NADOHE (National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education) serves as the preeminent voice for diversity officers in higher education. NADOHE supports the collective efforts of chief diversity officers, diversity professionals, and scholars whose research informs diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice issues in higher education and beyond. NADOHE’s board and membership-primarily consist of Black, Indigenous, and people of color with intersecting social identities reflective of the minoritized populations in higher education.

Ahead of a planned national conference in March 2022, NADOHE’s recently elected president Paulette Granberry Russell, J.D., hoped to hold a series of meetings that would clarify its priorities for the future, since the existing strategic plan was expiring. Unfortunately, the pandemic made it difficult to assemble their distributed team. 

An impromptu catch-up over LinkedIn with a former Michigan State colleague — Dr. Erik Skogsberg, Voltage Control’s VP of Learning Experience — presented a solution: facilitated virtual and hybrid strategic visioning sessions. This would enable Granberry Russell to convene NADOHE’s board to discuss and agree upon the priorities for the association well ahead of its annual gathering.

To prepare NADOHE for these unique work sessions, Skogsberg facilitated discovery calls with Granberry Russell and members of the association’s executive board and provided some high-level coaching to key stakeholders. He also enlisted the expertise of Dr. Lamar Johnson, Associate Professor of Language and Literacy for Linguistic and Racial Diversity at Michigan State University. Dr. Johnson brought deep expertise in white supremacy, race, anti-black racism, and the radical imagination within educational spaces.

In the weeks leading up to the executive board coming together, Skogsberg educated the group on the what, why, and how of the tech tools they’d be asked to use during the sessions. Skogsberg then scheduled some time for them to practice. He additionally held a Zoom-based orientation so participating board members could get comfortable maintaining their focus while engaging in a virtual and hybrid space.

The NADOHE sessions would differ from the Design Sprints Voltage Control traditionally conducts. Knowing that NADOHE had five strategic priorities they needed to discuss in just two days, Skogsberg custom-designed an appropriate agenda in collaboration with NADOHE and Dr. Johnson. The abbreviated sessions included the “greatest hits” of design thinking, liberating structures, strategic visions, systems thinking, and futures thinking methodologies to assist in their strategic vision session as well as Dr. Johnson’s work in radical imagination.

Virtual Session: Strategic Visioning

NADOHE’S initial visioning session commenced over Zoom in June 2021. After brief opening statements from three past presidents, the attendees — a mix of NADOHE’s board and its larger team — were asked by Skogsberg and Johnson to imagine their idea of a perfect world. They worked on paper and in Mural, an online collaboration tool.

Once thoughts were collected and shared, the group began discussing how they could address things at the “radical roots” of their work. We framed these as “radical goals” and once again collected them via Mural, where participants shared what they thought it’d look like if NADOHE succeeded in achieving its goals as an association. 

The group’s thoughts coalesced around Political Influence, Having An International Presence, Being Recognized As An Influencer, and more. After reviewing everyone’s goal statements, they voted for the top two. Granberry Russell then made the final decision, selecting a pair of goals she believed were the most important to achieve. 

These goals were further explored in a How Might We Session, where everyone considered the roadblocks that stood in NADOHE’s way. Once again, after considering the group’s work, Granberry Russell decided on what to explore through brainwriting. 

Unlike brainstorming, which gives the vocal participants the most input, brainwriting is a group activity where participants jot down their solutions concurrently on paper (or, in our case, in MURAL). Once everyone’s thoughts were collected, the group was encouraged to expand upon other people’s ideas. 

The day’s final exercise was another writing activity using Dr. Johnson’s racial storytelling framework. Racial storytelling reflects on how racial encounters from the past situate themselves in the current moment. Before breaking for the day, Dr. Johnson posed these four questions to the group:

• How have my lived and radicalized realities contributed to my conceptualization/vision of the organization?
• How does my racial background affect my vision and how I show up in the work?
• How have my educational experiences been radicalized?
• What is my radical vision for the future of our organization?

Day 2 of our virtual session began with everyone sharing their racial stories. Each individual was also asked what it was like to envision a radical future, what about their vision excited them most, what were their concerns, and what questions remained. Then, once in breakout groups, Dr. Johnson encouraged these small teams to create a concise racial success story with actions that must be taken to achieve it. The group then reconvened as one and selected the story that resonated the most.

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All of these exercises helped NADOHE gain clarity around the steps they would need to take to achieve the group’s new goal of further leading higher education toward inclusive excellence within five years. At the end of the two-day remote session, the NADOHE team had arrived at five key insights and six next steps. 

Hybrid Session: Strategic Implementation

Two months later, the NADOHE board reconvened in person and across Zoom to spend a day discussing how the organization could achieve its five-year mission. 

Prior to this session, Skogsberg emphasized the importance of providing equity  in terms of the experience. He insisted everyone use Zoom and Mural regardless of location, a practice we emphasize in our Hybrid Work Guide. Voltage Control and NADOHE also arranged for optimal audio and video setup in collaboration with the venue, so the virtual attendees weren’t at a disadvantage. 

To kick off the August meeting, Skogsberg led the group in a Hopes & Fears exercise. Everyone started by individually writing out their hopes for the day. Smaller groups then discussed and shared collectively. The same process was followed to uncover each group’s fears. With everything out in the open, the team was subsequently asked how they might best realize their hopes and address their fears, which ranged from a lack of consensus to unclear roles and responsibilities. 

With expectations set — and obstacles identified — the group was broken into subgroups and instructed to create a landing page prototype for one of five focus areas. The purpose of this Team Prototyping activity was to help NADOHE more tangibly prototype its visions for the organization and communicate them to a larger audience. It would also lay the foundation for a new website, which was critically needed.

After each subgroup presented their ideas to the larger team, everyone discussed the next steps that needed to be taken to make their goals a reality. This included mapping out in Mural what needed to be addressed next week, next month, and next year in order to strike an optimal balance between high-level vision and concrete steps for implementation.

As a result of the virtual and hybrid work sessions, the NADOHE team felt well prepared to present new initiatives to its membership at its annual meeting in March 2022. They knew what they needed to give their strategic planning committee to draft plans and make necessary bylaw changes. They also were on the same page and ready to begin research and committee work in key focus areas. Additionally, they had a clear idea of what they expected from their marketing agency regarding a new website and communications plan.

Post-Session: Reactions & Future Plans

For his part, Skogsberg enjoyed facilitating this work across multiple spaces for NADOHE’s success, balancing the many needs of participants, and being present across the layers of the hybrid space. “I pulled together key themes emerging on the Mural and in the room, making sure to be present across both the virtual and in-person spaces.”

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Participants shared an appreciation for the fun they had in the sessions, and what they discovered about working in both virtual and hybrid configurations. At the conclusion of the second session, NADOHE leaders admitted they had learned new problem-solving exercises that could help them in the future.

