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.

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.

At the end of the day, we needed to take some time away from the urgent and focus on the important.

If you’re not familiar with what we do, Favor is an on-demand delivery company that lets consumers get anything they want delivered in under an hour. How do we make this happen? We have a community of thousands of delivery drivers (we call them Runners) who are arguably our most important stakeholders. At the end of the day, happy Runners deliver great service to our customers, so we spend a lot of our time thinking about how to serve our Runners.

We brought in Voltage Control, a company here in Austin that facilitates sprints, to lead us through a structured week of activities to help us improve the earnings (and happiness!) of our Runners. The process was fun, fruitful, and we found that the impact continues beyond the short time we spent in the sprint.

Our Challenge
INCREASE AVERAGE HOURLY EARNINGS PER RUNNER BY 10% WHILE ALSO DECREASING RUNNERS WHO INDICATE THAT RUNNING IS FRUSTRATING BY 50%.

The Sprint

While the ideal sprint length is one week, we only had four days to dedicate, but we made it work in the shorter time span. Here’s what our week looked like and our activities each day…

DAY 1

We started our week by examining our long-term goal. We refined it by asking where we wanted to be in year with this project and noting questions that we hoped to answer. We agreed that we would aim to both increase runner’s earnings and decrease their frustration.

We spoke to key members of the Favor team with deep understanding of a Favor Runner’s journey to discover current pain points and areas of strength. As we listened to experts and identified areas that we needed to improve, we crafted “How Might We?” notes, reframing problems as opportunities.

We each used notation and sketching processes to craft a final sketch of a potential solution. We hung these on the wall to examine individually.

DAY 2

We reviewed each individual’s sketch and voted on areas of promise. We then selected one sketch as a potential solution to prototype and chose features from other sketches that we wanted to integrate. With all of this in mind, we created a storyboard to plan our user’s journey through our prototype.

DAY 3

We divvied up the prototyping work to be done into different roles, with some people gathering content, some building the screens in Sketch, and some stitching the screens together into a usable prototype.

Meanwhile, we worked to create a thorough, scenario-based testing plan of our prototype and recruited real, experienced Favor Runners to come in and test our solution on Day 4.

DAY 4

We tested our prototype with users in a makeshift research lab environment. In one room, the interviewer talked with a subject, while in another, the rest of team could watch the Runner and the prototype, discuss, and take notes. We compared notes looking for consensus and documented these insights to inform our next prototype.

Real Results

In only four days, we were able to find a new direction for the next iterations of our Runner app. We’re looking forward to bringing some of the best ideas we came up in the sprint to life. More importantly, we’re thrilled to know what Runners DON’T value so we can focus our energies on the pieces of the app that matter. Here are some of the key outcomes our our Design Sprint:

INSIGHTS: We revealed 35 individual insights into what our Runners value, need, and expect out of the next Runner app.

ALIGNMENT: We got cross-functional buy-in by assembling a diverse sprint team of Favor employees from 5 different specialties.

VALIDATION: We tested out new features and UI elements prior to sinking development time and money into building them.

“We started with all these ideas about what our users wanted and needed in the next version of our app. The design sprint made us rapidly validate these assumptions instead of getting months down the road and realizing we were designing things our users didn’t want or need. In one week, we were able to build a solid foundation for our redesign from real user feedback..”

-Meg Nidever, UX Designer, Favor Delivery

Lasting Change

One of the coolest things about our Design Sprint is that its effects are lasting far beyond the four days we spent. It reminded our team how valuable prototyping and early user feedback can be in building great designs. It also helped expose some of our top performers in other departments to the product design process.

If you have a high performing team with a big project that needs a jumpstart, I can’t recommend a Design Sprint enough.

The post Favor Improves Employee Experience & Earnings in a 4-Day Sprint appeared first on Voltage Control.

In addition to facilitating Design Sprints for larger enterprises, I mentor and coach smaller companies, including non-technical founders just getting started. These early-stage entrepreneurs often come to me hoping that I can help them determine which vendor to select to build their MVP. This is the point where I begin telling them about Design Sprints and rapid prototyping.

