Cecilia Foxworthy

December: UNDERSTAND, DEFINE & IDEATE

 

UNDERSTAND

Values Mapping

• Preliminary interviews suggested a possible disconnect between the assumptions filed staff had versus assumptions office staff and owners had around overarching company values. I separated the two groups to simultaneously define perceived company values. The teams went through silent ideation, group share-outs, and theme clustering. Core questions were: 1) What do office staff, field staff, and owners feel are the overarching values of the company, and 2) are ideas similar or is there a disconnect?

Post the Path

• Seperately, office staff and field staff were charged with answering the question ‘How does a client get a sweater from AHA Bolivia - what is the whole process from initial client communication to delivery of the sweater’? The purpose of the exercise was to: 1) map a common process, 2) appreciate everyone’s role in the process, and 3) identify pain points for which the group can find solutions. The teams first silently generated post-it steps of their individual processes, then posted on the wall in a group share-out, and finally built on the steps by identifying holes in group discussions. To identify major pain points for later ideation, individuals were asked to vote for their top three pain areas along the finished process map. Groups then switched to review the process map the other had created. Office staff reviewed the field staff map and discovered they were unaware of several major steps in the field staff process. Field staff reviewed the office staff map and discovered they were generally aware of all steps needed to deliver a finished product to the client.

 

DEFINE

Pain Point Identification and Exploration

All voting was tallied and priority pain points were selected as the focus for the remainder of the week’s exercises. For each pain point, I assigned a different type of deeper exploration exercise to get at the root of the issues. Pain points with associated exploration exercises were:

• #1 Raw material ordering process is cumbersome and has long lead times

  • Stakeholder Exercise: The team maps out all stakeholder associated with the raw materials ordering process, answering the 1) who is responsible for the process, 2) who can obstruct the process, 3) who benefits from the process, and 4) what outsiders does the process depend on? The steps taken between all stakeholders were mapped with Post-its and then the group identified company points of control.

• #2 Field staff have challenges with on-time delivery of finished samples and production

  • Anti Problem: The team explored ways to prevent field staff from delivering finished orders on-time and then discussed insights.

• #3 Continuous quality control rejections for production items

  • This pain point was explored via open discussion, with one lead visually capturing the main reasons for the pain point at the front of the room.

• #4 Field staff payments are laborious, time consuming, and often come late

  • This pain point was again explored via open discussion, with one lead visually capturing the main reasons for the pain point at the front of the room.

 

IDEATE

Pain Point Ideation

The team ideated solutions to previously determined pain points via a variety of different exercises designed to keep the energy high and ideas flowing. Pain points with associated ideation exercises were:

• #1 Raw material ordering

  • Straightforward Ideation: The team ideated on Post-its individually, shared-out, then built on ideas with group ideation. Idea honing was accomplished by grouping ideas into Good, Better, Best buckets.

• #2 Delivery of finished samples and production

  • Brainwriting: The team picked one of the reasons causing the pain point (previously determined). Each individual wrote one solution idea to that reason on a card. The person to the left of each individual added to the original idea. This passing and adding happened a total of three times before moving on to the next reason for the pain point. The best ideas were picked by dot voting, with each person getting two votes.

• #3 Quality control rejections

  • Air Time: Each individual wrote a ‘How might we...’ question addressing this pain point at the top of their paper. They all folded their papers into an airplane and launched them across the room. The person that caught the airplane wrote one solution to the ‘How might we...’ question on the paper. This was repeated five times to ensure enough ideas were generated for each guiding question.  The team then broke out into smaller groups, split the airplane sheets, and added more ideas to each sheet via group brainstorming. All ideas were shared out and voted on using the $100 allocation test in which all solutions were assigned a dollar amount in accordance with their perceived value of solving the pain point.

• #4 Field staff payments issues

  • 3-12-3: Participants spent three minutes generating nouns, verbs and adjectives that described the challenges associated with the pain point on separate cards, and then mixed all cards together. Everyone broke up into pairs and picked three cards at random from the stack. Each pair had twelve minutes to develop a thought-out solution to the challenge highlighted on their cards - this could be sketched, written out, or storyboarded. The pairs then had three minutes each to present their ideas to the larger group. The group voted on the best idea and then spent an additional chunk of time building on the winning idea.