“The Hopes & Fears method allowed the Board to think beyond the present and imagine the future of the organization, and also to consider if there were downsides to the imagined direction and goals,” said Granberry Russell. “I do see us employing [these methods] again. It may also be useful to have the responsible committees and people associated with each of our priority areas to use facilitated conversations to complete the work they’ve been charged with.”

“The conversations were challenging but handled effectively by the Voltage Control team that worked with us,” added Granberry Russell. “Dr. Skogsberg’s ability to pose questions that led the participants to engage with each other, and to be introspective on what will be best for the organization, was essential to our success. Voltage Control was actually praised by participants as effective in managing expectations, time, and achieving our goals.”

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Looking for an Expert Facilitator?

Voltage Control offers a range of options for innovation training, design sprints, and design thinking facilitation. Please reach out to us at info@voltagecontrol.co if you want to talk.

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While most companies were struggling to figure out Zoom meetings in 2020, one large CPG company brought cross-functional, international teams together to remotely prototype packaging and products for the U.S. and abroad. 

These Design Sprints were a response to the CEO encouraging management to embrace a more agile approach to problem solving. Inspired by the nimbleness of startups, he directed his teams to find ways to accelerate product development and how they worked in general.

This inspiration empowered our client — the organization’s Design Thinking Champion — to explore opportunities for rapid iteration. In the year or so prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, she’d begun to assemble stakeholders from various departments and divisions at locations around the world for in-person collaboration. Still, the virus (and subsequent lockdown) upended this practice.

In response, the Champion engaged Voltage Control to help her continue her design thinking sessions remotely. She had been impressed by the wealth of free online resources Voltage Control had created as well as founder Douglas Ferguson’s books. She also liked that we had a relationship with Google Ventures’ Jake Knapp — author of the popular book Sprint — and conducted the five-day Design Sprints he popularized at GV (formerly Google Ventures).

Voltage Control worked closely with the Champion to plan and execute nine Design Sprints in total. One of which was a five-day workshop to explore innovative, sustainable packaging designs for three hot wax hair removal products. The challenge at hand was to use consumer-centric techniques to address the deeper needs of the brand’s customers. To accomplish this, Voltage Control defined the objectives for each day: 

• Monday – Map
• Tuesday – Sketch
• Wednesday – Decide
• Thursday – Prototype
• Friday – Test

Day 1: Map

A big part of the first day was setting goals, asking questions and exploring how the team might arrive at a solution. Because of Covid-19 protocols, each team member joined the workshop via Zoom and collectively recorded thoughts in the online collaboration tool Mural. 

To kick things off, Voltage Control socialized observations from the pre-work everyone did before joining the session. This ensured participants had the chance to connect 1:1, and everyone was heard. We then asked everyone to share what was interesting about the challenge and what questions they had going into the session.

Some of these included:

• Do we understand consumers’ key drivers for purchase?
• Can we find a solution that doesn’t impact other usage aspects like safety?
• Can we combine functionality with aesthetics?
• Will consumers be able to recycle/reuse/compost independently of their country of origin?

These questions were then followed with a review of the problem space. Voltage Control believes no one knows everything, so a group discussion helped unlock individually held knowledge and provided a chance for the larger team to get aligned. 

Day 1 then concluded with the design thinking activity “How Might We” (HMW), which encouraged participants to think big without getting mired down by the painful details of bringing a complete solution to market. Each team member selected their top four HMW notes, and the entire team reviewed these essential questions to keep in mind during testing. Affinity grouping and dot voting were used to select the most significant questions without debate.

Day 2: Sketch

Picasso once said, “great artists steal,” and that’s what guided Voltage Control as the second day of collaborative work began. The team located and shared analogous inspirations via Mural. These included competitor products, adjacent services, intuitive interfaces, strong branding, and compelling content.

This complemented the previous day’s work, where the group discussed the problems and the potential solutions. When they considered what they’d “stolen” along with the goals and solutions they’d volunteered on Monday, it put them in the right frame of mind for a bit of fun Voltage Control calls Crazy 8s. 

During the Crazy 8s exercise, we gave everyone on the team eight minutes to explore eight new ideas quickly. We instructed them to fold a paper in half three times, so they had eight squares to sketch in. We then allocated 1 minute per square for participants to unlock latent ideas and try different versions of an idea.

Once the eight minutes were up, we let participants spend the rest of the day sketching one or two solutions they felt had the most promise. Although each person was together in the same Zoom room, they worked alone. It’s a somewhat controversial opinion, but the Voltage Control team doesn’t believe group brainstorms work, and we’re not the only one. Instead of forcing consensus, we gave each person time to develop solutions on their own.

Day 3: Decide

Our third day commenced with a group review of Tuesday’s independent sketching. The team used small dots to identify parts of sketches they liked. Then, the team was led through each of the sketches, and key ideas were called out. A second “heat mapping” exercise was conducted, where smaller dots were placed on the ideas with  high potential. After these rounds of speed critiquing and straw poll voting, an R&D Manager — who’d been selected as the group’s decider — used three “super vote” dots to determine  the winning solutions. 

Each participant then imagined their ideal user flow in six steps. The group compared the flows and voted on them. Once again, the R&D Manager was the final decision maker, deciding which of the flows matched the chosen solutions. Next, the team collaborated on the storyboard using the solutions and user flows as a framework. To wrap the day, Voltage Control assigned everyone the roles they’d perform during prototyping on Thursday.

Day 4: Prototyping

Our virtual prototyping session heavily leveraged a combination of digital design tools, including Sketch, Craft, and InVision. By collaborating in Google Docs, the distributed team could track jobs on a Kanban board and easily share assets between one another.

Day 5: Test

On the final day of this Design Sprint, the cross-functional team gathered once more on Zoom to observe the remote, real-time interviews of five actual consumers. Using a Voltage Control-created scorecard, the stakeholders quickly assessed the consumers’ responses. 

These consumer insights gave the team potential next steps they could explore in the weeks and months that followed the Design Sprint. When asked about this and three other Design Sprints he attended, one Product Scientist commented they “were incredibly effective at stress testing ideas for safety, sustainability, and other factors. They were also a useful way to explore opportunities to see if what competitors were doing was right for us.”

The Champion had a similar take and said, “We sometimes learned we needed to pivot and not invest a ton of time. Some groups arrived at a seemingly right idea that just needed more vetting, while others had uncovered multiple pathways they could take at the end of the week. Across the board, we exited and applied larger qualitative research with a larger consumer group.”

The Outcome

Voltage Control conducted eight other design sprints in collaboration with the Champion, which concluded with similar positive results. While two of the Design Sprints helped the company offer better customer experiences, many Voltage Control facilitated sessions allowed the company to improve their sustainability efforts.

While not everything will be commercialized, Voltage Control helped the company be more nimble through design thinking exercises. The Champion liked how Voltage Control was able to assist her in answering her CEO’s call to be more agile. By building upon the groundwork she’d already laid pre-Covid, the company was able to get to consumer benefits faster and work smarter, not harder. 