While a full blown 5-day Design Sprint is not always appropriate for an early stage venture, rapid prototyping and testing with real users is essential to controlling costs. Most startups these days are aware of lean startup techniques and are focused on customer discovery techniques. Once they have confidence they genuinely understand the problem space and have validated their hypothesis on the customer pain, I see them quickly jumping to build their MVP before they’ve done any solution validation. Rapid prototyping is a quick and reliable way to perform this critical solution validation.

When considering Design Sprint for an early stage company, think about the number of potential participants and the amount of upfront research that you have completed. If there are only two employees, advisors, or other stakeholders working on the project, a full 5-Day Design Sprint isn’t necessary. Likewise, If there are enough potential attendees but there has been lots of upfront research, and a possible solution is already in the sites, a shortened process may be more appropriate.

If a full Design Sprint is not appropriate or someone is only ready to test the waters, I advise beginning with a simple three-step process. Spend as much time on each step as you feel comfortable and feel free to take breaks between steps as needed.:

Step 1 — Decide & Storyboard

Review your solution in detail and build a storyboard.

Step 2 — Prototype

Build your prototype

Step 3 — Test

Test with five users

StealthCo

In late August I got a call from a local Austin entrepreneur who was the co-founder of a successful Austin startup and is currently in stealth mode with his original co-founder. He was calling to ask me for advice on hiring engineers. They had just finished a deep dive into customer discovery and were excited to put their learnings to the test as an MVP. Rather than helping them recruit engineers, I quickly jumped into explaining the Design Sprint process to them. He hung up the phone and bought the book. When he and his co-founder came to the Austin Design Sprint Meetup 10 days later, they had already gone through a rapid-fire version of a Sprint to understand the process better.

After having tested the waters a bit, it was clear to them that they needed some guidance. My presentation shed some light on some areas where they could improve. They saw the value in having me facilitate and were on a budget, so they asked if I would be willing to coach them each morning and check-in at the end of the day. I’ve known them for awhile, and I love their dedication and passion. I was curious to learn more about applying Design Sprints in this context, so I agreed.

At this point, StealthCo was only four people. They came to me curious about the minimum number of people for a Design Sprint and worried that their CEO wouldn’t have time to participate. After chatting through it with them, we decided to add three external experts and that it was critical for the CEO to attend. In fact, he initially planned to join part-time, and after day one decided to attend the full Sprint. Luckily, one of their external experts is a UX researcher, so they had a skilled interviewer to conduct the interviews on Friday.

“We are always looking for ways to save time and get into the heads of our customers. When Douglas told me about Design Sprints, I immediately dove in. Our first Sprint opened our eyes to a new audience’s needs and allowed us to save resources by trashing a project early. Design Sprints have become an important methodology in our product development process.” — Co-Founder, StealthCo

I met with the two co-founders and their facilitator each morning for 30 minutes before the other attendees arrived to discuss expectation and process for the day. I stayed for another 30 minutes to make sure things were off to a good start. At the end of each day, they called me to debrief me and ask me questions about how they might course correct. While a little bumpy, they made it through the process with actionable insights. Now, they are running this process all on their own to drive their solution validation process.

Servable

Servable is software that helps businesses flexibly manage and pay teams of independent contractors. I met co-founders Shelby and Zach after an introduction from Justin Halloran, a local angel investor. We meet weekly, and I advise them on everything from big-picture issues like product strategy down to technical seo recruiting, their tech stack, and even nitty gritty problems that are stumping their engineers.

About a month ago we were chatting about Jobs-To-Be-Done and other product management techniques, and of course, Design Sprints came up. Having gotten them excited about Design Sprints, I encouraged them to attend a Design Sprint essentials workshop I was hosting during Startup Week. They attended the workshop, and were ready to run a Design Sprint.

They decided to focus on their event vendors using the rapid prototyping tools from day 4 and day 5 of the Sprint process. They already had an idea of how they wanted to solve the problem and were hoping to learn more about how customers and prospects responded to this potential solution. I referred them to Eli Wood, the founder of Reagent Design, an Austin based Design firm. Eli worked with them over a weekend to adopt some Design Sprint exercises to produce a prototype and quickly put it to the test.

