Drama-based Team Development


Culturally Clueless


Big Bucks Unlimited has been a successful manufacturing company for over 50 years – until now. Sales figures are in freefall, staff turnover is climbing and the shareholders are getting very fidgety. The board cannot understand it – they have an excellent product, quality processes and a state of the art manufacturing plant – what could possibly be going wrong?

The Chairman remembers reading an article about employee culture and motivation and the effect they can have on productivity. At the time he dismissed it – after all, why wouldn’t the staff be motivated working for such a successful company – but now in desperation he has decided to bring in a team of consultants to analyze the culture of the organization.

So that’s your task … to analyze the culture of Big Bucks Unlimited and to decide

"Who killed the motivation?"

Corporately Clueless is part training session and part game. The teams are introduced to the Cultural Web - a tool to identify and /or design the culture of an organisation. The Cultural firstly identifies the areas that contribute to creating a culture, such as organisation structure, processes, stories / myths and traditions. It then details how to pull all this information to form a cohesive picture.

Each team is provided with information about a business, including organisation structure, HR policies and the opportunity to contact various members of staff. However, not everyone will be available in person and you will also be limited on how many face-to-face interviews you can hold – so chose carefully.

At the end of the session you have to decide which person (or persons) are responsible for Big Bucks’ problems. Was it: Natalie Notional in Marketing, Edward Egghead in IT, Beryl Bulldog the Chairman’s PA or Dotty Daydream in Customer Service Or perhaps it was Ollie Oldtimer or Norman Niceguy at the manufacturing plant.

You have to decide whodunit and how …

An optional extra to Culturally Clueless is to then get delegates to use the Cultural Web to think about the kind of culture they would like to have in their organization in the future – and then take practical steps to get to that position.

Dramatic Deeds


Dramatic Deeds is our brand for forum theatre - a new and powerful development activity that uses drama to embed learning. It is an improvised play that addresses specific issues that are pertinent to the needs of the client.

Dramatic Deeds provides a safe environment to try out new ideas, tackle sensitive subjects and share knowledge. It allows participants the rare benefit of hindsight with the ability to rewind the action and try again. A debrief and review session ensures that participants can translate the experience into practical value and relate to their own organisation.

We will write a tailored sketch that reflects some of the issues or challenges facing the organisation and / or learning experiences you wish to impart. The situation will be humorous and focussed on a situation that all can relate to, so as not to feel threatened. The humour in the situation will come both from the characters themselves (some stereo-types etc) and a few funny lines. However, the key points of the exercise will still be clear with the humour serving to maintain interest and make the points more memorable.

The sketch will last approximately 15 minutes and the situation ends with a stalemate situation. The facilitator then asks the delegates to split into groups to discuss what went wrong, what the potential end result might be and how this would impact the company (and ultimately its employees) and how the situation could have been handled better

We will already have prepared some ideas for the replay sketch based on what you want the learning to be, but will reconvene at the end of these breakout sessions to check whether there are any other points that need to be included in the replay (during which time the delegates will have a coffee break)

We will then run the replay with the entire audience and facilitate a short debriefing session to pick out what they have learned from the experience and possibly how this links to the new organisational strategy / culture in relation to customers

Forum Theatre works particularly well when trying to change culture or attitudes. As it is completely tailored to each individual client, we can write the script to link into the key topics being discussed throughout the rest of the conference.

Recent examples of Dramatic Deeds sketches include:

  • Dodgy Furniture Store – challenging perceptions of customer care
  • Family Affairs – teamwork and communication in a working class family
  • Opportunity Knocks – diversity and equal opportunities for college leavers
  • Fit for Business – handling resistance to change in an estate agency
  • Avago Antiques – changing culture from traditional to modern

The Cheese Experience

One of the main reasons employees resist change is fear and anxiety – which translate into stress, resistance and underperformance. In this interactive session, we can provide a taster of our ‘Coping with Change’ workshop which can help your employees develop the skills and attitude to embrace change as an integral and welcome aspect of their life. Using simple techniques and participative games and activities we will touch on key issues, such as:

  • Understanding the change process
  • Examining attitudes, fears and overcoming barriers
  • Using ‘small changes’ to cope with change


The session will include a live recreation of the ‘Who Moved My Cheese’ parable, which identifies the different ways that people handle change (some thrive on it, some pretend it isn’t happening), the dangers of staying the same and the opportunities that change can bring.

There will also be the opportunity in smaller groups to examine some of their fears and discuss how they can be overcome. Time permitting, we could also incorporate a couple of games / activities to help people i) recognize the emotions people go through during change and ii) visualize a new future.