“Conducting remote Design Sprints seemed daunting at first, but it really wasn’t,” said the Champion. “The virtual whiteboard served us really well, and all the info captured through Mural worked better than our pre-Covid methods.”

“I also appreciated the structured roles team members had,” she continued. “Previously, we had worked rather very linearly. It was great to bring decision-makers into the week, having prototypers on hand and achieving progressive movement towards daily goals.” The Champion further thought the remote Design Sprints were well-thought-out.

Taking insights and having an actionable output doesn’t often happen  in the CPG space, so the Champion felt doing nine Design Sprints in 2020 created a bit of “muscle memory” for applying repeatable frameworks, then iterating on these processes. She hopes design thinking — and Design Sprints — will become ingrained at the company, allowing organization to shift from a fixed, linear mindset to readily applied tools & methodology. 

The Champion wants teams across the company to have more opportunities to talk to consumers while working with a broader range of peers. Her ultimate goal: to synergistically work together to achieve something great in a short matter of time. She may just see this come to fruition. The Product Scientist, who admits he was a skeptic at first, became an advocate of the Design Sprints. He believes many of his peers are now in favor of them as well.

“I was worried about them being a mess and team members not participating,” said the Scientist. “The learning curve was so steep that first day — having to get comfortable with new tools like Zoom and Mural. We were up and running by that first afternoon though.” 

“By the time we got to Wednesday, we really liked the structure and flow,” he added. “The team was pumped when we did the storyboard and then again when we got consumer feedback. Everyone I collaborated with during my first Design Sprint was enthusiastic at the end and was already chatting about doing another in Europe.”

The Scientist told Voltage Control that since participating, he’s been conducting internal “roadshows” to evangelize the idea of Design Sprints. Due to the travel time and cost, the Scientist said he and his international colleagues don’t get to do much brainstorming in a physical environment. He feels the experiences facilitated by Voltage Control have opened up the possibility to do more of this kind of work, even after the Covid-19 pandemic has subsided. “These [virtual] Design Sprints make brainstorming with a large, global team more accessible,” he concluded.

Being able to transform a skeptic into an evangelist over four Sprints shows the impact Voltage Control’s efforts can have. As a whole, we taught a wide swath of employees how to meet in meaningful ways, despite distance and the pandemic. These fresh approaches to work (and working together) re-invigorated every participant, from marketers to scientists. Regardless of what they’ll face in the years ahead, they’ve now been trained to let no business disturbance interrupt their innovation. 

Do you have an innovation you want to implement, a company problem you need to solve, or a meeting structure that needs improvement?

Voltage Control facilitates events of all kinds, including design thinking workshops, innovation sessions, and Design Sprints. Please reach out to us at hello@voltagecontrol.com if you want to talk or for a consultation.

The post Teaching a global CPG company to innovate like a startup appeared first on Voltage Control.

Open Assembly hosts conversations and connections between organizations and people that want to adapt to the changing virtual landscape and thrive using evolving digital tools. The company focuses on community and knowledge sharing that helps culture and business transition to the future of work. 

The team at Open Assembly wanted to refine their vision of open talent standards and certification entity in collaboration with the open talent community. 

“During COVID we were meeting as a group and there was a lot of good energy around what to do to reduce friction and accelerate adoption in the open talent industry. We were doing a lot of talking, and someone proposed that we should run a design sprint so we could put our community into action.” —Catherine McGowin, Managing Director, Open Assembly 

Voltage Control facilitators Douglas Ferguson and John Fitch custom-designed and facilitated a series of workshops, including a three-day Design Sprint to help Open Assembly and 20 leaders from its community engage with one another and build consensus around actionable next steps. 

“Open Assembly had a dream that they might be the right organization to provide solutions to these needs, but they wanted to hear from the community how they thought such a group should be structured and if they would be a good fit to lead it. They also wanted to make sure they fully understood the needs of the community. Not only did they agree that Open Assembly should lead this instead of bothering with organization structure, but the community insisted on focusing on a manifesto and identifying workstreams for getting started.” —Douglas Ferguson, Facilitator, Voltage Control

The Discovery

For the first workshop in the series, facilitator John Fitch led an ideation session during Open Assembly’s weekly community meeting to collect ideas and concerns from the broader group. The generated information was integrated into the following Design Sprint. 

The Design Sprint

Day 1: Alignment 

The Design Sprint started with mapping the problem space. We started by imagining our end result and risks along the way. Then, we worked backward to figure out the steps we needed to get there. At the end of the first day, we had an identified goal as well as a list of questions the group needed to answer during the sprint. 

Identified goal: We are uncovering better ways to engage global talent by helping others do it. We seek to reduce the friction that interferes with the adoption of new work paradigms. While we realize talent supply is equally or even more important than demand, we recognize a need to stimulate more demand first to initiate the flywheel of opportunity. 

Questions:

• How do we address too many different delivery models to align on a single set of standards?
• How do we overcome large organization inertia and bureaucracy?
• What does the group see as the key barriers to adoption that we can collectively address? 

The group then engaged in “Expert Interviews,” where they asked the experts within the core team a series of questions to better understand the problem and potential solutions. Next, the team participated in an activity called “How Might We…” The purpose of this exercise was to encourage the group to get curious and interview a few experts in order to explore possible solutions to their challenge by thinking big rather than getting mired by the painful details of taking a full solution to market. They considered and answered the following prompt:

As allies who believe in the virtues and support the adoption of open talent and innovation models, we believe that we can make more meaningful progress together than apart. How might we come together and organize the open talent marketplace, overcome our most critical challenges, and reduce friction that interferes with the adoption of this new paradigm for work? 

Day 2: Solution Sketches

On the second day, the group did lightning demos of their ideas. The team located and shared analogous inspiration. These demos included competitors, adjacent services, intuitive interfaces, inspiring branding, and compelling content. 

Key takeaways from the demos:

• Ubiquity and ease of use
• Establishing credibility and trust
• Models for standards and maturity 

Each person then participated in a four-step sketch. Anyone can sketch. Most solution sketches are just rectangles and words. This process enabled everyone on the team to become a designer.

The team started by writing down the goal and questions on their paper. Then, they copied their favorite How Might We’s and lightning demos onto their notes. This moment of collection and reflection grounded the team and focused energy while allowing each participant time to process all we had done so far.

Next, the team transitioned from observing and collecting to reacting and generating. They rapidly documented all ideas they had as they reviewed their notes.

Everyone silently responded to prompts to unlock thinking in new ways in an activity called 10×10 Writing. This helped the group to loosen up before committing ideas to paper. 

The team spent the rest of the day sketching one or two solutions that they felt held the most promise. Although they were together in the same room, they worked alone. Instead of a group brainstorm, we gave each person time to develop solutions on their own.

