Challenge
Can storytelling help rethink KPMG’s purpose amidst a brand and culture refresh?
In 2021, KPMG Global was at odds with their purpose statement. It was pithy, but difficult for employees to relate to. KPMGers weren’t easily able to explain the impact the business can have on clients, or how their own work inspired themselves and their colleagues. What kind of tools could KPMG develop so its teams would be able to describe the meaningful impact of what they do every day? And could those tools also deepen relationships between KMPGers and with their outside clients? In a recent diversity training, KPMG saw huge success when participants attended and were unafraid to be vulnerable. That bravery was something to tap into and, we hoped, share far and wide.
Solution
A masterclass that leaves KPMG’s global group leadership feeling empowered and engaged
We’ve spoken to some bright thinkers out there, and a surprising truth is that many are secretly anxious about their storytelling abilities. We’re believers that this skill can be learned by anyone. We held several discovery calls with the corporate affairs pros at KPMG to ask the juicy questions: why were we doing this? What were competitors up to, and what would the end goal be — or, more specifically, the key takeaways of a storytelling training session? At the end of this discovery phase, we devised the curriculum for a masterclass tailored to KMPG’s goals and the needs of its global ambassadors. Trainees would learn about the three elements of a compelling and authentic story, how to “keep the best and leave out the rest,” and finally, why getting better at storytelling would make them better at their jobs … and more fulfilled too.
Result
A strategic toolkit
This masterclass was a balancing act between internal and external storytelling, so to make it worthwhile to participants, we needed to craft the workshop materials strategically.
A highly interactive, practical, and fun three-hour storytelling workshop for up to 10 participants. Our trainer drafted around 20 story prompt options, out of which participants would choose one each. By the end of the session, every participant was encouraged to share a short but authentic, engaging and strategically purposeful story about the impact of their work. With consent and an intention to empower them, KPMG filmed each participant for the duration of the workshop to document their early efforts and celebrate their final mastery.
Pre-recorded storytelling training sessions. From our experience, a professional workshop calls for some dynamic pre-work. With the help of our video team, we consulted with the KPMG learning and development team to advise on the best video clips from the workshop to include in the session for KPMG’s broader global workforce. We pre-recorded an additional entertaining and practical training session based on the filmed “end stories,” using them as relatable examples of the session’s focus on demonstrating and teaching participants “How to tell an authentic story about the impact of your work.” We then integrated the selected and edited “end stories” into our pre-recorded training session to provide KPMG with a final 30-45-minute module that they could use as part of their Storytelling Masterclass. The session ended with options for those who want to learn more and a clear call-to-action as motivation for participants to apply their new storytelling knowledge at work in a small and achievable way the next day. This pre-recorded session was made available to all KPMG employees.
Follow-up. A training is only effective if the trainees practice their new skills! We provided KPMG coordinators with three months’ worth of weekly follow-up storytelling prompts and tips for them to share with all employees who took the Storytelling Masterclass. The aim was to keep their learning alive and continue to build storytelling into a natural driver of their communication. As part of the follow up, we assembled a toolkit that packaged up the workshop for the global groups to mobilize with their own teams as they saw fit with guidelines from KPMG comms team – a “train the trainer” model, if you will, in the form of a written version of the workshop following the structure of the masterclass.
You took the time to make the learning deeply relevant to our employees’ day-to-day functions. After the session, a few participants revealed that they’d been skeptical, but that it was one of the best training sessions we’d ever put on.
Alice Morrow
Corporate Affairs, KPMG Global
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