Agile Collaboration and Design Thinking

Our interactions, whether one-to-one, or in team meetings, all have the potential to inspire, energise, empower and encourage us, and those around us.

That they usually fall a long way short of this is largely due to outdated paradigms which limit understanding and skill sets.

We have been working for over 30 years to equip organisations to address this. Our goal is to dramatically improve the quality of business interactions, particularly in teams and how they meet together. Design thinking forms a very large part of that.

Our approach has been to shift the paradigm of ‘meeting’ from a noun to a verb. To enable people to see the activity more clearly as a designed process to inspire, energise, empower and encourage.

A key part of this is the recognition that the only real product of meeting together is creating a difference in people. Everything else is the difference those people then go on to make – as a result of the insight, understanding, commitment and confidence the meeting generates within them.The faster and more reliably that difference is made, the more agile the team as a result.

Effective agile collaboration – effective ‘meeting’ – is about inspiring maximum difference in minimum time. The design of the meeting is the biggest factor in achieving that.

typical ‘meetings’ use inefficient processes

The fact is, traditional meetings are not designed to achieve this. Their pattern stems back hundreds of years, to a time when they were required to maintain autocratic control over hierarchical structures.

But our organisations are no longer like that, and our collaborations need to align, energise, empower and encourage autonomous self-directed activists. And there are much better ways to do this than with the meeting practices we typically experience in organisations.

The psychological insights of the last 70 years (a period of increasing empowerment) have spawned hundreds of resources, tools and techniques. Each designed to better engage, align and energise team thinking. Unfortunately, the majority of current managers and leaders are poorly trained in their selection and use. As a result, they are totally overlooked in most circumstances, and their potential is lost. Furthermore, as a consequence, the next generation of leaders appear largely unaware they exist.

shifting the ‘meeting’ paradigm with design thinking

Our approach to addressing this is as follows: Firstly, to free people from being trapped in the paradigm of traditional meeting patterns. Secondly, to awaken a better understanding of of the wealth of powerful, easy-to-use alternative activities. And thirdly, to inspire people to adopt the following simple design steps:

Design thinking applies at two levels here. Firstly, in the design of the meeting or collaboration process itself. And secondly, within the application of that process, as the team work toward the best solution.

There are, as previously stated, hundreds of tools that can be selected and used to radically improve the effectiveness of collaboration. But the reality is, even starting with just a handful of them can make a huge difference. And it can start a chain reaction which transforms collaboration in your business.

We make such tools freely and instantly available, requiring little or no preparation. For example, tools that make breakout sessions in virtual meetings easier and more participative, with higher quality outputs.

Our Facilitative Leadership Training has a large component on facilitating the use of these tools

As a start point in adopting these tools, you may find this selection chart useful.

Thinking tools of this type not only enrich the dialogue and commitment of individual teams, they serve to provide consistent ways of working across teams. This makes it easy for new members to come into teams, and other members to move across teams.

It also makes it quicker for new teams to get up and running, and for people to play a productive role from the outset. Thereby enabling more agile ways of working across the organisation.

Furthermore, the tools work even more easily and effectively in an online environment. Thereby, they support Agile to more easily engage external partners wherever they are situated. And they also support more flexible working patterns and WFH. They also lend themselves to incorporation within Insight Landscaping.

Within the meeting toolchest, you will find free and easy-to-use tools and techniques to support all of the aspects of strategy engagement: visualising adventure; engagement frameworks; shaping culture; facilitation and collaboration.

The tools we refer to above are curated in our Meeting Toolchest. The sections within it that you may find particularly helpful are:

And there is also our Breakout Magic guidance for those just starting out, experimenting with bits of it to build their confidence as they go.

To explore this topic further, feel free to contact us. We find our own thinking is continually sharpened and enriched by the questions people ask, and by the discussions that emerge from it.