Impact Week Rwanda 2017

A Design Thinking Learning Adventure

In the following, I would like to summarize some of my personal learnings and impressions of the days and weeks of the Impact Week Rwanda 2017 and especially of the preparations of this event: I explored new roles and responsibilities outside of my comfort zone, I experienced the power of cross-company learning and I saw big opportunities and also challenges when teaching and applying Design Thinking far away from the well-known corporate creative environments.

Three years of Impact Week

The Impact Week Rwanda 2017 was the third time that I visited Africa not only for pleasure and personal challenges (like my hike on top of the Kilimanjaro in February 2017), but also as a Design Thinking expert and enthusiast.

I started this journey in 2015 as a team member of the first Impact Week in Kenya. We kicked off this initiative to motivate and support young people in Africa to believe in their own creative powers and the opportunities to start their own businesses and to let them experience a “new”, or at least another, way of learning and working together to solve the problems they tackle in their lives, families, societies and countries on a daily basis.

The following year, I was responsible for the overall training, workshop planning and moderation during the second Impact Week, which again took place in Kenya.

In this second iteration, we also added a two-days training for local teachers and professors to become Design Thinking coaches. In combination with the opportunity to directly apply the learnings from the training during the following workshop days with the students, the teachers and professors understood the benefits of acting more like coaches than classical teachers.

Now in the third year, the Impact Week was organized in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, and was conducted in cooperation with the Technical High School of the SOS Children´s Villages. This time, I took on an overall co-leading role.

While the first two Impact Weeks had been more or less private activities for me, this year I received the opportunity to do them as part of my job as a strategic design consultant at the SAP AppHaus Heidelberg.

As SAP had committed itself to actively support the 17 UN Sustainability Goals (SDG’s), and we as a team within the SAP Design department also want to use our design and Design Thinking skills for social projects, the Impact Week was a perfect opportunity to do so.

I am very thankful that I am able to do these kind of projects as part of my corporate job.

Explore new roles to find the right ones

As written above, I left my well-known Design Thinking workshop preparation and moderation role for the Impact Week in Rwanda this year. I decided to do this to learn something new and to take on more responsibilities for the overall event.

Therefore, my co-lead Jens and I did not work on the right agenda, meaningful inputs about certain aspects in Design Thinking or the best methods or tools for a particular team exercise, but we were in charge of everything around that: Like the alignment with our local partner, the nomination of the senior coaches, the team-building before the trip, the logistics for both the participants from Europe and also a range of materials that we brought with us to Rwanda. During the event in Kigali, my daily tasks included the organization of drinking water for all of us, the transportation back and forth from our guest house to the Technical High school and, every evening, feedback rounds with the whole team at our guesthouse. Furthermore, I set up alignment discussions with the core organization team and was responsible for everything else that came up.

In general, most of it went well (at least the participants were not too thirsty all the time) with some parts being more fun and others being more challenging for me. Overall, I recognized what kind of tasks and responsibilities really motivate and fulfill me: Being in contact with people and working closely with them.

Going back to the place I love most in my work

This is definitely not a completely new learning and perspective for me, but the weeks and months before and during the Impact Week in Kigali really confirmed this personal realization for me. I am glad and proud that I explored this new role and I am conscious and honest enough to admit that next time, I want to go back to the place I love most in my work: The workshop arena — interacting, motivating and inspiring the participants with all I have and know and with the deep trust that they will be also able to go beyond their well-known roles and boundaries.

Real collaboration needs real communication — proven again!

I shared my overall lead role with Jens. The core organization team consisted of five motivated and skilled people. We had seven very experienced senior coaches from different companies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The 10+ junior coaches came from different backgrounds in communications, marketing, training and education and were all very eager to learn as much as they can and to experience something new. Last but not least, three Kenyan coaches, who we knew from having worked together during the previous two Impact Weeks, also joined our team.

In total, we were almost 25 highly skilled, motivated, definitely nice and emphatic people — who was a real pleasure for me to work with.

Of course, I know the importance of good and regular communication, especially in such diverse teams. I even talk about this during my Design Thinking trainings, show best practices like the “Feedback Burger” and give recommendations to do reflection rounds and feedback sessions in general.

