Our project, built over the span of a month and based on the feedback submitted by the company’s director and the person in charge of the Design Research department, was organized in the form of a Mindshake.
The main goal was to create a moment to rethink the team, the processes and creative forms inherent to the way they work; to put everything in perspective and to understand the baseline background from which they were coming to future interventions and to a new direction as a team and as a company.
We followed the ensuing plan:
- “Questioning the obvious” – what we take for granted and don’t feel the need to question. Is it possible to understand that there are different ways to do the same things and that this is the first step to thinking big?
- Skills – explore the personal strengths of each person that can be useful for the team and what each individual can ask/expect from the others. What are my “dark-sides” and how can I explore them?
- Proactivity – explore and distinguish the proactivity concept, put it in practice keeping in mind the tasks and processes fulfilled by each person and by the team, and find the blank spaces to sharpen everyone’s work and make it more productive.
- Common vision – how to encourage a permanent vision as a company and as a team to enable questioning the obvious, to put in practice skills and proactivity. Knowing what moves us and where we want to go.
Using techniques from Design Thinking itself, such as brainstorming or the Costumer Journey Map and always using visual aids (and billions of post-its), we began to occupy the room slowly creating more team, in small groups or all as one, standing or sitting on the floor debating, sitting in chairs listening, or even running through the place to activate.
After 8 hours, body tired and mind shaken, consciences were opened, the team was put in perspective and willing to begin a path of action so that changes can happen, feeling more aligned. On that day we were not seeking solutions. We tried to leave space to the “different is possible” and open clues brought by the team itself, using parts of the process of Design Thinking to work with a company that uses it as a working tool.