Day 3: Decide

The third and final day of the Design Sprint was centered around deciding on the best-generated idea to move forward with. The team used small dots to identify parts of the sketches they liked. Then, we led the team through each of the sketches posted on the wall and called out key ideas.

Using a technique called Heat Mapping, members of the team worked their way around the room placing smaller dots to create a heat map of things that stood out as ideas with high potential.

The group went through a speed critique and straw poll voting to further narrow down the top ideas. John Winsor, Founder and CEO of Open Assembly, also the project “decider,” used three super vote dots to select the winning solutions. We then combined each of these sketches into a single solution for prototyping. 

Finally we ended with participants discussing needs, prioritizing, and then committing to next steps. 

The Outcome

The Open Assembly team walked away with a working manifesto. They also gained several insights from the Design Sprint:

1. There is already lots of alignment. While there was nuance, everyone was in agreement.
2. Consistent desire to focus on demand and removing barriers, but not to the detriment of the supplier experience.
3. Strong desire to get to specific key barriers that need to be addressed and how the group can address them collectively.
4. Everyone appreciates the work that Open Assembly is doing and has no issue committing to come to the table and support what we are building.

Top priorities the team identified to move forward with:

1. Release draft manifesto into the wild (beta release)
2. Organize work groups
3. Summarize outcome of the three days; secure feedback from the crowd/collective on the manifesto
4. Operating model—roles, processes/governance, success measures, tools
5. Create a dream list of all (individuals or businesses) who should be involved

John Winsor, Founder and CEO of Open Assembly, said their next steps after the Design Sprint were to “begin work on building a trade association focused on setting standards for the industry. The group wanted to see a group formed that could establish standards for the industry around the accreditation of platforms and education of the demand side organizations. The group also expressed the need for greater advocacy and promotion.”

Open Assembly  tested their manifesto prototype with the community in the weeks following the Design Sprint. 

Since the Design Sprint, Open Assembly has created a 501c6 non-profit trade organization called the Center for the Transformation of Work (CTW). 

The Summit

Several months later, Open Assembly engaged with Voltage Control to design and integrate a collaborative exercise into Open Assembly’s Global Summit, a virtual, 2-day community event with over 160 attendees. Voltage Control designed a custom canvas, conducted live scribing during the event, and hosted a final happy hour to engage attendees in conversations about the event content and the mission. 

Open Assembly gained the support of the community as well acquired new tools to integrate into their business moving forward. 

“We have started using Mural in other instances and decided to incorporate the powerful tool and Voltage Control into our first annual global summit event. It was a great interactive experience for all of the attendees. ” —Catherine McGowin, Managing Director, Open Assembly 

Do you have an innovation you want to implement, a company problem you need to solve, or a meeting structure that needs improvement?

Voltage Control facilitates events of all kinds, including design thinking workshops, innovation sessions, and Design Sprints. Please reach out to us at hello@voltagecontrol.com if you want to talk or for a consultation.

The post Open Assembly Established Interactive Community & Nonprofit Trade Organization With a 3-Day Design Sprint appeared first on Voltage Control.

Cisco Systems, Inc. is a multinational technology company that develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, software, telecommunications equipment, and other high-tech products and services. The goal was to build a successful virtual training. They help “seize the opportunities of tomorrow by proving that amazing things can happen when you connect the unconnected.”

The Cisco team participated in our recent Mastering Large Virtual Meetings Workshop held on April 13 (and has been held a few times since), co-hosted by master facilitators Douglas Ferguson and Daniel Stillman. In this fun, fast-paced one day online workshop, participants learned how to facilitate large virtual meetings. Our instructors led them through various methods, teaching why and how they work. Attendees learned facilitation tips and tricks and how to incorporate these techniques into virtual meetings. Cisco was among other participants who greatly benefited from the experience. 

“It IS possible. As simple as that—it is possible to run big virtual meetings and make them engaging, fun, and use those as the tools to connect people. It was a huge inspiration and a boost to try things out.” —Valeria Kanziuba, Program Manager, Design Thinking Facilitator, Cisco

Large Virtual Meeting Workshop

Getting good work done is hard enough in person. In a virtual context, it requires even more attention to detail. Virtual sessions can be difficult to run with just a few people, and the dynamics shift greatly when you start to get over 6-10 people. 

“Especially at large enterprises, conversations sometimes have to be large—there are many hands that touch critical products and services, and bringing all the people involved together to have a real conversation can start a project off on the right foot or get it back on track. These gatherings took time and energy to design for ‘real-life’ meetings and the same is true for virtual ones. I’m really excited to see the impact the LVM workshop is delivering for people. The critical work of innovators and changemakers can’t wait for when it’s safe to bring a big group together in person…we can get back to work on our most important challenges right now.” —Daniel Stillman, Master Facilitator

We’ve spent a lot of time at Voltage Control thinking about how to adapt our methods to the virtual space to keep teams engaged during virtual meetings and distribute the work in an asynchronous manner. It takes a pro-level toolkit and mindset to leave virtual meeting participants excited about the next virtual meeting. 

“We felt it was really important to share this knowledge to help everyone level up during this challenging time.” —Douglas Ferguson 

In this workshop, we taught participants how to find the tools they need to get the most out of a team’s distributed intelligence. Each exercise in the workshop was both an opportunity to participate and a teaching moment of the tools we use to drive successful large virtual meetings.

The Workshop

The day began with participants finding their virtual table, followed by impromptu networking techniques used to build rapport with virtual workshop attendees. Just like a wedding reception layout, attendees found their assigned table and connected with others at their table. They were then randomly assigned to other participants in breakout rooms to network and get to know new faces. This level of connection and engagement elevates participatory decision-making. 

Next, the group dove into 9 Whys, an exercise that helps people clearly identify and unpack their challenges. Participants voiced their concerns and challenges with holding large virtual meetings and then the group debriefed the information to learn from one another. The group then synthesized the information, connecting common themes and identifying patterns, acquiring the skills to synthesize data along the way.  

Douglas and Daniel also lead everyone through an  Open Space Technology, a useful method that helps you create and guide participant-driven agendas that align around a common theme. Leaders guided each group as individuals shared their personal methods and learned from each other’s approaches. We wrapped the day with a  Fishbowl Conversation, where the leaders of each session discussed and explored the artifacts created from the group work sessions. 

The group then engaged in a Spiral Journaling exercise to reflect on the previous day and to help clear participants’ minds of anything other than the workshop at hand. 

Participants had the opportunity to gain free advice from others in the workshop during Troika Consulting. People were put into groups of three: one person started as a Client and the other two served as Consultants. The Client shared a problem with the Consultants explaining it in detail. The Consultants listened and then asked clarifying questions. The Client then turned off their camera and listened as the Consultants discussed amongst themselves possible suggestions and solutions to the presented problem. The Client then turned their camera back on and shared with the Consultants their major takeaways from the advice they were given.  We repeated two more times so that everyone got a chance to receive advice on a challenge.