“Using this augmented Design Sprint process and getting user feedback in 3 days was a game changer for us. Observing users in this way feels like a jump to the future and has fundamentally changed the way we prioritize our roadmap.” — Zach Fragapane, Head of Product, Servable

On the first day, Eli and his partner Jeff came over to the Servable offices, and they built a user journey map with a focus on a small business owner who manages teams of independent contractors. From there, they hand sketched wireframes starting with the first customer touch all the way through activation for a total of 25 frames. In the afternoon, they selected the three most critical frames and created solution sketches for them. Overnight, Eli and Jeff created high fidelity mockups. On the second day, they reviewed mocks, made improvements, and then stitched them into a prototype.

If you are an early stage startup and looking to more quickly validate your solutions and generate new ideas rapidly, consider adopting some or all of the Design Sprint exercises. While a 5-day Design Sprint is ideal in many cases, you may find value in using the prototyping exercises in a more ad-hoc manner until you graduate to needing the more extended process.

The post Design Sprints for Early Stage Companies appeared first on Voltage Control.

A few months ago, I started my new company, ZenBusiness. I founded it with the belief that insights from our potential customers would be absolutely fundamental to business decisions. For this reason, I became interested in the methodologies behind the Design Sprint process, as made famous by the folks at Google Ventures. I did my research, read the book Sprint by Jake Knapp and then asked around for advice on hosting my first Sprint.

I serendipitously ran into Voltage Control’s Douglas Ferguson as a part of my regular networking “rounds” in Austin and we started chatting about what he’s learned from facilitating Sprints for numerous start-ups. From reading Knapp’s book, I knew that it would be important to have an experienced facilitator for our first Sprint, so I asked Douglas to help. He also recommended a fantastic designer as his co-facilitator; together they made an amazing combo and covered everything in terms of brain power—from marketing and branding expertise to deep knowledge of software and user experience.

Here’s a few of my top learnings from our first Design Sprint with Douglas:

1. The process helps you identify the right question to answer. One of the first things we did in our Sprint was map out the customer journey and every key touchpoint. It’s a deceptively simple task, but putting this flow into a visual form allowed the team to really hone in on which question we should answer through our Sprint. As a new company, it can be overwhelming to know where to focus our energy. We decided that we would spend our time looking at the initial customer sign-up experience because it would give us the most “bang for our buck.” Being new to the market, our most pressing problem is, naturally, the top of the funnel and acquiring first-time customers.

2. An outside facilitator allows the team to focus on outcomes, not “doing it right.” One of the benefits of doing a Design Sprint is that all of our critical team members were together in one room, focused on solutions, not just talking. With Douglas leading us through the process, our team was free to work on the tasks at hand—fleshing out our targeted customer segment, building a prototype and testing it with real customers. Douglas gave us the structure and leadership we needed to fully engage in the process. With his help, we had no worries about doing it right; we only had to worry about getting our ideas right for our customers.

3. We learned enough to lead ourselves next time. ZenBusiness’ first Sprint was a great success.The basic assumptions we tested —Does anyone want to buy our product? Do we have a market?—were answered with an overwhelming “yes.” At the end of the week, Douglas left us with some very actionable product changes to make. The cherry on top was that we had learned the Sprint process enough to give it a shot ourselves next time. Soon, we’re embarking on our second Design Sprint and, this time, we are comfortable facilitating ourselves. It is a testament to Douglas’ guidance and leadership: the students can now take care of themselves.

My parting advice is this: Don’t think twice about using an expert to help with your first Design Sprint. It will undoubtedly save you time, money, and by the end, your team will have learned this transformative process so you can lead yourselves in, and into, the future.

Don’t think twice about using an expert to help with your first Design Sprint

The post The importance of an experienced facilitator for your first Design Sprint. appeared first on Voltage Control.

I wrote a story, Twyla’s Design Sprint Journey a few weeks ago and the Google Ventures design team graciously agreed to host it on their Sprint Stories publication. I can’t say enough good things about those guys and they continue to impress me with their generosity and focus on building community around the Design Sprint process.

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