This year’s management conference with over 230 bank executives was anything but routine: The participants argued and debated intensively. They wrote and pasted. Every individual was challenged and involved. They were structured. They were calculating. They were animated. Focusing 230 managers on the matter at hand in just a few hours – on this occasion, it worked. While impressively demonstrating that working together intensively at eye level is not only a whole lot of fun, but also even more effective when it comes to laying a sustainable groundwork for the necessary change processes and future projects.

The setting was a fresh, inviting cogitation space – the creative conference floor of the Lindner Congress Hotel in Düsseldorf, where even concrete is made to bloom. A workshop, an ideas arcade, a garage, a food court and other settings provided the ideal contexts for the innovative and interactive conference format, specially developed by welcome.

Participants worked, planned and discussed in groups. Visualisation methods were noted, select and ranked in analogue form using graphic recording, target, key and essence posters, while discussions, expectations and adverse outcomes were moderated. Impulse talks, before/after sli.do questionnaires and word clouds rounded out a perfect working day. One of the results was a hidden-object book for managers.