Empowering in-house innovation with the production teams at Ubisoft
For global gaming developer Ubisoft, innovation is a core part of their DNA. To stay ahead in a competitive, fast-changing market, their in-house teams need a unique mix of creativity, technical depth, and excellent communication. And who is responsible for ensuring this creativity and communication flows frictionlessly between production studios at Ubisoft? It’s a unique team known as “community animators.”
While some see the word “animation” and assume “moving images,” this word, like Ubisoft itself, has French roots: to bring to life, to fill with spirit — to animate, or enliven, a community.
Thus, Ubisoft’s community animators must perform the crucial work of facilitating conversations between studio heads, developers, creatives and beyond — organizing in-house summits and conferences, running planning meetings, debriefs, look-aheads and more. If they’re not at the top-of-their game, able to respectfully engage with senior leaders, developers and managers alike, they run the risk of merely being obstacles.
With this in mind, Ubisoft reached out to Co.school for support taking the team’s facilitation skills to the next level. Over the course of several months, participants from France, Belgium and Canada came together digitally for live, virtual workshops to explore the art of facilitation. Support by Co.school’s pre-recorded modules from Authentic Facilitation, the work was deepened with collaborative, inquiry-driven sessions designed to draw out participants’ existing knowledge and wisdom, while deepening their understanding with new frameworks and tools.
Additionally, participants were able to sign up for one-on-one coaching sessions with Co.school facilitators, to bring live problems, use cases and active questions for their own development.
Ubisoft has now run two cohorts through Co.school’s facilitation training, and also invited Co.school to present at their in-house Producer’s Summit, to share more about co-creation to the rest of the company.
Charles-Adam Foster-Simard
"I also want to highlight an inspirational masterclass given by [now Co.school], an organizational change agency, on the concept of "The Chaordic Path," or how balancing order and chaos unleashes creativity in our teams."
(You can read some of the Ubisoft team's reflections on our work together in their own article, above.)
