The brief

The John Lewis Sheffield store is due to relocate in the next few years. Senior staff need to feel prepared to lead the business through the future challenges and disruptions of the move.

A Chocolate Theme

The Wizards were asked to support a leadership conference for 80 John Lewis staff from the Sheffield store over two days, split with 40 attending each day. The business theme for the conference was “Leadership and Motivation”. As Waitrose, owned by the John Lewis Partnership, is now the biggest retailer of boutique chocolate in the UK, it was decided to use chocolate as a metaphoric theme throughout the day.

The Wizards were commissioned to design and facilitate a creative chocolate production challenge for the second half of the conference that would get staff thinking about the leadership challenges involved in the project and crucially how this would apply to the real work challenges during this next period

The Challenge

Participants worked in teams to research, design, manufacture and present a selection of the finest handmade chocolates that could be given as a gift to all partners as part of celebrations for the opening of the new John Lewis store in Sheffield. The chocolates selection was to be themed - to represent excellent leadership and motivation at John Lewis Sheffield.

Design of the chocolates and identifying metaphors

The advertising of chocolate often involves metaphor to sell to its target audience. In this challenge participants were asked to devise chocolate metaphors for workplace and life issues using the ingredients of the chocolate, the visual and textural qualities of the packaging, and the naming of the chocolates themselves.

Wizards worked closely with John Lewis staff in advance of the conference to ensure that the project was carefully designed to incorporate real workplace challenges facing the John Lewis staff. As an example, by intentionally moving people from one team to another, and changing leadership roles, the project would simulate the impact on individuals and teams when in the store. Facilitation discussions within the context of the project, allowed for tougher and more insightful conversations than would have been possible in the time limited situation of the workplace.

Reviews and Learning

Critical to experiential learning projects such as this is the opportunity to reflect on the project and to review learning. Participants recorded their reflections and observations as the project progressed. At the end of the project there was also a substantial learning review where everyone was given the opportunity to reflect on their leadership behaviours and motivation at different stages of the project, and to consider how their learning can be transferred back to work.

The review was focussed specifically on how learning could be transferred back to the workplace, and setting up future ways of working that would help to lead John Lewis staff through the next few challenging years.

Results

“The Wizards were very thorough and spent a long time with me to find out about how we operate as a business. They then spent a long time tailoring the project to ensure it met the development needs we had identified.

The event certainly had wow factor, there was real buzz around the room as people were involved in the project. The feedback was that the chocolate factory contributed to making it the best conference we had ever had. On average attendees gave the chocolate factory 9 out of 10.

In terms of longer term impact, there have been specific instances where managers have dealt with things differently following the event. People seem to be more willing, a spirit of ‘all hands to the plough’.”

Mark James
Recruitment and Development Manager
John Lewis Sheffield