But nevertheless — and surprisingly or not — we of course experienced issues with it. Talking about it is always easier than doing it in real situations. We definitely did not communicate enough in the organization team, sometimes too late and sometimes not honestly enough. And sometimes I was also not courageous enough to discuss critical topics with my co-lead on time.

The good thing: In most cases, we realized the communication issue early enough and were able to react accordingly, like at our spontaneous meetings in the garden of our cozy guesthouse in Kigali, which often happened at night.

But take it seriously! Good communication never happens without effort. Take responsibility for it, plan enough time and then do it. And do it again. It sounds so simple, but it can be very challenging to do.

It´s not about methods, it´s about learning.

In Rwanda, we had a very diverse group of people. We had participants that were 15-year-old shy teenagers with very basic English skills, 18-year-old extroverted high school students and experienced alumnis, who had already started their own companies. In addition to this, the group included teachers from the Technical High School and employees from both government institutions and local NGOs as junior coaches. In total, we had around 120 locals as participants and junior coaches, who worked within 18 teams with the methods and tools we had prepared beforehand.

And although we did, from my point of view, a really good job preparing all materials and inputs, I often noticed big question marks in the faces of our participants because we had probably overwhelmed them with details about interview guidelines, personas, point-of-views or the correct brainstorming questions in these moments. On the other hand, I heard laughing and saw a lot of energy and enthusiasm as soon as the participants started working in the teams: Teams, in which the shy teenager, the extroverted high school student and the experienced alumni worked together at eye-level in a funny, relaxed but focused, often very visual and definitely creative working style.

Each group was supported and coached by one of the teachers, who often experienced a totally new way of teaching in this role. This was in stark contrast to the classical “I tell you what you have to learn” style, which still seems to be the norm in African schools, as I had easily observed when walking through the different buildings and class rooms on the campus.

I believe these (learning) experiences are most probably the real eye-openers and take-aways for both, the team members and the teachers, and I can image to focus much more on these aspects in future Impact Weeks (e.g. by planning even more time for feedback and reflection rounds in the teams and with the senior coaches) instead of “just teaching” Design Thinking methods and tools.

The power of cross-company learning

By the way, “learning more about how to learn” was also a big topic for the other (senior) coaches and participants from Europe, as we all experienced during the time we worked, discussed and stayed together in Rwanda. This was magnified by the cross-company way we worked together, coming from different firms like SAP, Nestlé, Erste Bank, Creaholic, MHP- A Porsche Company, Lufthansa or Brussels Air.

It was much more than just presenting best practices or project success stories during a conference or having discussions during a one-day meetup. It was a real project with all ups and downs and with a lot of room for discussions and sharings in smaller and bigger rounds: During the workshop days, during the time we explored Kigali and Rwanda or during our time at our lovely guesthouse.

This cross company learning about Design Thinking is definitely a big takeaway for all of us and there are already first plans on how to extend this in 2018, e.g. as part of the Design at Business learning and training activities.

Outside the comfort zone is outside the comfort zone — be prepared!

One of the first slides in my standard presentation for my Design Thinking formats shows a nice visual of the well-known mantra “the magic happens outside the comfort zone”. I use this to prepare the participants for the next hours or days, as a good Design Thinking activity moves indeed everybody a little bit outside his or her (corporate) comfort zone.

Rwanda was in many ways far outside my comfort zone: The role as co-leader, which was much more challenging for me than I had expected beforehand. The uncertainty in so many ways (especially in the weeks and days before the start of the Impact Week). My conscious “step back” from my quite familiar field in preparing and moderating a Design Thinking format as written above. My high (and too high) expectations of the quality of everything we did there.

All of these aspects (and there were even more) made this Impact Week a real challenge for me, to be honest.

What I learned through this journey outside my comfort zone: It is really ok and no absolutely understandable to get a little bit lost from time to time! But take care of yourself from the very beginning and prepare yourself for this adventure in the right way: For example, with the right companions like Jens, Angela, Sabine or Jörn, who always helped me with honest feedback, valuable tips, concrete actions or just active listening. Or a good mentor like Michael, who had organized the first two Impact Weeks in Kenya and who had always a good proposal at hand or, at least, showed never-ending optimism. Or moments of “healthy egoism”, for example when I decided to skip a wedding invitation in order to get some time for resting at home during the “hot phase” of the preparations of the Impact Week.

