Last week I had the chance to take the stage with a company and team that’s been close to Ei for a long time.

They were gathering their entire company (10,000+ people) for a multi-day People Conference built around a refreshed set of company values, and I was asked to open Create Day with a keynote about what creating and creativity means in the workplace today.

But the assignment started months earlier.

It would have been easy to pull an existing talk off the shelf, swap in a logo and a few company references, and call it “tailored.”

Instead, we spent the summer building it together.

I met regularly with the team leading the work. We talked about why they had refreshed the values in the first place, what they were hearing from employees, where the idea of “Create” was resonating, and where it was getting stuck.

Employee Voices

They shared internal research from earlier in the year. We dug through hundreds of employee recognitions and found relevant stories for the Create value in action. I learned their language, their tensions, and the things people were genuinely proud of.

Slowly, the talk became less about what I wanted to say about creativity and more about what this particular group might need to hear. By doing thoughtful prep, our hope was that attendees would be more likely to recognize themselves in what’s being shared.

A Delightful Surprise

As I was doing the research and writing the talk, a little surprise surfaced. When employees were asked to describe “Create,” they reached for words like innovation, imagination and new ideas.

But when we looked at hundreds of moments where employees had actually recognized one another for great work, the language was much more ordinary.

Someone helped a teammate.
Someone asked a good question.
Someone collaborated across a boundary.
Someone figured out a way forward when the answer wasn’t obvious.

That insight became a big part of the talk.

Because creativity, especially inside a company, isn’t (always) about a flashy logo or new design. It usually looks like a person noticing something, getting curious, trying something, and helping another person get unstuck.

From there, I brought in some of my own experiences and shared them alongside stories from inside their company. There were moments of pause and discussion throughout. And then we even ended with a five-minute sprint using a tool we built for the day. Just a few prompts to help the attendees see a key challenge differently and start moving forward with fresh ideas to practice this new Create value.

Designing for those “off ramps” creates a connection between an inspiring moment to back to the day-to-day work. And for the audience, they can even be a delightful surprise (ie: the paper was tucked under every seat in the auditorium earlier that morning).

People First

I walked away from the experience impressed by this long-time partner, but especially by its leadership and people. Refreshing your company values from a board room is easy enough.

But listening carefully to thousands of people, noticing what people are actually doing and valuing, and then being curious about how to define and celebrate those actions…that’s a core strength that will serve them for years of growth to come.

People First

The greatest opportunity we have when we bring people together is not to lead with our ideas, it’s to lead with the needs and stories of the people in the room. That’s when we move beyond educational theater to an experience that shifts how people think and act, not just what they know.

If you’re designing an experience in your work, how can you listen better first? What information or stories would help you share what your people truly need to hear?

And if you need help, you know where to find us.