An Overview
A workshop in 4 parts
It used to be that we would say you can have it faster, better or cheaper; pick any two.
But that's not really an option going forward. We need to do faster, and better, and cheaper in order for us as an organization to reach our goals.
Innovation is one of those things that sometimes feels very elusive. It͛s not about some sort of a thunderclap or a lightning bolt in the middle of the night. When you sit up, bolt upright, and say "Eureka, I know what we need to do". (Not even in the corniest of movies!) Sometimes that might happen something like that, but that's not what we're going after. It's not repeatable or scalable.
What we can do is use a purposeful approach that will put us in the right place. That will set us up with the right tools and enable us to methodically, clearly and directly come up with innovations that will be of benefit to us. Either because we really have moved the ball forward, or we might be like Thomas Edison who said "I have not failed. I have merely found 10,000 ways to not create a light bulb." That's what we want to do. It also can be a very fun approach. I know that sounds funny, fun at work, but let's dig into it.
Our approach is a classic Flair and Focus, which means that in our Flair steps we'll drive for maximum volume of ideas and will not do any evaluation or editing of suggestions. More is better, quality or feasibility will not even be considered. In fact, we͛re going to encourage silly, flippant, and crazy ideas.
Then we'll move into a focus mode, where we͛ll identify the one component, aspect, or portion of our topic and will frame that as the focal point that we'll focus on.
We'll flair again as we brainstorm about all of the things that *could* move the needle on the issue we want to tackle. In fact, I suggest we want to include things that move the needle the wrong way, to make sure we are actually pushing the right button or pulling the right lever.
Then in the fourth and last step, we͛ll once again Focus on the approach that we͛re going to take. We like to call it ͞"running the experiment͟." We think it will work. We have a hypothesis of the problem and a proposed solution. So let's test that to confirm the result.
Now, let's get started!
Learn More
This is a portion of the Appendix from "Standing On Shoulders: A Leader's Guide to Digital Transformation".
It is taken directly from a workshop I do on design thinking. It is lightweight enough to use for team retrospectives, and still powerful enough to use for product, service, or process development.