Then, the group engaged in an exercise called 1-2-4-All. Everyone was presented with the same question/prompt about how to move forward with running successful large group meetings. Participants first started ideating possible solutions in silent, solo reflection, generating sticky notes in a MURAL board. Then they were put in pairs, followed by foursomes, and then finally the entire group ideated together. This exercise helps groups naturally build consensus, enrich the quality of shared insights, and engages everyone in the room. 

Mad Tea was the next exercise. Participants were paired up and discussed the tangible things they were going to do post-workshop. They talked about the commitments they were going to make to ensure productive and effective large virtual meetings. 

The day ended with a commitment Chat Storm. All participants wrote out their personal commitment to this work to share with the group and simultaneously “entered” it into the Zoom chatbox. This method is great for sharing and gathering all forms of information from participants in a large virtual meeting. 

“If I would name one tool that found its implementation throughout—it would be a chat storm. I think it is one of the best discoveries that we would like to carry over to the in-person events once those are back. We use it literally in every single engagement, no matter the size. It proved to be a universally easy-to-use tool to ask opinions, brainstorm, respond to polls, sign up for teams, etc. So many use cases, it’s unbelievably simple and powerful.” —Valeria Kanziuba

Major Takeaways

One of the important takeaways that allowed us to build a successful 100% virtual training offer for Cisco Security Business, as well run multiple meeting with big audiences, was the possibility to use multiple technologies at the same time—Mural/Miro + video conferencing with breakouts + chat—switching between those, depending on the needs and the group dynamics we need to achieve.

It was initially too overwhelming to figure out how to manage not only participants (and meet their expectations, if not exceed) but also navigate the tech. We learned from Douglas and Daniel the importance of teamwork, having a tech facilitator, proper setup to allow facilitators to have the right things at hand whenever needed, as well as plenty of planning upfront—altogether that set us up for success from the very first event we hosted. Equally, allowing ourselves to be honest and say Hey, people, we are experimenting here, we are learning how to do it, be patient with us and yourself—also took off the pressure, and that was something I observed during the training.

Another great example of the implementation of our learnings is the successfully delivered Technical Marketing Engineers Summit for the Cisco Security Business Group that we just wrapped up a couple weeks ago. It brought together 65 TMEs from all over the world from all the different time zones for three days. The Summit consisted of two leadership panels, two keynotes, and twelve Design Thinking sessions. It took a team of more than 10 people to plan and design. We were especially challenged with one of the main goals of the Summit: TMEs community building and breaking silos. How could you think of the community building over the screen? We were pretty nervous to see how we might make it work. And we did! We learned that when designed with thought and understanding the constraints properly and finding the ways to work around those constraints rather than fighting with them and trying to mimic what we would normally do for the in-person event, guarantees the success.

“The most important [takeaway] was to understand that it is possible to do, and do successfully, get inspired and get very practical tools and tips on how to make those work. We were able to put all into practice and have success from the very start.” —Valeria Kanziuba

It’s always rewarding to see how this work impacts teams and helps them achieve amazing outcomes. We are excited to see who will come to our future Mastering Large Virtual Meetings Workshops and the awesome work they may bring these solutions to. Maybe we will see you at the next one!

The post Cisco Built a Successful Virtual Training for its Security Business & Established a Large Virtual Meeting Process appeared first on Voltage Control.

Lumos Pharma is a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on developing new therapies for people with rare diseases. Its focus is prioritized in areas where the pathophysiology is clear and medical need is highest. Lumos Pharma’s mission and strategy are to deliver safe and effective therapies to patients via time and cost-efficient drug development. 

In light of a recent merger, their human resources team wanted to explore a way to combine the two company cultures and build team unity across departments in the new virtual landscape.

“These sessions really helped us learn quite a bit about ourselves, our co-workers, and who we are as a team…we feel energized, excited, and impassioned about our work.” —Maggi Gentle, Senior Director of Human Resources at Lumos Pharma 

The Workshop

Lumos Pharma participated in a two-day teamwork dynamics workshop centered around the Clifton StrengthsFinder framework: an evaluation of 34 CliftonStrengths themes that reflect a person’s natural way of thinking, feeling, and behaving. The team completed the StrengthsFinder assessment to identify each team members’ core strengths and how they can be combined to form a healthy, productive company work dynamic. 

Identified goal: Focus on a way to help build our team unity in the virtual world we have found ourselves in. 

Day 1

We spent the first day diving deep into all aspects of the CliftonStrengths assessment results at an individual level and team level. 

The Process:

The team began with a team-building activity before diving into the work. Each team member added a picture of their favorite book in a “collective bookshelf” constructed in a MURAL template and we discussed our choices. 

Then, we observed a Macro View of the company’s Strengths dynamics—across teams and different organizations—among the four different CliftonStrengths domains: Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building, and Strategic Thinking. 

Team members then created personal profiles, based on their individual results, in a collective Mural board. Each person included self-reflection stickies with helpful mindsets and things to be aware of moving forward. They placed the profiles into one of three sections that corresponded to their main CliftonStrengths theme: Execution, Influencing, Relationships, or Strategy. The Mural board serves as an evergreen, transparent resource to get to know other team members and their strengths and refer back to when needed.  

Day 2

We worked through individual and company-wide blindspots and eventually looked at all company 2020 goals through the lens of what strengths could be leveraged to best achieve those goals. 

The Process:

The workshop narrative was set up so that each person could first appreciate themselves, then others, and eventually the entire team. We identified and worked through individual and collective blindspots to ideate unique strengths recipes for company success. The team first talked about the blindspots of each person’s strengths to be more mindful of. This knowledge was then used to workshop strategic strengths combinations within teams to create effective and productive team dynamics. We were challenged to appreciate people and teams through the lens of their strengths rather than only focusing on a person’s work title.

Next, we broke into four teams to 1) Look at identified 2020 company goals 2) Ask important, high-level questions surrounding those goals. To better understand the information, we organized the questions by color-coding stickies in a Mural board in accordance with the domain they most gravitated towards. 

The Outcome:

The Lumos Pharma team gained valuable insight into their individual strengths and their co-workers’ strengths, and by extension, they better understand who they are as a team. They have been able to assess their team dynamic more thoroughly and accurately based on who possesses which strengths.

“Are we utilizing our employees to their strengths or forcing them to work in other areas?” That is something Maggi Gentle, Senior Director of Human Resources at Lumos Pharma, says she continues to discuss with management. “I believe that the workshop helped us learn more about one another. We engaged with team members we don’t normally engage with and the discussion around goals was very inclusive. I also feel that the work around strengths was very enlightening for our management team, specifically our CEO.”

Lumos Pharma’s next step is to continue to work on company goals and the development of its mission statement and values—now better informed by team members’ strengths. 

