Go Narrative re-creates the magic of in-person workshops using Microsoft Teams

A global pandemic can be a death knell for a consultancy whose client experience relies heavily on in-person workshops. How do you recreate the powerful alignment, the energy of brainstorming, whiteboarding, and breakout sessions when people cannot safely breathe the same air? For Go Narrative, the answer turned out to be a new way of working—one so powerful that it continues to inform the firm’s approach long after the lifting of lockdowns.

In response to the pandemic, Go Narrative successfully shifted its workshops to a virtual format, keeping its collaboration approach intact. This transition focused on preserving the essence of their diverse and inclusive workshops. The process starts with capturing each participant's unique insights. As the workshop moves from 1:1 interactions to small and larger group sessions, technology becomes vital in smoothly integrating ideas, preventing overlap, and setting priorities. This approach combines ideas across their client's departments and enables rich interactions among technical, business, and creative experts. Despite being physically apart, the workshops promote collaboration, enhance Go Narrative's client's company culture, and foster unity, showcasing technology's role in sustaining teamwork during challenging times.

The tool that enabled this transformation, it turns out, was already in hand. “We are primarily a Microsoft shop,” says Matthew Woodget, the company’s founder and CEO, “so Teams was already a vital component for our collaborating and co-authoring, as it easily allowed us to assign internal and external permissions for file access and project access. For example, a writer couldn't access the business-development materials or main contract but could see a reference folder with the project objectives and deliverables.”

When the time came to seek a virtual alternative to the live workshops, Woodget and his team considered their options. “I’m firm in my convictions, but I'm also open to new ideas and suggestions,” he says. “I also had to consider my clients’ preferred ways of working—I love presenting and facilitating workshops in person, and I feared we wouldn't be able to serve our clients as well as we had previously.”

In the end, only Microsoft Teams offered the required breadth of functionality, familiarity, security, and integration with the productivity tools that Go Narrative was already using. “The seamless integration with Microsoft Office,” he decided, “meant we could focus on helping our clients level up their storytelling game rather than wrangling a cobbled-together solution.”

Using features such as breakout rooms, custom waiting rooms, whiteboarding, co-authoring, transcription, and third-party integrations such as Teams + Mural for their brainstorming sessions, Go Narrative created rich virtual sessions. “The first one was the most challenging,” Woodget recalls. “At the time, Teams didn't have breakout rooms, so we had to do that all manually. But we got surprisingly close to the energy and input of a live workshop.”

According to Woodget, client feedback was overwhelmingly positive—so much so that virtual sessions remain standard operating procedure for Go Narrative. “I actually find myself offering virtual first when a prospective client is enquiring,” he explains. “One client in particular couldn't get their global team to one location. With Microsoft Teams, they were able to include people from multiple time zones while causing minimum disruption to their everyday responsibilities, not to mention their personal lives. If it involves more of their team, saves them T&E costs, and saves on the investment with Go Narrative, I'm all for it.”

“We have been able to maintain exceedingly high NSAT scores from our clients,” Woodget emphasizes. “Without a doubt, the fluid collaboration that Teams enables has a positive impact on our ability to be responsive and focus on the work to be done.”

Of course, keeping clients’ data secure is of paramount importance to any consultancy. “We often use Teams as a front end to other Microsoft products, including SharePoint,” says Woodget. “We can set permissions at the most granular of levels — not just for users, but also for things like compliance and sharing link expiration.”

Perhaps the most significant impact has been on the productivity of the Go Narrative team themselves. Woodget says that embracing the full functionality of Teams has changed the way they work. “We used to have so many stacks of sticky notes around the office,” he explains. “I was always terrified to throw them away until a project had ended—or even after—for fear of losing a vital input by a client's team member. With Teams + Mural, we have a secure digital record of every input.”

“It's been a massive benefit for in-person workshops, too,” he adds. “We can use laptops, tables, and even phones with in-person people, and they can put their sticky notes into the virtual workspace. We can then do our discuss-and-debate phase on the big screen and online with all that input.”

Woodget concludes that his firm’s use of Microsoft Teams has also been good for the bottom line. “The ease-of-use that comes with Teams being so familiar and integrated, ultimately, makes us more productive—using Teams is actually a cost-saving measure for us.”

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