For DFW Airport over three years, Conbrio designed and led both executive and board retreats which defined execution themes for the year for new and continuing airport programs and projects. The airport’s staff and board, comprised of the mayors of Fort Worth and Dallas and appointees of each city’s city councils are responsible for a $900 million a year enterprise with 1,800 employees who work for the airport and another 60,000 who work for airlines and other companies on airport property. The challenge in designing and leading sessions was narrowing the number of topics to the most important and strategic, keeping the discussions on track and doing so in ways that kept everyone involved and discourse civil. Conbrio built processes and tools into workshop agendas to mitigate disruption and dampen sometimes heated disagreements. In one of the workshops, Conbrio using markers and a blank canvass, facilitated the never-before creation of a history map of the airport from its opening day. The map showed when deregulation kicked and, as a result, how airlines reduced the way they interacted with the airport. In turn, it showed how airport managers stepped in to fill the void and went on to create one of the top five airports worldwide in customer satisfaction. The map became the first draft of a more sophisticated story map created later to use in on boarding new employees.