“We learned about the strengths of our co-workers and how we might be able to collaborate with others to complement our own strength make-up. Many leaders are able to identify the strengths of their team members and play to them well. It is a very powerful tool for us as individuals to identify our own strengths. It is very empowering and affirming to name our strengths and embrace them. It is my hope that the two afternoons spent getting to know our own strengths and those of our team help in some of our exciting upcoming projects.” 

Looking for an Expert Facilitator?

Voltage Control offers a range of options for innovation training, design sprints, and design thinking facilitation. Please reach out to us at info@voltagecontrol.co if you want to talk.

The post Lumos Pharma Meaningfully Merged Two Cultures in a 2-Day Workshop appeared first on Voltage Control.

IDB Invest, the private sector institution of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Group, is a multilateral development bank committed to supporting the private sector in Latin America and the Caribbean. It finances sustainable enterprises and projects to achieve financial results that maximize economic, social, and environmental development for the region.

Their technology team wanted to investigate how to successfully communicate their value proposition internally to IDB Invest, to ultimately get more people aware of their strategic role in the organization. So we facilitated a four-day Design Sprint to help them do so.

“The design sprint was an eye-opening experience. It planted the seed of a now-growing design culture within the AKI division by having team leaders (who usually approached IT solutions software-centered) go through the design thinking process and see the value of taking a more human-centered approach in devising effective solutions.” – Jose Morales Mendizabal, Lead UX Designer at IDB Invest

The Design Sprint

IBD Invest engaged in a four-day Design Sprint, led by Voltage Control. The team started the first day by imagining their desired end result and the risks along the way. Then, they worked backward to figure out the steps they needed to get there.

Day 1: Map/Sketch

We agreed on a goal, central questions we wanted to answer, and reviewed the map of our problem space together.

Identified goal: Communicate the value proposition to our internal stakeholders in a clear, understandable, accessible, and engaging way so that we can build advocates and become viewed as a strategic partner in co-creating solutions. 

Central Questions: 
How can we build and maintain trust?
How can we avoid prioritizing the urgent over the important?
How can we avoid missing the big pictures (and why)?
How can we get things done due to lack of time, support, and bureaucracy?
How can we address our internal communication issues?

The team then engaged in an exercise called “How we might…” The process was an effective way to encourage everyone to explore possible solutions to their challenge by thinking big rather than getting mired by the painful details of taking a full solution to market. Each team member selected their top HMW notes to keep in mind during testing. 

Next, the team located and shared analogous inspiration in lightning demos. The demos included competitors, adjacent services, intuitive interfaces, inspiring branding, and compelling content. 

“Good artists lie. Great artists steal.” —Picasso

Day one ended with a four-step sketch. This process enabled everyone on the team to become a designer. Anyone can sketch. Most solution sketches are just rectangles and words. Step one was for all team members to write down the goal and questions on paper as well as their favorite HMW’s and lightning demos. Taking time for this moment of collection and reflection grounded the team and focused energy while allowing each participant time to process all we had done so far.

Next, the team transitioned from observing and collecting to reacting and generating. They rapidly documented all ideas they had as they reviewed their notes. Step three was Crazy 8s. The team had eight minutes to quickly explore eight new ideas. This was a fun way to unlock latent ideas and try different versions of an idea. 

The team spent the rest of the day sketching one or two solutions that they felt held the most promise. Although they were together in the same room, they worked alone. Group brainstorms don’t work. Instead, we gave each person time to develop solutions on their own. 

Day 2: Decide

On the second day, the team engaged in Heat Mapping. Each team member worked their way around the room placing small dots on posted-up sketches to create a heat map of things that stood out as ideas with high potential. 

Once the heat maps were created, we led everyone through a speed critique and straw poll voting to narrow down the most popular ideas. Then the team leader used three super vote dots to select the winning solutions. We combined each of these sketches into a single solution for prototyping.

User Flows was the next activity. Each team member imagined their ideal flow in six steps. We compared the flows and voted on them. The team leader made the final call on which of the flows matched the solutions that were chosen. 

Using the user flows and solutions as a framework, the team collaborated on a storyboard. We pulled elements of the solutions that aligned with our flow into wireframes of the screens we could prototype.

Day 3: Prototype

The third day was dedicated to prototyping. The team created a web experience to showcase their division’s role and the services they provide to the organization in order to communicate their value proposition. The prototype featured a “brochure” style website, leveraging copy and stock photography to support the internal branding of the AKI division, as well as an interactive chat-bot simulation to solve users’ IT support queries. To build a high fidelity prototype, the team used a combination of digital design tools including Google Docs, MS Teams, and Adobe XD. By collaborating in Google Docs, the team could track jobs on a Kanban board and easily share assets with one another.

Day 4: Testing

On the final day, the entire sprint team observed the interviews in real time while I moderated the interviews from another room. Using the Voltage Control Design Sprint Scorecard, the team quickly assessed the response to the questions we set out at the beginning of the Design Sprint.

“I’ve never seen us work this way, usually we spend a ton of time and then launch something without knowing if it is the right thing.” —Alejandro

The Outcome

The IDB Invest team identified several takeaways about the technology and processes they were using. Firstly, we learned that Maestro, the core operations analysis tool they were using, was slow and cumbersome for quick updates which slowed their process. We also recognized holes in the user experience from how to effectively provide users with what they need to the consistent desire for more transparency in their work to build trust and engagement.

We developed potential next steps from these insights to address the problems. These included exploring contextual support from Maestro or other systems to improve the tool’s usability as well as exploring other helpful navigation tools, functions, and forms of communication to enhance the user experience. The ideas to experiment with ways to foster a sense of community and unlock more opportunities for self-service were also noted.

Here’s what Lead UX Designer at IDB Invest Jose Morales Mendizabal said about the team’s takeaways and how they are incorporating the learnings in their work post-sprint:

“After the great and really surprising insights we uncovered during the Design Sprint, we decided to go back to the drawing board and think of different approaches to communicate our value prop in more active and engaging ways than just a static, brochure-like intranet website. In the end, we crafted a ‘marketing plan’ aimed at improving the client experience. We are just now getting started rolling out each of the tactics that propel each objective in the strategy. The intranet portal will still be worked on, but it will be just a channel in a larger ecosystem.”

Looking for an Expert Facilitator?

Voltage Control offers a range of options for innovation training, design sprints, and design thinking facilitation. Please reach out to us at info@voltagecontrol.co if you want to talk.

The post Strengthening IDB Invest’s Value Prop With a 5-Day Design Sprint appeared first on Voltage Control.

I was recently in Atlanta, Georgia, with a good friend, Erin Mays, Managing Partner of Ebco. Voltage Control and Ebco often team up to facilitate immersive workshops for companies to explore innovation trends and their impacts on the market.

