How Can Facilitators Ignite Creativity in Diverse Workshop Environments?

A conversation with Varsha Prasad, Innovation Strategist and Founder @ IdeaCompass

“Somewhere along the line, as we grow up, we get so used to doing things a certain way that we lose touch with that creative side of the brain. As kids, we tried all sorts of things and never stuck to a certain methodology or structure, but I think facilitation brings out that childlike curiosity, which makes the whole thing very special. And I think that’s what’s kept me going.”- Varsha Prasad

In this Facilitation Lab podcast episode, host Douglas Ferguson interviews Varsha Prasad of IdeaCompass about her journey as a facilitator and entrepreneur. Varsha shares insights from her first design thinking workshop, the impact of mentorship, and the importance of creating engaging environments. She discusses navigating cultural differences in facilitation, her transition to independent consulting, and the value of community support. The conversation highlights the power of innovation, structured reflection, and open-mindedness in workshops, offering practical advice for facilitators seeking to inspire creativity and collaboration across diverse teams.

Show Highlights

Links | Resources

Varsha on Linkedin

IdeaCompass on Instagram

About the Guest

Varsha is an innovation strategist and the Founder of IdeaCompass, a consulting practice dedicated to helping entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs transform bold ideas into actionable strategies. She specializes in facilitation, design thinking, and business innovation, working with diverse industries including tech, education, transportation, hospitality and e-commerce and public sector.  

With a strong background in customer success and corporate innovation, Varsha has collaborated with organizations globally to drive impactful change. She is passionate about building human-centered solutions that deliver tangible business results.  

Varsha’s expertise lies in guiding cross-functional teams, fostering creative collaboration, and simplifying complexity into clear, actionable strategies. Her approach blends structured innovation frameworks with a deep understanding of customer needs, ensuring sustainable transformation for the businesses she works with.

About Voltage Control

Voltage Control is a facilitation academy that develops leaders through certifications, workshops, and organizational coaching focused on facilitation mastery, innovation, and play. Today’s leaders are confronted with unprecedented uncertainty and complex change. Navigating this uncertainty requires a systemic facilitative approach to gain clarity and chart pathways forward. We prepare today’s leaders for now and what’s next.

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Transcript

Douglas:

Hi, I’m Douglas Ferguson. Welcome to the Facilitation Lab Podcast where I speak with Voltage Control Certification alumni and other facilitation experts about the remarkable impact they’re making. We embrace a method agnostic approach so you can enjoy a wide range of topics and perspectives as we examine all the nuances enabling meaningful group experiences. This series is dedicated to helping you navigate the realities of facilitating collaboration, ensuring every session you lead becomes truly transformative. Thanks so much for listening. If you’d like to join us for a live session sometime, you can join our Facilitation Lab Community. It’s an ideal space to apply what you learn in the podcast in real time with peers. Sign up today at voltagecontrol.com/facilitation-lab, and if you’d like to learn more about our 12-week facilitation certification program, you can read about it at voltagecontrol.com. Today, I’m with Varsha Prasad at IdeaCompass, where she helps entrepreneurs and enterpreneurs build customer-centric products through custom innovation workshops. Welcome to the show, Varsha.

Varsha:

Thank you, Douglas. Happy to be here and chat with you.

Douglas:

Yeah, it’s so good to have you. And I guess let’s get started by hearing a little bit about how you got your start. Take us back to that first design thinking workshop at Cisco. What do you remember about how it felt walking into that room and why did it hit so different?

Varsha:

Yeah, that was a different kind of day for me, especially because I was used to one hour meetings in a conference room with long tables and chairs on either side of the tables, one person standing at the front of the table walking through a presentation, and most of us joining off or just looking into our phones. But that was a special one because as soon as we entered the table, the room set up was totally different. There was music playing in the background.

And we had our director, who was supposed to be one of the senior most people in our organization, standing at the door welcoming people with smiles, and I could see sticky notes, colorful sticky notes and Lego blocks and all sorts of cool stuff lying on the table there. So that was very new to me. And from the time we entered, I didn’t know how the day passed. It was eight hours. We walked in at 9 AM and then we finished, I’d say I think five or something with a break in between for lunch. That was the day that things turned around for me and I fell in love with the whole process of design thinking and creative workshops.

