Organisational Development at Sky Media

200 Sky Media employees got seriously creative in the music studio making use of APOD’s pioneering team development process to increase morale and empower their sales team.

The entire Sky Media team took part in the APOD Music process with follow on Team Coaching and a Sky Media Music Chart.

This involved groups of 6 to 8 people from across functions and levels attending a Studio Day – a day in a music studio – where they focused on writing and recording an original track and becoming a band. During the day, participants were encouraged to reflect on the team process and their personal experiences and to consider how these experiences could shed fresh light on their working lives.

Two facilitator-led follow-up team coaching sessions focused people’s attention on individual effectiveness, team processes, sales and marketing and on working together to achieve success in a Sky Media competition to get to the top of the chart.

All participants also had their own personal action plan (committed to during the team coaching) with actions ranging across a huge spectrum from changing the style of team meetings to ‘getting more time 1:1 with my boss for some thoughtful direction setting’

Evaluation at every stage of the process showed it to be a huge success. Not surprisingly the studio days had the wow factor, however all recognised the value of the follow-up team coaching and 100% of participants said they would recommend the development programme to others. Overall the development programme met all of the agreed objectives and in addition the injection of energy and fun with the day in the studio and coaching to engender a sense of personal responsibility and ‘can do’ increased Sky Media’s resilience during a testing few months as the UK economy took a downturn.

See more on this work in full Training Journey case study.

Collection of participant quotes at the end of the programme (studio and team coaching sessions)

“The group talked about any problems, fears and concerns we had. Exploring everyone’s ideas means we really bonded”

“I found commenting on each other so positive – everyone has a smile on their face because they feel appreciated as individuals”

“This was a brilliant team building session and one of the best ideas that Sky have come up with”

“I’ve been looking at things differently in terms of getting the best out of people and being more creative about how I approach it”

“The group didn’t get direction, they got acceptance”

“Being in a group where we were all similarly out of our comfort zone and then seeing us move through it with encouragement and support from the group has reminded me to think even more about peoples individual situations at work and what they are facing. We are not all the same and I need to understand the position of others”

“I saw the talent being drawn out of people in the studio, my intention is to give others the right encouragement and support so that they can achieve”

“I think that for me I know what I could achieve if I put my mind to it, but doing a programme like this has given me the confidence to make some changes in my life, that I perhaps may not have done before”

“I have always been quite an optimistic soul when it comes to achievement, but I was still amazed that individuals who had different tastes and musical ability were able to create a good song in just a day”