Page 211 - Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company

192 The Disney Way

teams and to increase the participation of the workforce at all levels amounted
to radical and far-reaching change for the traditionally structured utility. Top
management recognized that such an organizational metamorphosis would
require a thorough re-education program. Employees would have to reassess
their views of the company as a whole as well as their individual roles within
it. But determining how an implementation should be constructed was no
easy task.
Storyboarding uncovered potential barriers to the transition, which
could then be addressed in the plan. Among the items dealt with in the
session were management and employee resistance, closed lines of com-
munication, rigid and hierarchical bureaucracy, and outdated facilities. This
particular storyboard ended up serving as the foundation for Illinois Power’s
implementation plan for the new team culture.

Getting Started with Storyboarding

Supplies
■ A meeting room with plenty of blank wall space
■ An unbiased facilitator
■ Pin boards and pins or drafting tape
■ At least ten 4 × 6 index cards for every participant
■ Water-soluble felt-tip markers in blue, black, and red
■ Several different colored press-on three-quarter-inch dots

Procedure

■ Facilitator asks leading questions, and group agrees on “topic card.”
(See Figure 10-1.)
■ Participants record their thoughts regarding the topic on index cards.
■ A facilitator gathers the “detail” cards, discusses each card with group,
and clusters them by topic.
■ Once three to four detail cards are in a cluster, group determines “header
card” that describes the cluster. Header card is then printed in red.
■ Once all cards are discussed and headers created, facilitator determines
the number of “priority dots” to be given to each participant. Priority
dots identify most significant headers and most significant detail cards.
■ Storyboard is either left on the wall for group reference or typed and
distributed to all members.