Ebco is one of Austin’s fastest-growing agencies. Ebco is led by consumer research expert Erin Mays and market and trend expert Kalyn Rozanski, experienced professionals, and trusted advisors. They are both passionate about trends and consumer behavior. Their mission is to use what they know to arm you with the information and inspiration you need to make informed strategic action. Erin was recently named a winner in the Innovation and Startup Category at the 21st Annual Austin Under 40 Awards. Ebco was also listed on Austin Inno’s 50 on Fire List in 2018. The future is bright for Ebco and we love every opportunity we get to work with their team and clients.

Erin has a degree in anthropology and has worked professionally in innovation as a Design Strategist and Researcher before starting Ebco. There is always plenty for us to talk and wonder about. We often laugh when together but I always learn something new in every interaction. Erin has the wit and tenacity that is common amongst CEO types. I’m not surprised that organizations like Colgate, Georgia Pacific, and other major brands are bringing Ebco in to explore new consumer trends in their respective markets.

In the morning before a workshop, we were talking about the BeltLine. This revitalization effort in Atlanta is one of the largest urban design and planning projects ever undertaken. Once a former railway corridor around the core of Atlanta, this area is being transformed into a multi-use trail throughout the city. Projects such as the BeltLine in Atlanta, the Big Dig in Boston, and the High Line in New York City are examples of a trend in cities and the adaptive reuse of major infrastructure.

The elevator in the lobby “dinged” and the rest of Erin’s Ebco team arrived. Our conversation shifted to the client and the workshop we were to run in a few hours.

Workshop Design

In collaboration with Ebco, Voltage Control designed a workshop to make space for Georgia Pacific to learn about new trends that will impact the future of their industry. My task was to help design an interactive experience for the workshop attendees to experience these trends, and related products, firsthand.

The client’s primary goal was to expose and familiarize attendees to these trends. We also wanted to drive relevant, meaningful dialog among these participants. Each station showcased a macro-trend and the associated micro-trends. We also included current products that exemplifies the trends.

Each of our team members facilitated one of three trend experiences to guide the participants through those macro trends. The workshop was interactive, conversational, and captured the participants’ insights. They were able to touch, feel, and even taste these cutting-edge products. This also helped the team members contribute to the future vision of the company.

Attendees then filled out an insights survey using Mentimeter. This is an interactive workshop tool that allows facilitators to capture input in real time from their audience.

Attendees loved getting to highlight their favorite parts of the workshop that inspired them at each station. We ended by asking, “What ways can Georgia Pacific develop products and services that take advantage of these trends?” Now Georgia Pacific can analyze the research provided by Ebco and combine that with the insights from their teams. This combination of research and workshops defines them as the trendsetters and industry leaders.

“We run best-in-class immersive trend-workshops for our clients — and that includes expert facilitation. Voltage Control has been the perfect partner in delivering immense value to our clients.”

Erin Mays, Founder + Managing Director, EBCO

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What I have learned

Workshops are intense experiences filled with bold ideas and powerful conversation. The curiosity of the attendees is both inspiring and exhausting. It is important after these action-packed workshop days to spend time resting and reflecting to recharge for the next gathering. My time facilitating this workshop made me think about how Voltage Control’s Founder, Douglas Ferguson, often spends time at Generator in Austin doing contrast therapy. This recovery lab brings athlete grade recovery equipment to everyday people.

I’ve always been a fan of self-care whether it be massage, acupuncture, meditation, or a day off from the gym. Having access to professional athlete tools allowed me to up my recovery game and I’m feeling the best I ever have.

Douglas Ferguson, Founder + President, Voltage Control

CEOs and academics see recovery as an essential key to success. Recovery is what we do on our days off from training to ensure we’re at our best the next time we need to execute.

Collaboration

I love when our team at Voltage Control collaborates with other local Austin companies. Agencies like KungFu.AI, RESPEC, and Ebco invite Voltage Control into gatherings to design and facilitate meaningful experiences. Our team elevates client engagements in ways that are participatory and productive. Our purpose is to escalate innovation while fostering deep rapport between these agencies and their clients.

“A Voltage Control workshop enables us to learn more about the project and submit a scope of work faster than we could have believed. Voltage Control facilitating frees us up to focus on the client and their project.”

Jim Scott, Design Innovation, RESPEC

From Rapid Discovery Workshops to 5 Day Design Sprints, inviting Voltage Control as a third party facilitator puts both organizations on the same side of a table. These workshops are bespoke and designed to fit client needs. They provide the structure needed to drive alignment for quick decisions and validation.

“Voltage Control workshops free us up to collaborate with our clients to identify their most fertile opportunities and build actionable roadmaps which help us define and de-risk initial engagements.”

Steve Meier, VP of Sales & Marketing, KungFu.AI

Voltage Control’s participatory methods and agenda design are invaluable to agencies like Ebco, KungFu.Ai, and RESPEC. Our facilitators lean on a breadth of methods and facilitation experience which is indispensable to meet the unique needs of each client.

Looking for an Expert Facilitator?

Voltage Control offers a range of options for innovation training, design sprints, and design thinking facilitation. Please reach out to us at info@voltagecontrol.co if you want to talk.

The post Evaluating Ebco’s Innovation Trends in an Immersive Workshop appeared first on Voltage Control.

The Challenge

Adobe has a complex portfolio of apps that are available on wide range of devices.

Their team wanted to explore how to provide their customers with relevant content to help them complete tasks by showing them the proper tool.

Adobe had identified this as a significant pain point for users, but the problem hadn’t received dedicated focus yet.

The Method

Adobe set out on a five-day Design Sprint facilitated by Voltage Control.

“Optimizing user journeys across product offerings and devices is a complex challenge. The structure of the design sprint enabled the team to hone in on the crux of the problem from a user perspective and walk away with an actionable strategy.” — Ambar Munoz, Senior Product Manager, Adobe

Our Sprint Schedule

• DAY 1: We agreed on a goal, refined the target, mapped the problem space, and interviewed experts.
• DAY 2: We examined analogous solutions from other companies and sketched ideas.
• DAY 3: We combined ideas, chose a solution to prototype, and created a storyboard of the customer’s journey with Adobe’s product.
• DAY 4: We assigned individual roles and worked together to prototype the solution and plan interviews.
• DAY 5: We showed the prototype to real users, got feedback, took notes individually, and compared these notes looking for consensus and insights.

In only 5 days with Voltage Control, Adobe was able to accomplish a notable amount. One week of focused, collaborative work will fuel the next iterations of their prototype.

Three Key Takeaways

1. REVEALED insights about tasks users are looking to accomplish with many different types of devices.
2. ACHIEVED a better understanding of how colleagues and teammates are working and discussing projects.
3. ALIGNED on a new mobile strategy within the current business plan to shift focus toward user’s desires to learn.

The post How We Helped Adobe Align on a Mobile Strategy in 5 Days appeared first on Voltage Control.

Voltage Control designed and facilitated the United States Special Operations Command’s (SOCOM) 3rd Innovation Foundry (IF3) at Austin’s Capital Factory. This event brought together Special Operations Warfighters and non-traditional technologists to explore future Special Operations scenarios over three-days.