Douglas:

Was there a specific moment in the day where something clicked for you?

Varsha:

I think the fact that ideation is, I think one of my favorite ways to work around things, like from the day I realized that this is how you can brainstorm and come up with new ideas. Idea bombing is one of my favorite exercises. Every time I feel like I’m in a clump, I’m stuck, I just stick to this plain, simple exercise. I take a sheet of paper and a pen and just start writing as many ideas as I can. And some of the best ideas come up when you are sitting with a tight timeline. You say, put a timer of 10 minutes and in the 10 minutes come up with as many ideas as you can. And that is one of my favorite exercises, and I keep using that over and over again, both with my participants and myself as well.

Douglas:

I love that. Have you ever done ten-by-ten writing from Liberating Structures?

Varsha:

I’ve done, I think the eight-by-eight, is the Crazy Eights the same thing?

Douglas:

Crazy Eights is a little different. I love Crazy Eights too. To your point, that’s another rapid fire time constraint activity. The ten-by-ten writing is, it’s not part of the Liberating Structures repertoire, but it’s listed as one of the in development. And basically you give your participants a prompt and they’re supposed to write 10 responses to it, and then you give them a second prompt and they write 10 responses and a third prompt, and they write 10 responses. And it’s about just creating so much volume because essentially they’re writing a hundred things that they’re writing 10 things to 10 different prompts.

Varsha:

Exactly. Yeah, that’s an interesting one. Probably the next ideation exercise for me to try out.

Douglas:

Yeah. You can get really playful with the prompts too. One of my favorites is what is something that users don’t want.

Varsha:

I think that there’ll be a list of 20 of them. [inaudible 00:05:04].

Douglas:

Yes. So often we’re making things that people don’t want, right? That’s amazing.

Varsha:

True. I agree.

Douglas:

So you mentioned your lead being a real pivotal mentor, and I want to come back to that kind of scenario you described of just walking in and the room was set up totally different and they were greeting you at the door and there were all these things sprinkled around the room that were different and just how much of an impact the way the room is set up can have.

Varsha:

Yeah.

Douglas:

Do you want to elaborate on that a little bit?

Varsha:

Yeah, a lot, because I think this also came up in the Art of Gathering by Priya Parker, when we were doing the certification. So how you set up the room, how the room is placed when participants enter it changes the mood, the psychology of the participants, I think to be in a different environment. I think that’s key. I think for me, it just transported me into a very playful environment and having the music around and seeing those creative, colorful sticky notes, it just activated that creative side of the brain. I guess that’s what it did to me. And ever since then, I realized that that plays a very crucial role because corporate meeting setups, usually there is a hierarchy where the head of the meeting stands at the front and everyone is seated around the table in rows. So it’s a stark difference for sure.

Douglas:

And it’s interesting how powerful that can be. Just putting some thought into how we might just rearrange the space, how we might group folks different, how we might change the seating. It’s a totally different experience walking in with rows of seats versus clusters of chairs or… Very powerful. Also, I took note of you talking about how you were greeted at the door.

Varsha:

Yeah.

Douglas:

It’s like so often the host is stuck behind a laptop trying to get the HDMI cable to work or whatever, and that feeling of being invited in, being welcomed, so powerful.

Varsha:

Yeah. And it shows that they were in the room much before the meeting started and they prepped for it. They got all the stuff in. So it shows how much effort they’ve put into designing that space for us, and that automatically signals that we need to be just as involved. It allows us to reciprocate that.

Douglas:

Yeah. The facilitation doesn’t start, once everyone’s in the room and we’re getting folks attention. It starts when folks are first arriving and how are we making them feel comfortable. And to your point, you even just mentioned that you were starting to feel a certain way around like, oh, I’m already in a creative mindset. I’m ready to play games. I’m ready to be totally different in this space.

