In the Design Sprint process, the interview is a crucial step to test your prototype.
This method provides a deliberate and scientific approach to conduct effective interviews. A consistent process and unbiased mindset yield realistic feedback. Effective scoring gives clarity to the results and primes you to make strategic decisions.
The “Penny Game” allows the team to learn through self-organization and observation; specifically, that smaller batches can deliver value to the customer faster. In addition, the game demonstrates that the size of the batches has a direct impact on the delivery. With a large batch, the Workers feel more pressure on themselves to get the batch to the next Worker; with smaller batches, the pressure is lower but more constant.
Use this exercise to introduce people to analyse and solve problems together. Everyone feels engaged and is part of the solution.
This step-by-step method is intended to facilitate the co-creation of actual measures and steps towards change within a team or an organisation. All participants are involved and develop all the ideas together. You have idea owners but the content is created through a process where everyone is involved in all ideas.
The most common causes of dysfunctional meetings can be eliminated: unclear purpose or lack of a common one, time wasters, restrictive participation, absent voices, groupthink, and frustrated participants. The process of designing a storyboard draws out a purpose that becomes clearer as it is matched with congruent microstructures. It reveals who needs to be included for successful implementation. Storyboards invite design participants to carefully define all the micro-organizing elements needed to achieve their purpose: a structuring invitation, space, materials, participation, group configurations, and facilitation and time allocations. Storyboards prevent people from starting and running meetings without an explicit design. Good designs yield better-than-expected results by uncovering tacit and latent sources of innovation.
This is a tool that you can use thought a whole change process of a team or a company. It is strength oriented and gives you both orientation of the facilitation and summary of the common status of the process.
Individual reflection helps to pick apart complex experiences so that the successes of the experience can be repeated and the failures can be avoided in the future. The format is flexible, taking you through key stages of the reflection process, and ending with key action points.
Ideation and Concept Development is a process for groups to work creatively and collaboratively to generate creative ideas. It’s a general approach that can be adapted and customized to suit many different scenarios. It includes basic principles for idea generation and several steps for groups to work with. It also includes steps for idea selection and development.
Seeds begin to shape what emerges during a time of silence and reflection. Seeds are small personal notations, but they hold the potential for deep change. This practice is especially useful after a process of Guided Journaling as a way of identifying what resonated most strongly from the “field of the future.”
The purpose of a retrospective is to reflect on the process of the team’s collaboration, rather than on the content of work itself. This opening icebreaker helps participants to get in a reflective mood and share their thoughts and feelings.
An Empathy Walk develops your capacity to “hold space” for someone who is very different from you and establish a relationship across a significant boundary. It is adapted from the work of MIT Professor Emeritus Ed Schein, who has shaped the field of organizational culture, learning, and leadership over the past 50 years.
You can eliminate or mitigate common bottlenecks that stifle performance by sifting your group’s portfolio of activities, identifying which elements are starving for resources and which ones are rigid and hampering progress. The Ecocycle makes it possible to sift, prioritize, and plan actions with everyone involved in the activities at the same time, as opposed to the conventional way of doing it behind closed doors with a small group of people. Additionally, the Ecocycle helps everyone see the forest AND the trees—they see where their activities fit in the larger context with others. Ecocycle Planning invites leaders to focus also on creative destruction and renewal in addition to typical themes regarding growth or efficiency. The Ecocycle makes it possible to spur agility, resilience, and sustained performance by including all four phases of development in the planning process.
