Department for Transport – Building Business Relationships
The Department for Transport is the United Kingdom government department responsible for the English transport network. DfT partnered with Impact Factory to help build business relationships for the Business Delivery Unit.
The Client
The Department for Transport is the United Kingdom government department responsible for the English transport network and a limited number of transport matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Department for Transport’s key aim is that ‘transport works for everyone, balancing the needs of the economy, the environment, and society’.
Here at Impact Factory, we consider that a pretty important goal.
The Challenge
Impact Factory was delighted when we were asked to design a Business Relationship Management programme for the Business Delivery Unit.
The Department for Transport wanted some work to be done around the challenges and pressures of their various roles and the environment in which they work.
The Solution
The day began with the setting up of a multimedia environment, adding some music and lots of soft footballs around the place and this turned what might have been a formal training space into something quite different.
Well, the environment is a big part of what happens in communication after all!
Anthony and Dannie knew straight off the bat that there was already some fantastic work being done at the Department for Transport and that the team already had a great momentum working together.
Impact Factory’s aim was to help this well-integrated team maintain its current momentum, going from excellent to terrific.
The openness, willingness, and supportiveness of the team, and in particular the positive, encouraging attitude of the team leader, Albert Kwake, definitely contributed heavily to the day’s success and it certainly went from strength to strength.
Building Business Relationships
A later part of the day was dedicated to Forum Theatre.
Forum Theatre
Two actors joined the Impact Factory trainers and played out some examples of the trickier situations the Department for Transport staff have to deal with.
This gave our delegates an opportunity to take an objective view of certain situations and offer up alternative responses which might create a more positive impact.
By the time we reached this Forum Theatre section, everyone was keen to explore the possibilities around some of these more testing areas of business relationships.
As well as having lots of fun, the group came up with plenty of fantastic options around how to move certain situations forward and break the less-than-helpful patterns.
Furniture moved, people moved, ideas moved in fact, almost everything moved.
And the day ended on a real high, with delegates buzzing around the room full of ideas and chatter, looking forward to getting back into the office to try some stuff out.
Now that is, most certainly, the ticket.
No pun intended.
Read – Better Business Relationships
