“Due to the rapid growth of the company, in favourable economic times and a tight labour market, it is not easy to find enough logistics employees, and keep them. Several difficulties ensue: an increase of workload per person, loss of focus and meaning, burnouts. Given these challenges, our main question is: How to keep our company‟s mojo working?”

This question was the main point on the agenda of a multi-day strategic session for the European board of directors and management team of Mainfreight, a global logistics service provider. We were invited to organize a theatre-based reflection as part of their programme.

We suggested to mirror their situation to the allegory of Henry V: one of Shakespeare’s history plays, which covers events during the Hundred Years’ War, immediately before and after the Battle of Agincourt (1415). Despite heavy losses and hardship, the English win a major victory against the French. What happens at the decisive moments in the battle? Which parallels could facilitate learning in the process of shaping the company’s strategy for the future?

To realize our workshop as part of their multi-day strategic programme, we took the following steps:

1. Preparatory talk with the logistics director responsible for organizing the multi-day strategic programme in which we defined the learning issue,
2. Analysis of the learning issue and matching of the allegory, force field analysis and archetypal framing,
3. Presentation of and invitation to the allegory, followed by experimental role-playing based on the allegory, performed by the team members, directed by a professional director.
4. Informal discussion following the performance, and an evaluative talk a few weeks after the strategic session, to obtain responses to the experimental role-playing. The central questions were: How did the allegory/metaphors help the company to learn for strategic foresight? What was its contribution to ‘imagine the future’ and ‘see the bigger picture’?

In the discussion following the experimental role-playing, the team members understood the relevance of the allegory to the organization. They recognized ‘balance’ as a common theme:

1. balance between work and private.
2. balance between setting the company’s goals and their winning strategy.
3. the relationship between a leader and his people – how to make and keep them part of the company’s ‘family’?
4. They articulated parallels like the perilous position of the English on the French battlefield and the distressful situation of the understaffed teams in the competitive ‘battlefield of logistics’. They also noted how these parallels can generate ideas for improvement, like ‘listening to your team is crucial’ and ‘When you ask people to work long hours, don’t forget to think about their families’.

The allegorical reflection supported Mainfreight’s European directors to initiate new strategies, like 1) involving team members in the development of new strategy or 2) include values that discern their company from others (e.g. agility vs. bureaucracy) in their training programs. We also saw that the application of the allegory in the workshop is an ‘act of connection’ within the team. Joint participation in telling, listening, and undergoing the story led to more empathy regarding their business issues, e.g., attention for work/life balance, compassionate leadership, company values, and mutual understanding.