Designing a common history to win the challenge of the future 

 I work as a management consultant and my job is , most of the times , to help client companies   review their current strategy and organization and decide how to change and adapt both , in order   to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving environment . I was recently engaged by a large   multinational enterprise that works in the area of consumer goods with the following request : the   management team of the Italian subsidiary ( around 25 people ) has been recently profoundly   changed with young new mangers joining the firm in several key roles . This change has created a   tension in the team between the new - comers , strong of their professional skills and updated   knowledge , and the “ old guard ” , composed by seasoned managers with lot of experience and   power in the organization . This split is not helping the company in moving ahead with the speed   and efficacy it needs . Moreover , now it is time to develop a new strategic plan and it is mandatory   for all the managers composing the team to offer their contribution while avoiding interpersonal   conflict or power fights . A hard confrontation is expected but should be limited to the different   views about the future of the company and should find a synthesis in a strategy shared and   supported by the whole team . How can we create the conditions for all this to happen in a one   and a half day of residential workshop ?     I was working on this project together with a colleague of mine . She is a psychologist and her   knowledge was very helpful in finding the right solution to this problem . Our business partner was   the HR manager of the Company , a quite conservative professional who was afraid of the conflict   that might have sparkled during the meeting and of the evaluation of his ( and our ) work that the   CEO would have made at the end of it . He suggested to start the meeting by leaving the ground to   the CEO in order for him to set the goals for the strategy design effort and warn his people about   the need to overcome conflicts and work together as a team . The HR manager also suggested that   this way of proceeding was consistent with the traditional hierarchical culture of the company . We   thought about this proposal but then we said that the traditional culture was exactly what the   Company , and its CEO wanted to change and that to start a meeting in a passive way , with the top   guy preaching the change was not an effective way of overcoming resistance to change .    We did n’t know about “ design thinking ” at the time , but now I know that what we suggested as an   alternative solution was a mix of “ story telling ” and “ visualization ” .   Following   what André Martin from Mars has shared with us during the Design Thinking course , we   needed a “ storytelling [ that ] is the difference between solving a problem and creating a   cause ” and which could have an emotional impact on the people involved in the workshop , also   uniting them in a common set of values and in a shared history . We also thought that we needed   to stimulate the “ right side ” of the brain of the people involved , in order to stimulate their   creativity in view of the strategy formulation exercise that was at the core of the meeting . We   wanted to touch their imagination together with their hearts . Visualization , considered as   “ anything that takes us beyond just using words or language alone ” , appeared immediately as a   good approach to follow together with storytelling or as a way of telling a compelling story in and   by itself .      Following our ( involuntary at the time ) “ design thinking ” , this is the solution that we proposed and   that was accepted with some enthusiasm also by the HR manager of the Company and by his boss .   We divided the past 30 years of the life of the company in strips of 5 years each . We assigned each   segment of history to a small group of managers who were present at the time . A month before   the date scheduled for the meeting , we asked each group to prepare a presentation by following   these guidelines : 

 • You will be in charge of presenting this period in the life of our Company to the rest of the 

 team . Your presentation should be organized and delivered in a way that it should touch   the brain and the heart of your colleagues . We want the team to be able to recognize the   values that have inspired us over the course of our life , the challenges that we have   overcome , the crises that we have faced and the successes that we have enjoyed .   Following your presentation each of us should know   more about our Company and should   feel a greater level of commitment toward the common cause that unites us . 

 • Please support your presentation with any artifact of the time that you think could inspire 

 thoughts and emotions in the people listening to you . They can be pictures , letters ,   products that we used to sell , t - shirts and other form of merchandising used at the time .   Anything that should bring us all into that period by visually reliving it . 

 We were n’t expecting the quality and creativity of the presentations that we enjoyed at the   beginning of the first day of the workshop . I remember in particular a group that was in charge of   presenting a period when the Company had diversified in disparate industries ( and loosing then   money because they had no core competencies in most of the new businesses they entered ) . The   team extracted from a mysterious box , like magicians , racquets and tennis balls ( the company had   acquired a firm in the sport business sector ) , bottles of wine , shoes , etc . The efficacy of the story   telling united with the objects and pictures that were visually supporting it was so high that , in the   end , the whole team knew that to venture into areas where you do not have any competence   base to sustain a competitive advantage was something to absolutely avoid in the new strategy   development exercise . The team was also able to recognize in the words and images provided by   the different groups , that there were common values maintained throughout the history of the   company . Trust and consideration for the people working for the company were core among   those values and stable across different periods of time . Among laughs and some tear moved by   forgotten memories , the experience that we designed reached also the goal of uniting the team ,   beyond all the differences in age and experience , and preparing it for working together on the   new strategy of the Company .      By combining story telling with visualization we all gained insights about the history of the   company , its culture , the evolution of its strategy over time , its core competencies , the attitude   and values of its people etc . I do not think that any other way of sharing information and emotions   would have worked equally well , or at least not in such a limited time frame . Consequently , we   have used this approach also in other projects , always finding it very effective and engaging . 


