Dr. Joachim Maier

Dr. Joachim Maier

PhD Utrecht, Lic Oec Zürich, BA Umea

Beratungsfilmer, Organisationsentwickler & Trainer

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  • 8006 zürich
  • Switzerland

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Personal information

Professional experience

  • Employment status
    Freelancer

Educational background

  •  
    01/2002 - 19.juni/2006

    Utrecht > Humanistische Universität (Niederlande): Unternehmensorganisation/-führung, Angewandte Philosophie, Soziologie, Didaktik Abschluss: Promotion 11/1995 - 12/1998 Universität Zürich: Unternehmensorganisation/-führung, Geschichte, Nordistik - Lizentiat Abschlussarbeit: KOMPLEXITÄTSMANAGE

  • Languages
    German, English, Spanish, French, Swedish

About me

Social Filmmaking for Organizational Development

Every cineaste knows: Movies convey and contain emotions, and leave you in the audience with a clear head. If a movie makes an impression, once it ends and the lights turn on, you know exactly what to do. In Organizational development (OD), learning is a characteristic of an adaptive organization. Social Filmmaking for organizational development, the user-generated fabric of a movie in an organizational context, homes in as a reply upon the commonly neglected question "what should we really adapt to and re-act upon". The short answer is: One should act upon the stories that make up the living reality of all the people, whose job & passion it is to contribute to the reproduction of the focal system. By means of giving voice to the corporate crowd in strategic, transformative or educational processes all-alike. This text intends to inspire your OD repertoire and shall deal with two issues:

  • Address the biggest concern of my customers, namely, will employees speak out in front of a camera?

  • Reveal the single most touching customer feedback upon a social filmmaking intervention.

WILL EMPLOYEES SPEAK OUT AND SHARE PRECIOUS INSIGHTS?
In a market-driven economy customers and their insights are an undisputed key for product, bunsiness and organizational development. Employee insights (EI) home in as a complementary concept. EI builds on the assumption, that people who spend their working days and nights inside a context wherein their organization does (not) meet customers demands, are the real experts for development drivers. The single biggest concern of my clients usually is: will our employees talk to you and share? In front of a camera? Vis-à-vis a total stranger? The following chapter is the account of a mundane experiment to prove one point: employees do speak out.
Honestly, in the beginning of my practice as a social filmmaker / consultant I was kind of surprised myself. People only seemed to have waited for someone to turn to. Longing for a container to port their message to the right places. To any place – really. The real difficult part of my work is to provide a productive setting for the listeners. But that is a different story for another article. This time I shall focus on the outlines of a social experiment. In 2010, just in between the first and the second financial crisis, I chose to assemble a video to address a question that moved me at the time: how would Swiss banksters narrate the events that build up to the first crisis? And on a corporate level: what are the learnings and take-aways?
The setting seemed almost impossible: I spent 3 hours during a lunch-break in the middle of Zurich‘s financial district. And asked about 30 total strangers to share their account of the latest crisis in the form of a ferry-tale. By inviting the banksters to re-dress their accounts as a fairytale, I successfully avoided the common automatic-expert-talk. The cover-story was the following: We are working on the outlines of a research project for to understand the morale and insights of the latest crisis. More than one third of my chance encounters complied and shared their account. The final product is available on youtube and vimeo. It did not receive that public attention I was hoping for. But the clip makes a point: employees enjoy to speak out! I firmly believe that a movie says more than all so many words. Consequently this paper puts forward an invitation to watch the following 6 minutes:
www.bit.ly/dppWEa
The people you shall see and hear are for real. And they spend no more than 8 minutes to answer a real tough question: What happened in the course of the first crisis in the financial industries and what is the moral of this history. The short answer: Nothing has been learned and the history will repeat itself. Unfortunately these people were right. The take-away is simple: commonly, decision processes are based on the perceived reality of the management and fail to take into account huge parts of the organization’s perceived reality.

MY SINGLE MOST TOUCHING CUSTOMER FEEDBACK
In autumn 2011, I have been invited to run a one day user-generated video workshop with 15 people from a small branch of IBM. M. was the gatekeeper – a senior team member, who was not the formal boss at the time. In the advent of major leave-takings (including his own), M. initiated and facilitated a series of 6 meetings. M. wanted to counteract the teams‘ expected breakup by fueling the teamsters with pride and a sense of purpose. First, everybody was invited to come up with a 60 second micro-story upon the question ,what is it that you want to experience, before you move on to the next team and your next role within or outside this organization?‘ The participants made use of their iPhones to film their statements. In a second (so-called story-battle) step, the teamsters opted for one favorite story. Subsequently, that champion story was developed, enacted and shot under the auspice of initial storyteller. At the end of the day, one team accomplished the final editing of that champion story, while the other members polished and arranged the 15 individual short statements. Closure approached. With a public viewing of the days‘ work, everybody received all the clips on a memory stick, before the participants went on to enjoy diner.
After the workshop, M. went for a late visit of his friend S. – a male, in his late 40s and on sick-leave for consecutive three month due to burn-out symptoms. Over a beer and two, M. unpockets the flash card with the days' movies. S. is deeply moved by the various energetic takes on the 'what do you want to experience here, before you move on to the next business role'-question. S. starts to weep and opens up for a serious discussion regarding his own chores and unfinished businesses. Another indicator for my initial claim that movies convey and contain emotions, and leave you in the audience with a clear head. If a movie makes an impression, once it ends and the lights turn on, you know exactly what to do. The take aways for OD-people? When was the last time that you heard of a story starring a 40-something year old-male moved to tears? And in terms of workshop-work-reality-transfer: assume that, say, half of the participants chose to display their movies by the end of the day in a similar fashion – and fed-back their echoes?
 

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