at the same time…) Click on the image to see it in full.