Varsha:

Yeah, yeah. Especially when you’re not used to that in your office and when you hear music in the office, it just plays on your mind. Yeah.

Douglas:

Yeah. So cool. So coming back to your mentor, what did you learn from shadowing him and working alongside him and how did that shape your early style as a facilitator?

Varsha:

Yeah, so my mentor, his name is Viva, that’s how we call him, Viva. And he was the one who had been to a design thinking workshop, and then he realized how powerful the framework is, just the mindset that it puts us all in. And he decided to introduce that into our organization, and I think we were one of the first or the second teams that he introduced this concept to. The day we did the workshop, I went up to him and I said, “Hey, I really liked the whole workshop that we did today. How can I be part of this?” And he said, “There is no formal design thinking club as such, so let’s start something here.”

I think his mindset was to… He had already embraced the design thinking mindset where you test things out, you prototype it, and then if something doesn’t work, then you reiterate on it. He had a playful mindset himself, so that encouraged us to be bold and accept that. And I think that played a crucial role. He never expected us to be perfect. He didn’t say, if we walk into the room, we need to have answers to everything. That was a huge learning that I had from him.

Douglas:

Yeah. It also sounded like you were really curious throughout your tenure and just trying lots of different things and being persistent and following through on things, what helped you keep that drive and that curiosity and that willingness to explore new things? I could imagine some folks might lose steam or get frustrated or not stick through things. So what kept your passion alive there?

Varsha:

To be honest, that’s a question I keep asking myself even today, because I’m the kind who just jumps from one hobby to another. I don’t keep through with things. I’ve tried dancing, I’ve tried singing, I’ve done all sorts of things. But this is one thing that I think I’ve been doing it for six plus years now since the day I first walked into that room and learned about design thinking. Every time there is a workshop, every time there is some ideation session, I want to be the one who’s facilitating it. I want to be the one who’s driving it. I think one of the key things is when we walk into the room, there is a lot of chaos, there’s a lot of misalignment, and what do we do?

There’s a lot of confusion when we enter the room, and then by the end of it, people are so happy with the amount of ideas that were just generated and the amount of clarity that they get by the end of all those exercises and activities. And somewhere along the line, I think as we grow up, we got so used to doing things a certain way that we’ve lost touch with that creative side of the brain. As kids, we tried all sorts of things and we never stuck to a certain methodology or a structure, but I think it brings out that childish behavior, that childlike behavior, I shouldn’t say childish. But childlike curiosity, which makes the whole thing very special. And I think that’s kept me if I need to answer that question.

Douglas:

Yeah. It sounds like unlike some of the other things you’ve tried, this really connected in with something deep and meaningful that you just couldn’t let go of.

Varsha:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Douglas:

And so also noticed reading your alumni story, the arc of building creative culture across three countries. There was the group, they’re in Bangalore, then Poland and now Netherlands.

Varsha:

Yeah.

Douglas:

So I’m curious what you’ve learned about facilitation from doing this work across these three different cultures around how people show up in different ways or just anything you’ve noticed about the differences or the similarities even.

Varsha:

Yeah, I think when I was facilitating back in India… And also it was more around very technical teams. So one thing that I’ve noticed is technical folks are very rooted in a structure. They have a certain way of working and introducing creative ways of working is something new to them, and it’s not as acceptable to these folks. But when I moved to Poland and I started the design thinking club, I think there was a lot more acceptance on or curiosity around how does this work? What does this contain? I think when it comes to cultures, I think Poland has been a lot more accepting in terms of being playful, but I think the culture is also getting better in India where people are open now to newer ways of working. But there was this initial resistance, especially from technical folks where they said, “Hey, what are you making us do? What are these sticky notes? What are these activities and energizers that you’re making us do?” But yeah, over time I think there’s been an acceptance around these new ways of working, these new ways of thinking even.

Douglas:

Coming back to the technical folks having a bit of resistance early on. When you look back on that, what were some of the things that helped them connect in with the purpose or understand more deeply why that was important? Or was it getting to the other end and realizing that, oh, there’s value in this, or was it some clarity that they were getting along the way? What was it that do you think that really helped them?