EMAIL: 
ID_NUM: 
NAME_STUDENT: 
PHONE_NUM: 
STREET_ADDRESS: 
URL_PERSONAL: 
USERNAME: 

### Task: You are a PII (Personal Identity Information) Detection. Given a essays written by students, you have to identify ONLY the following:
NAME_STUDENT - The full or partial name of a student that is not necessarily the author of the essay. This excludes instructors, authors, and other person names.
EMAIL - A student’s email address.
USERNAME - A student's username on any platform.
ID_NUM - A number or sequence of characters that could be used to identify a student, such as a student ID or a social security number.
PHONE_NUM - A phone number associated with a student.
URL_PERSONAL - A URL that might be used to identify a student.
STREET_ADDRESS - A full or partial street address that is associated with the student, such as their home address.
### Input: Designing a common history to win the challenge of the future 

 I work as a management consultant and my job is , most of the times , to help client companies   review their current strategy and organization and decide how to change and adapt both , in order   to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving environment . I was recently engaged by a large   multinational enterprise that works in the area of consumer goods with the following request : the   management team of the Italian subsidiary ( around 25 people ) has been recently profoundly   changed with young new mangers joining the firm in several key roles . This change has created a   tension in the team between the new - comers , strong of their professional skills and updated   knowledge , and the “ old guard ” , composed by seasoned managers with lot of experience and   power in the organization . This split is not helping the company in moving ahead with the speed   and efficacy it needs . Moreover , now it is time to develop a new strategic plan and it is mandatory   for all the managers composing the team to offer their contribution while avoiding interpersonal   conflict or power fights . A hard confrontation is expected but should be limited to the different   views about the future of the company and should find a synthesis in a strategy shared and   supported by the whole team . How can we create the conditions for all this to happen in a one   and a half day of residential workshop ?     I was working on this project together with a colleague of mine . She is a psychologist and her   knowledge was very helpful in finding the right solution to this problem . Our business partner was   the HR manager of the Company , a quite conservative professional who was afraid of the conflict   that might have sparkled during the meeting and of the evaluation of his ( and our ) work that the   CEO would have made at the end of it . He suggested to start the meeting by leaving the ground to   the CEO in order for him to set the goals for the strategy design effort and warn his people about   the need to overcome conflicts and work together as a team . The HR manager also suggested that   this way of proceeding was consistent with the traditional hierarchical culture of the company . We   thought about this proposal but then we said that the traditional culture was exactly what the   Company , and its CEO wanted to change and that to start a meeting in a passive way , with the top   guy preaching the change was not an effective way of overcoming resistance to change .    We did n’t know about “ design thinking ” at the time , but now I know that what we suggested as an   alternative solution was a mix of “ story telling ” and “ visualization ” .   Following   what André Martin from Mars has shared with us during the Design Thinking course , we   needed a “ storytelling [ that ] is the difference between solving a problem and creating a   cause ” and which could have an emotional impact on the people involved in the workshop , also   uniting them in a common set of values and in a shared history . We also thought that we needed   to stimulate the “ right side ” of the brain of the people involved , in order to stimulate their   creativity in view of the strategy formulation exercise that was at the core of the meeting . We   wanted to touch their imagination together with their hearts . Visualization , considered as   “ anything that takes us beyond just using words or language alone ” , appeared immediately as a   good approach to follow together with storytelling or as a way of telling a compelling story in and   by itself .      Following our ( involuntary at the time ) “ design thinking ” , this is the solution that we proposed and   that was accepted with some enthusiasm also by the HR manager of the Company and by his boss .   We divided the past 30 years of the life of the company in strips of 5 years each . We assigned each   segment of history to a small group of managers who were present at the time . A month before   the date scheduled for the meeting , we asked each group to prepare a presentation by following   these guidelines : 

 • You will be in charge of presenting this period in the life of our Company to the rest of the 

 team . Your presentation should be organized and delivered in a way that it should touch   the brain and the heart of your colleagues . We want the team to be able to recognize the   values that have inspired us over the course of our life , the challenges that we have   overcome , the crises that we have faced and the successes that we have enjoyed .   Following your presentation each of us should know   more about our Company and should   feel a greater level of commitment toward the common cause that unites us . 

 • Please support your presentation with any artifact of the time that you think could inspire 

 thoughts and emotions in the people listening to you . They can be pictures , letters ,   products that we used to sell , t - shirts and other form of merchandising used at the time .   Anything that should bring us all into that period by visually reliving it . 

 We were n’t expecting the quality and creativity of the presentations that we enjoyed at the   beginning of the first day of the workshop . I remember in particular a group that was in charge of   presenting a period when the Company had diversified in disparate industries ( and loosing then   money because they had no core competencies in most of the new businesses they entered ) . The   team extracted from a mysterious box , like magicians , racquets and tennis balls ( the company had   acquired a firm in the sport business sector ) , bottles of wine , shoes , etc . The efficacy of the story   telling united with the objects and pictures that were visually supporting it was so high that , in the   end , the whole team knew that to venture into areas where you do not have any competence   base to sustain a competitive advantage was something to absolutely avoid in the new strategy   development exercise . The team was also able to recognize in the words and images provided by   the different groups , that there were common values maintained throughout the history of the   company . Trust and consideration for the people working for the company were core among   those values and stable across different periods of time . Among laughs and some tear moved by   forgotten memories , the experience that we designed reached also the goal of uniting the team ,   beyond all the differences in age and experience , and preparing it for working together on the   new strategy of the Company .      By combining story telling with visualization we all gained insights about the history of the   company , its culture , the evolution of its strategy over time , its core competencies , the attitude   and values of its people etc . I do not think that any other way of sharing information and emotions   would have worked equally well , or at least not in such a limited time frame . Consequently , we   have used this approach also in other projects , always finding it very effective and engaging .
### Output: 