On some level, I definitely know the importance of this kind of preparation and support and, looking to countless heroes and their journeys in books or movies, I can give a lot of examples for it. However, during my Impact Week adventure, I — in an almost painful way — had to learn again (!) that “just knowing” is not enough. You have to take it seriously from the beginning to ensure that your personal journey also ends in a happy end.

Design Thinking all around the world?

From the very beginning, Design Thinking as a methodology and working culture was used as the central piece of the Impact Weeks “to foster entrepreneurship and intercultural exchange”, as written in our mission statement.

And after three years of Impact Weeks in, by now, four different countries, we have created a really good and professional Design Thinking training and workshop format, including state-of-the-art learning materials, print-outs and documentation.

We trained around 60 local teachers and professors to become Design Thinking coaches, we had almost 500 local participants in total and we brought over 50 Design Thinking experts and enthusiasts from Europe to Kenya, Rwanda, Nigeria or Columbia. Definitely well done!

It is great to see that the coaches we had trained last year in Kenya and who joined us partly also for the Impact Week in Rwanda just recently finished their first “own” Impact Week some days ago. This is definitely a perfect example for this kind of “impact” we would like to create. Especially when considering that these coaches also use and live a lot of the attitude and working culture that we show in the Design Thinking trainings and workshops in their “daily job” as teachers and professors at the Africa Nazarene University (ANU).

On the other hand, I am still not sure whether “Design Thinking” is really the best answer to the real questions and problems people in Kenya, Rwanda, Nigeria or Columbia experience. Is it naive or overbearing to believe that something I do and use in my daily job with big companies can and should “simply” be re-used in completely different environments, audiences and cultures? Especially with learnings like above about the question, whether we should “teach” methods or “another way of learning”?

In general, I still strongly believe in the power of Design Thinking to motivate and positively influence people to believe in their own creative confidence to actively shape and design their life, their environment, their countries. Which is definitely something all of our participants in the different countries can use and build on.

However, I also believe that we have to invest more time in the preparation of an Impact Week to understand the real needs or challenges of the local participants even better. For example, by staying much longer in the different countries to get a better overview of the local conditions or by running preparation or scoping workshops with the local partners. Furthermore, we have to improve our cooperation with local experts from NGO´s, development assistance or the government to ensure that we do not only bring “Design Thinking” to the country but actually initiate something that really helps the people and creates real impact.

Life is great. Appreciate it.

I had the chance to work and learn a lot from different people from various countries. I had great conversations with African teenagers, local entrepreneurs and business leaders and other residents. I danced to Rwandan Hip-Hop and enjoyed fast rides on a motorcycle up and down the hills of Kigali. I visited Gorillas in the jungle of Congo and felt touched by their peaceful and empathic way of living together. I climbed an active volcano up and down — and had a delicious dinner at the crater there. I relaxed on a heavenly beach. And in the end, I arrived safe and healthy back at home.

In contrast to that, I also saw the pure madness people can do to each other during my visit of the genocide museum in Kigali. In the Congo, I watched young boys holding weapons like toys. I saw a lot of people just sitting around in front of their handmade huts all day long without any real perspective. Or listened to stories from our climbing guide about his struggles to just earn the money his family needs day by day.

Overall, I am very thankful for all of these positive, challenging and also difficult experiences! They helped me appreciate the way I live and work at my home in Germany even more again.

Sometimes I forget the many things I have in my life, when struggling with my daily problems and challenges, which are definitely also there and which I do not want to deny in general. But I am healthy, have a family that supports me and two wonderful children that can learn and grow in the direction they want. I have some good friends to chat, dance with or to just enjoy life with. I live in a wonderful home in a nice city: With a lot of sun, security and beautiful nature around. I have a job that is often more fun than work, where I can earn good money and that even gives me the freedom to run projects like the Impact Week as part of it. Of course, not everything in my life is perfect but I am really grateful for how it is.

Perhaps this is, besides all the outcomes, learnings and impacts I mentioned in the last chapters, the biggest personal impact of “my” Impact Week Rwanda 2017.