Varsha:

Yeah, it is definitely the clarity that they get along the way where we… Highlighting the fact that no matter how good your technology is, if it doesn’t connect with your customer, then that’s going to flop. So telling them or making them understand that important fact has played a very crucial role. So especially when you say, we did a lot of these training programs for technical leaders, so aspiring solution architects and technical leaders, because they need to get out of that structured or single one way of thinking into now how do we bring innovation within our company, within our teams, and how do we change that culture within our teams. So once they saw how design thinking works, I think they were a lot more accepting, thinking that this is something we need to embrace and it’s new, but it’s something that we need to embrace. So, yeah.

Douglas:

Yeah. You’re making me think too if the technology folks start to realize that, oh, we’re making this technology for humans. We need to think about the experience they have, and in order to explore that, maybe we need to use some tools that have a bit more human connection

Varsha:

Yeah.

Douglas:

So that we can get in that mode of understanding and thinking about and maybe empathizing with other humans.

Varsha:

Yeah. And I think it also helped when our organization itself was renamed as customer experience, so that put the customer at the center of everything that we do. So I think that changed a lot of our mindsets as well.

Douglas:

Yeah, it’s fascinating too, that you bring that up. Just naming the group had an impact. ‘Cause if you think about how those folks were showing up early on, they might’ve just been resistant because they were confused. They’re like, where am I at? Why is this team doing this thing? How does it fit in to the bigger picture? How does this impact the work I’m doing? But then you reframe it, you tell a different story around the fact that, “Hey, we’re helping with customer experience.” Now they’re showing up in a different way with a different expectation, and they say, “Oh, this is going to help customer experience. I see why we might be thinking about things a little different or even interacting with ourselves a little bit different. We might need to do some make believe because the customer’s not here.” If we need to think about them, we might be in a different mindset.

Varsha:

And I feel like the culture shift comes a lot from top down. What are your leaders speaking? What are their core values? So customer centricity was one of the biggest value that we had. As we shifted names, we became the customer experience organization, and I also became part of the customer success team where we had to be in front of customers day in, day out. Our job was to understand what the customers need and how we can help them. So I think that also played a huge role in the shift of the mindset. Yeah.

Douglas:

Yeah. Also, I remember you saying that facilitation actually disrupted the hierarchy you’re used to. Can you talk a little bit more about what that means and how it showed up in the rooms that you held?

Varsha:

Yeah, so if you remember, I said that our director, who’s one of the senior guys in our organization, he was at the door inviting people and then he was smiling and he was just encouraging people to be more present and to be involved in the whole process. And then we had our managers, our team leaders on the same table that we were sitting in. So we had our be it our team leads or solution architects, so who are senior in the team, and someone who just joined the team also contributing to the ideas that they were trying to pool in. So they were all solving the same problem of how do we help the customer, but they all belong to different grades.

One was talking from the perspective of managing a team, a manager. And a senior solution architect, he was bringing in his perspective, and then there was a person who just joined the team and she was bringing in her own perspective of what she thinks is happening with the customer and how she’s dealing with things. So it was a round table rather than that long table where we sit according to our grades.

Douglas:

I love that shifting from the long table to the round table and maybe flattening power structures. I love it.

Varsha:

Absolutely. Yeah. And then I think power structure, when you say about that, I have seen where managers said, “We don’t mind sitting out from this because we know that the dynamics might change if we are present in the room.” And because they understand the purpose of say that particular workshop or meeting where they want their employees to be more authentic and speak out. And I’ve seen managers sit out from certain meetings and the dynamics of the rooms completely change. So that’s also very powerful.

Douglas:

Yeah, it’s so fascinating and amazing when leaders realize that dynamic is there and are willing to do what it takes to make sure that we can still move forward to subdue that a bit.

Varsha:

Yeah, yeah, and I think I’ve been fortunate where I’ve worked with leaders who understand that and they know that it’s not about them, it’s more about the culture that’s already present and the biases that are present. So in order to remove them, they need to be out of the meetings. So that’s been a good thing.