The Challenge

• Bring together a diverse group of Special Operations Warfighters and non-traditional technologists to work collaboratively on future-based scenarios, with a focus on AI and robotics.

The Process

• Three-day workshop in April 2019 with 85 people.
• Workshop leveraged a blend of activities: Design Sprints + Liberating Structures + Gamestorming.
• Each team was assigned one of the three scenarios. The teams explored and generated solutions and then used design thinking exercises to ideate, explore, refine, and rank potential concepts.
• On the final day, each team selected one concept to pitch to SOCOM leadership and other military VIPs.

“The scenarios were sophisticated and intentionally difficult in order to drive new and creative approaches to the problem sets.” —RDML Rodriguez (NSWC Deputy)

Day 1: Frame

• Douglas Ferguson, President of Voltage Control, kicked off the first day with a brief introduction to the process and the goal of exploring solutions for special operations in the year 2029.
• After other introductory presentations, Dr. Bruce Morris, NSWC N9, discussed the common themes in the scenarios that the attendees would be solving.
• The participants watched videos for each of the three scenarios. Each video defined the mission, provided context on the operational environment, and detailed critical constraints.
• Participants were assigned to one of six teams that included both technology experts and special warfighters. After watching each video, each team identified key challenges and risks in the form of Critical Questions.

Day 2: Ideate

• On the beginning of day 2, Bruce Morris reviewed the common elements of the scenarios and the future operating environment for special reconnaissance.
• The teams worked to map the problem space to unlock tacit knowledge and build shared understanding.
• Attendees wrote down ideas about how to approach their scenario and then passed their solutions to the next person, who added to those ideas. They built on and integrated each other’s ideas for five rounds.
• Each individual put their best ideas on paper in detail. The custom template was designed to get attendees to consider three important phases of the operation: Infiltration — Actions at the Objective — Exfiltration.
• Every table took time to reflect on their sketches. They began with observations of their sketches. Then they identified patterns that began emerging. And finally, they thought about what changes they would make to the sketches on the last day, based on what they learned.

Day 3: Refine

• On the final day, each table worked together to dive deeper into the details of each solution. The goal was to get to a deeper level of specificity around the technologies that would be used.
• The tables reviewed their votes and prepared a presentation for the group.
• A spokesperson from each group presented their group’s concept to a panel of military VIPs who came to hear the pitches, ask questions, and offer feedback.

“Breaking down barriers and challenging thought process and experience provided powerful insight and self-discovery.” — Major Christopher Jones

The Outcome

• SOCOM built key relationships with local and regional entrepreneurs and technologies.
• They gained an understanding and clarification on requirements and new areas for R&D.
• They uncovered new concepts to analyze and distill down into trends.
• SOCOM plans to build on the outcomes of this workshop in future rapid prototyping events.

Interested in hosting a similar workshop? Check out our Innovation Immersion service.

The post Exploring Special Ops Scenarios With Design Thinking appeared first on Voltage Control.

It was about six months ago when I first spoke to members of Apple’s IS&T team about their use of Design Sprints. I remember it sounded quite strange that they were using Design Sprints so frequently. I was intrigued and wanted to learn more. After speaking with them about their process, I started to believe that they were using Design Sprints as a method of requirements gathering. I was wrong.

Requirements Gathering is an activity for identifying and gathering requirements for an information system. While no perfect method suits all projects, a few standard methods are: User Interviews, Storyboarding, Use cases, Questionnaires, Brainstorming, and Prototyping.

Joint Requirements Definition is a method of requirements gathering defined by a group of stakeholders participating in discussions to elicit requirements, analyze their details and uncover cross-functional implications. Similar to Joint Requirements Definition, there is also Joint Application Design and Use Case Workshops. These cross-functional approaches resemble Design Sprints without the streamlined structure or the prototyping and testing.

Since forming my original opinion around Design Sprints for Requirements Gathering, I’ve had the opportunity to work with Fidelity Investments, multiple state agencies, and recently acquired startups that are similarly using Design Sprints. After getting a closer look, it is clear to me that instead of a tool for requirements analysis they are getting to what I am now calling requirements acceptance. The distinction to me was that they were already equipped with requirements. They had done their research and were seeking to validate this research and ensure that the rest of the organization was onboard.

It is not only critical to understand your customer’s needs and how your product aligns with those needs, but you must also understand how these changes or additional impact your organization. For smaller companies, these concerns may be minuscule or nonexistent. Larger companies must address these organization concerns in order to ensure success.

Requirements acceptance, as I’ve come to define it, is a process for socializing your product requirements and where you intend to drive the product. It is often a complicated and involved process to drive to complete alignment across all stakeholders in a larger organization. As I’ve witnessed first hand, Design Sprints offer an alternative path to the months-long typical process most companies engage in.

“Some were frustrated that they weren’t on the same page, but I was excited that we were discovering it now!” — SVP of Fortune 500

I believe there are five big reasons why Design Sprints are so effective at rapid alignment around product requirements and getting organizational requirements acceptance.

Surface Possible Conflict

A Design Sprint prototype provides a concrete view of the proposed solutions. Stakeholders aren’t relying on a memo, it’s real, and they can’t ignore it or convince themselves you mean something entirely different. 
Seeing the solution in real and absolute terms bubbles up questions about the offering. Stakeholders and leaders can get their arms around it and really understand it. They can have a concerted vs conceptual conversation.

Accelerate Conflict Resolution

When misunderstandings around requirements or solutions to address those requirements are surfaced early, companies then have the opportunity to stop or adapt. You might decide to proceed down a different path, cancel the project entirely, or adjust course slightly. Regardless of the decision, you can make it today without waiting six months and realizing that there is violent disagreement amongst stakeholders.

Circumvent the Pocket Veto

The Design Sprint prototype prompts a conversation around a proof of concept prototype and supplies proof of commitment. When commitment is recorded and confirmed you avoid the unexpected torpedos that can often stifle progress.

Fast Forward Customer Learning

Even if your prototype is just a landing page, the level of learning and understanding you garner from your customers is immeasurable. Gauging their reactions to your positioning of benefits and key value propositions provides deep insights into the viability your product. The best part is that you can get these insights before investing in building a product.

Building Strong Advocacy

The cross-functional team that you assemble for your Design Sprint walks away from the 5-day process having had one of their most memorial weeks in a long time. They not only have had a fun and engaging break from the doldrums of their typical week, but they’ve also been invited to co-create and participate in the shaping of the solution. They understand why trade-offs were made and can justify the current solution to their constituents. They become advocates for the solution to their part of the organization.

“This is how government should be working” — Richard Wade, Texas Water Development Board

Design Sprints are a powerful tool help large organizations drive rapid organizational alignment and get out of their own way. I would love talk with you about how to Design Sprints might help your organization.

The post Design Sprints for Rapid Requirements Acceptance appeared first on Voltage Control.