Who’s BMC
BMC is a global leader in software solutions that help IT transform traditional businesses into digital enterprises for the ultimate competitive advantage. BMC Digital Enterprise Management set of IT solutions is designed to make digital business fast, seamless, and optimized. From mainframe to mobile to cloud and beyond, we pair high-speed digital innovation with robust IT industrialization—allowing our customers to provide intuitive user experiences with optimized performance, cost, compliance, and productivity. BMC solutions serves more than 10,000 customers worldwide including 82 percent of the Fortune 500.
The Lego® Serious Play® workshop
Raffaella Centonza, HR Mgr Italy, Greece, Turkey, Iberia & Middle East of BMC Software, located in Milan, decided to carry out a training project, focused on knowledge sharing, communication and experiential learning with the objective of renewing team spirit and improving communication in a company where:
- There are 11 Italian people managers, where only 4 have direct reports in Italy while the majority of the population reports to different managers abroad, who have employees in Italy and in other countries.
- This fragmented organization, while representing a real multination company, can imply a potential loss of a local company culture, where people often focus on the goals of their BU on a global basis and forget that they are also part of a local team!
The training was organized and supplied by ETAss. Part of the training was done as an outdoor team building with the objective of reminding that all BMC people share the same ultimate goal and even if someone sometimes feel distant in their roles, each division is part of a single mechanism, each person, working with others, contributes to the growth and success of company as a whole.
Within this process, Raffaella Centonza wanted to focus also on internal communication, another key issue in BMC Software as in any other company: making communication more effective helps decrease conflicts and enhance wellness.
The Lego® Serious Play® workshop was done with a group of people in BMC Software Milan, under the umbrella of “Unconventional Training Lab” of ETAss. The participants came from different departments: sales, IT, customer support and R&D. The participants from R&D were originally an Italian startup bought by BMC and integrated into the company structure.
The workshop was a real time strategy for team focused on internal communications. Rather than talking about what the facilitator did, we preferred to let the participants talk after the workshop. In this short video, two employees of the R&D dept. gave their feedback on the workshop. The video is in Italian with English subtitles.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z1wZYz47KU]
Video courtesy of ETAss [directed and edited by Luis Alvarez]
Conclusion
Notwithstanding the favorable feedback, it would not be truthful to state that the workshop solved the communications issues that of course continue to exist, and to a certain extent will always exist in any company. BMC Software is a complex company and for sure a more extensive series of workshops to improve internal communication also on an ongoing basis would be more effective. It is true however that, after the workshop (which did help the participants at least understand the difficulties of their colleagues in different roles, creating a more empathic attitude towards others), the methodology started to be considered as a viable and effective tool for obtaining tangible results in a short time frame. BMC is currently organizing another session with one of the local teams and for facilitators this is a great result: making Lego® Serious play® an effective resource for a multinational like BMC.