Douglas:

Yeah, got to love the leaders that believe in we, not me.

Varsha:

Yeah.

Douglas:

So you made the leap from Cisco to independent facilitator. What was going through your head during that messy middle? I’m sure it was a little bit… It’s got to be scary, those moments. I know when I started Voltage Control, I was like, oh my gosh, what am I doing? So I’m just kind of curious, how did you finally make that decision and what was going through your head?

Varsha:

It was definitely the messiest middle that I’ve been in. I mean, I’ve done over a hundred workshops and I’ve seen a lot of messy middles, but this was a messy middle in my life. So I think when I decided to quit my tenured job as an employee to become an entrepreneur or a independent consultant, firstly, I was super scared. There were days when I could not sleep just thinking about what am I doing? I didn’t tell this to anyone except for my husband. So it was just me and my husband discussing this because I didn’t want anybody else’s opinions to sort of mess with my thinking. And I think that was the best decision because I really wanted to know if this is what I really want to do. And once I had that clarity that yes, I have been doing these workshops for six years now.

This is not a hobby anymore. This is something that I really love doing. I think I can figure things out on my own if I get the right kind of support. I actually designed think that phase of my life, I think. So I literally sat down and did a sailboat exercise, and I said, “What are the challenges that I’m facing right now? What is the things that are pulling me back or holding me back? And then what are my wins? What is helping me at the moment?” So I sat and did a whole exercise on what I need to do. By the end of that workshop that I did with myself, I had an action plan for the next 90 days. From the day I put my papers, or I rather told my manager that I’m going to be quitting, I had three months time, so I knew exactly when I woke up, what are the things that I need to do in order for me to go through this messy middle.

So automatically, I think my brain was like, this is not a difficult task, you know exactly what you’re going to do when you wake up, and this is what you’ve achieved in a week’s time. So I did have these check-ins with my husband every week I remember and I said, “This is what I’ve achieved. Look.” And I just felt good about having that clarity on where I’m moving, and I actually wanted to name my business Chaos to Clarity because I love the name, because that’s how I always saw my teams moving from chaos into clarity. And that’s how I felt at that moment when everything was just so chaotic and confusing and I moved through that into a space of clarity. I think that’s how I overcame my messy middle, and it was a huge benefit knowing these kind of methodologies exist that eventually ground you. I think that’s how I felt once those three months were done.

Douglas:

That’s really incredible. And I would argue you need a good compass to move through the chaos and get to clarity. So I think you still kept the name in that spirit.

Varsha:

Yeah, I took off with something that I really loved as well. It took a lot. I had all my design thinking, all my toolbox, books out with me, and then I was sifting through all the pages and I keep writing down all the names that I thought could help in naming this business and eventually was Idea and then how do you guide people with these ideas. So Compass came in and I’m happy with the name.

Douglas:

Yeah. And I wanted to talk a little bit too about compasses and journeys. You came to Voltage Control. It all started through one phone call with Eric that led to the certification and then the summit, and then co-leading or leading the Amsterdam region. And also that’s been a little bit of a journey for you anyway around leadership. And I’m just curious, your leap into the Voltage Control community and leading the region, what did that leap into the leadership teach you? What did you learn as you were going through some of those motions?

Varsha:

A lot of learning. I keep telling my husband this, that the amount of learning that I’ve had in the past six months, I don’t think I’ve learned so much throughout my career time. Because it’s like I’ve been put on fast track because I think I have to do everything on my own now and I don’t have someone teaching me, but having a community is so… I realize how important it is, especially when you don’t have a team or a boss to tell you this is what you need to do and these are our goals and stuff like that. But in those three months, this messy middle, my first goals was to get a formal certification in facilitation itself. So that I think was the basis or the foundation over which everything else is built up. So I don’t think all this would’ve been possible if I didn’t know that I’m already good, but this has made me even better.

