Challenge
Three months to create a story arc that Legrand stakeholders can ‘live’ by
Coinciding with the earliest stages of electrification in the late 19th century, Legrand’s heritage runs deep. In 1984, Legrand finally entered the North American market. Their foundations in electrical services grew into market-share dominance, partly thanks to some big strategic acquisitions.
But with so many new employees onboarding every year, leadership wondered: how could we arm this next generation of employees and partners with a simple Legrand story to give them the context of the company’s roots, and use it with clients to succeed in their new roles?
The idea was born to launch this initiative at its next annual summit where 200 of Legrand’s leaders and influencers would convene for two days of sharing ideas and leadership tools, while establishing a unified vision of success for the company’s future.
We were given three objectives:
- Explain to employees, suppliers, and sales partners who Legrand is, what they do, and why they do it
- Instill how they are a winning company they want to be associated with, and inspire those who want to want to do business with them, come work for them, or continue working for them
- Share a framework built with interviews, examples, and success stories that embody what it means to be Legrand
We had three months to carry out our first task: to distill the essence of Legrand’s business story and deliver a powerful speech that would help Legrand’s CEO share the purpose of their work during— and long after — the summit.
Solution
A speech to sum up Legrand’s story and its five pillars of success
Before we could put the Legrand story up on its feet, we had to come to an understanding – widely shared within the business – of what that story actually is. So a brand story became the first step on the path.
Working directly with John Selldorff, CEO of Legrand North and Central America, our brand story strategist gleaned all the juicy bits of their history, strategy, go-to-market tactics, and corporate values to craft a single, simple story that captures the Legrand Way.
Now we were ready to share the story in real time. We built a story arc themed around their five pillars: strategy, markets, acquisitions, customers, and values.
From there, we wrote a speech for CEO John Selldorff to deliver at the summit. This story — a blend of personal anecdote, professional observation, and thought leadership — was supplemented with a visually engaging slide deck projected behind John onto a massive screen, as well as a package of materials for participants to take away as tools.
The rousing standing ovation after the CEO’s speech from all the participants in the room was all the kudos we needed.
One more cool thing...
Training the Legrand trainers with a five-part story activation workshop
Legrand’s leadership summit was such a huge success that the organizing committee was enthusiastic to keep the ball rolling with the learning.
With a powerful anchor story now part of their toolset, we continued to work with Legrand the following year to roll out a training-led story activation project.
Building on our train-the-trainer model, we designed a three-hour virtual workshop that was rolled out in five modules, accompanied by a tailored pre-learning video, onscreen interviews and stories, custom visuals, and other engaging materials in each on-demand class.
The series of workshops successfully gave Legrand’s own internal trainers the knowledge, skills, and tools to confidently deliver one-hour workshops themselves on the Legrand story to their colleagues and direct reports.
The result? A storytelling culture and system that makes it easy for an entire workforce to add their voices to the inspired chorus of Legrand storytellers.
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