Fly El-AL, feel at home

“Timing is everything.” How else would I be able to explain that one of my first projects as a storyteller at Leave a Mark was for El-Al?

My name is Omer Shkedy and I am 31 years old.
El-Al airlines slogan is “Fly El-AL, feel at home” and for me, it really was like home. It was my family's home and my home for some time.

My father worked there for many years as an executive and I had the privilege of working there in the summer between high school and the army, in exchange for a plane ticket to anywhere in the world.
Before I became a storyteller a

Leave a Mark, I served as a pilot in the Israeli air force. What can I say?

This was meant to be.

We came to El-Al for an internal conference called 2SAP. Oren Har Nevo (a real superstar), head of the accounts division, and Tali Brand (another superstar), manager of a department in the division, decided to organize a conference to get all the heads of division and department at El-Al together to implement the 2SAP system. The system is a tech platfor which optimizes and manages the current finances of every department in the company. "The process begins with logging a minor purchase invoice into the budget, progresses to budget oversight, task management, and the facilitation of multi-million dollar purchase orders."

El-Al began using the system right before the outbreak of Coronavirus, but the world went on pause and system implementation did not go as smoothly as hoped. Post Coronavirus, the time came for orderly and organized implementation of 2SAP and for El-Al to reach their goal of being a service oriented company at the forefront of technology.

Challenges:

In order to make the conference a success, we as storytellers were looking for our narrative. How can we tell the story clearly and engage company management? We identified 3 key challenges we would need to overcome in order to succeed.

Accounts? Conference? Implementation? – These things sound like the most boring thing in the world. How can we make it interesting and fun, and capture people's attention?
The importance of the subject. – How can we show the potential of the system and what it can do?
Change is complex. – They are trying to implement a system that will change decades-old workflows. Can the introduction of such a major change be done in a way that's easy to swallow?

In light of these challenges, we mapped out the purpose of our presentation in two short sentences: Show where we are in the world, explain the system in the best way we can, and engage all the employees, in the holistic spirit of the company.

The Method:

After mapping out 3 key focal points, we set out to solve each one.

Where are we in the world and why are we here?
Here we took a modest approach. Managers from all over the company were invited to the conference, and we have no intention of scolding them or telling them they are doing their jobs wrong. Just the opposite; we want to motivate them. In order to do this, we used 2 strategies:

First, “the elephant in the room”:We looked in the mirror and took responsibility. No one was blamed, and we didn’t look for excuses. We just said, “There is a lot of room for improvement”. We shared how we felt about service and efficiency and provided practical suggestions.

Second, statistics: At the end of the “Flight academy course”, they always share data and numbers showing the wide variety of outcomes of people who completed the course. We did the same thing here. We used interesting numbers and data points with a clear flow chart to make our points interesting, fast and informative.

What does the system do and why is it so important? In order to illustrate the capabilities and advantages of the system we chose 2 examples:

The story of the receipt: We showed a short animation about a receipt for a small charge that was not recorded in the system. This led to major problems in the company data, and subsequently its function and reputation. Every company manager experiences such cases regularly, and must understand the importance of even the smallest transactions.
Anywhere, anytime: Another short animation demonstrated how simple and fast it is to make regular updates in the system, on work computers and cell phones.

How did we engage our audience?
Our closing presentation had two layers:
1. “Administrative tool” or, just common sense. We emphasized to what extent the system allows division managers to work better and more efficiently. When they ask themselves what they get out of doing their jobs using the 2SAP system, the clear answer is “administrative tool”.
2. “Going above and beyond” or, the emotional side of things. Part of the DNA of the conference was appealing towards the human desire to improve, and do whatever it takes to support the system. The success of one department is the success of all. Group effort leads to success for the entire company.

So how did it end?

On the day of the conference, Oren, the accounting head, gave an impressive and professional presentation. As we joined the audience, we saw smiles and heard comments about the animations, ideas and presentation design. At the end, Oren thanked us for helping prepare the story and presentation, but how did we know that we really succeeded…?

After the presentation, before we left, people from the audience approached us and asked to connect so we could work with them in the future. Again and again, ‘timing is everything’ remains true.

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