So that’s the confidence that the certification gave me. And being around other facilitators who do the same kind of work that I do, and especially seeing other facilitators… Because I think facilitators do this out of a space of love and passion for what they do. Most facilitators that I’ve been working with, even in the community or on my LinkedIn community, they’ve all been extremely helpful. And I think empathy is where they all operate from, and that’s how I think the certification itself helped. I think before I even enrolled myself, I was already part of the community and I said, “I want to volunteer,” because putting myself in a volunteer position helped me grow a lot more than if I hadn’t been there. I was leading the solopreneur or independent facilitators community at Voltage Control, and through that I learned how to do organic marketing. For example, I didn’t have a single post on LinkedIn during my professional career at Cisco, but then I realized how important it is to be visible to your network to make sure your work is seen by others.

And that’s when I decided that I’m going to do a weekly post of all the learnings that I’m going to learn through the certification, and it helped me keep accountable both on my marketing and also my learnings. So that was a great start to both learning and marketing and yeah, that’s how I think the certification played a huge role. Being a part of the community and volunteering at the community helped. I think anyone who’s come to me after that, I said, “Just go join the community first. See how the vibe is. Volunteer if you want to learn about facilitation and especially if you are starting on a new path in the facilitation space, this is a great space to be in.” I think that’s how it played a huge role.

Douglas:

Yeah, amazing. And looking ahead for what’s next. Gosh, I think it’s so much potential when you think about the moment you’re in and growing a business and whatnot, and I’m curious, what’s one hope or vision you have for the future of your work, either in your own practice or for the future of the field at large.

Varsha:

Yeah. And I think I realized as I was building the business and what I wanted to do, also the coaching calls with Eric helped a lot when I was trying to figure this out. I realized how much I love innovation. Also, people say innovation is a very broad term, but to me it’s about creating something new. It’s about using what you have and the creative powers that you’ve got to make the world a better place. And for me to be able to play a part in that is a huge win for me. And I think that is what keeps me driving. And I think our world has a lot of problems that can be solved and the place can be made a lot better than what it is now. And that’s what I see for my future and for the future of IdeaCompass at the moment.

Douglas:

As we come to a close here, I’d like to invite you to leave our listeners with a final thought.

Varsha:

That’s a deep question, final thoughts. I think if there’s one thing that I had to say is to my technical folks, I keep saying before every workshop, “Trust the process.” And if you are in any workshop, creative workshop like this, switch off the rational mindset and switch off the skeptic mindset to embrace what’s coming through in your workshop. It doesn’t matter if I’m facilitating or if there’s anyone else facilitating, because that makes a huge difference in the output of the workshop itself. I think that would be something that I really want my listeners to… If there are technical folks or if there are skeptical folks who are entering the workshop, that is something that I would like to tell.

Douglas:

I think we could all learn from that, right? Let’s put our guards down because our assumptions and all of our prior learnings inform those guards, and if we want to innovate, we got to put those guards down and be open to almost anything. And then we can of course put up the spectacles, pull up the guards, start to criticize stuff, but let’s wait a little bit before we start doing that and create some space for it. So I think that’s great advice, and not only for your techies, but for anybody, because I think we all get set in our ways and could use a dose of like, let’s ignore our best advice and try to come up with some good stuff here.

Varsha:

Absolutely. Yeah. I think the energy just shifts when people enter with that kind of mindset. And as facilitators, I’ve seen a lot of facilitators try their best to create an environment where those fears, where those biases are shut down. But as participants, if there is an effort from there end, then that’s a powerful workshop.

Douglas:

I couldn’t have said it better. Varsha, it’s been a pleasure chatting with you today. I hope we can do it again soon sometime.

Varsha:

Absolutely, Douglas, thank you so much for having me and having this wonderful platform for facilitators to share their learnings, their experiences. I love listening to your podcasts, and I hope there are many more other folks who can join the podcast and we learn from them.

Douglas:

Thanks for joining me for another episode of the Facilitation Lab Podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave us a review and be sure to subscribe and receive updates when new episodes are released. We love listener tales and invite you to share your facilitation stories. Send them to us on LinkedIn or via email. If you want to know more, head over to our blog where I post weekly articles and resources about facilitation, team dynamics and collaboration at voltagecontrol.com.