Why process design is important and how we facilitated magic! 🔮
Five weeks ago was the first time I met Mari at Drop Coffee in Södermalm. As she walked in with her shiny pink handbag and cool style, she went straight for a hug. What was supposed to be a quick coffee escalated into her now joining me as a co-facilitator in Next Day Innovations. This is the story of how two facilitators, facilitated each other into joining forces, combining our minds and knowledge, to co-create something even better and bigger.
How did we did it 😎
Our intention for booking another meeting was to explore what facilitation actually is. We wanted to do this in a workshop format, since it’s a great and visual way to contribute and co-create.
Our desired outcomes were to answer some questions we had defined together:
- How might we explore different ways of coaching and facilitation
- How might we measure the impact of facilitation
- How might we create different revenue streams for facilitators
We created an agenda based on answering these questions which we adjusted as we went along.
1st week ☝️
We met up for a whole day to explore facilitation. What is it? Actually? This entailed defining what values this service creates for our clients, and we realised the definition of facilitation differs depending on the purpose and intention of the facilitation session. As we went along, we defined three main branches of facilitation: Individual, Cultural, and Innovative, and we realised the deep connection these three have. You can’t build an innovative company without a good culture, and good culture is created by individuals.
2nd week ✌️
We continued with reflections, asking ourselves what we’ve had happen so far, and how it had made us feel. At that time we realised that both of us had gotten a lot of energy from the previous week. To move forward, we needed to validate our assumptions. The best way to do that? Ask for feedback. So we talked to Christopher-Robin, Programme Manager of the Design Lead Program at Hyper Island. As we toured him through our process, he told us he could see that the next step was to productify the process we’d just created in order to contain its value.
Alongside with working on the What, i.e elevator pitches, design, deadlines, etc. we realised we needed to spend some time on the How, which meant facilitating some team building to build a strengthen relationship. So we went into our past, sharing the main events in our life that’s shaped us into the people that we are today.
As the great philosopher Søren Kierkegaard put it:
“Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards”
3d week 👌
Since we had defined most of our values and had gotten to know each other by working together, we didn’t have to spend too much time on creating our Team Canvas. We voiced our Needs & Expectations, defined some Goals, went through our Weaknesses & Risks and finally defining our Roles. We decided that the Desired Outcomes for productifying our process was to get attention, show our process and to introduce us collaborating together so we settled on creating this Medium Article.
Finally we wrapped the first chapter of working together by taking down all the colourful post-it’s covering the walls of the room, to some great music ofc. When the white walls were visible again, the room looked like it had done three weeks earlier. And just as we were getting nostalgic we were as excited to exploring what the future had in hold for us 💥
As we worked together we set up rules, like having an open mindset, trust each other as well as being honest and open for conflict. It all happened quite naturally, I believe our biggest asset was our ability to be both spontaneous and serious.
Our roles in this were equal, and we helped as well as pushed each other. Since I have a bit more experience in facilitation I used a lot of tools and methods, which Mari was very open for. The more we worked together we realised that it was valuable for Mari to take some ownership and for me to trust her.
The time we adjusted depending on our needs, since both of us have our own things to tend to we had to be very flexible. Sometimes we had to pause in the most exciting of times, and sometimes we had to push ourselves to finish what we set out to do. And the silver lining in this was that we were always open with our expectations on one another. Giving ourselves time to reflect in order to understand our feelings, and then base our actions on that.
Why are we telling you this? 🤔
We want to share our process to show how we aligned our values and expectations to start our journey together. And also share that this is one of our services, facilitating teams through change, and helping them become the best version of themselves. We offer workshops, lectures and sessions, based on your individual needs. Sounds interesting? Let’s grab a coffee!
To reconnect to the questions stated in the beginning; How might we explore different ways of coaching and facilitation? How might we measure the impact of facilitation? And how might we create different revenue streams for facilitators? we have defined three different types of coaching and facilitation; Individual, Cultural and Innovative and connected a strong purpose to why companies need it.We’re working on another article where we’ll go deeper into that, stay tuned!–We have identified how we will measure the impact of our service, and we have started exploring new innovative ways of creating different revenue streams for facilitators.
And if you haven’t noticed throughout this article I just used the tool IDOARRT, short for Intention, Desired Outcome, Agenda, Rules, Roles and Time, scroll up and see. A great tool that I always use for aligning expectations in meetings, but it can be used for so much more! Check it out in the link below, where I’ve also gathered some other tools that me and Mari have used throughout our process.
IDOARRT — http://toolbox.hyperisland.com/idoarrt-meeting-design
How might we… — http://www.designkit.org/methods/3
Team Canvas — https://www.expressiveproductdesign.com/value-proposition-canvas/
What & How — https://medium.com/@marcvollebregt/you-and-i-are-throwing-a-party-or-understanding-process-design-a5430baa9d2f
Reflection — http://toolbox.hyperisland.com/reflection-individual
Double Diamond — https://medium.com/digital-experience-design/how-to-apply-a-design-thinking-hcd-ux-or-any-creative-process-from-scratch-b8786efbf812
These are just a few tools that we’ve used, but will make a great start to anyone wanting to develop their team culture. If you have any questions feel free to ask us, either in English, Portuguese or Swedish 🇬🇧🇧🇷🇸🇪
Final insights 🙌
We created magic. That something as unexpected and beautiful as can come from an initiative to meet. As we wrapped up this first chapter of collaborating we realised that both of us found a great partner in crime, as well as a new friendship built on trust, transparency and spontaneity. Currently Mari is based in Malmö and I’m (Sofia) based in Stockholm, we’re always up for meeting new inspiring people so don’t hesitate to to reach out to us!
We publish new articles every second week, so stay tuned to get deeper knowledge in: process design, design thinking, team culture, feedback and plenty more. We have challenging yet exciting times ahead 😃 Follow our journey on Instagram, here or Linkedin and see us grow!
Big hugs,
P.S We also wanna give thanks to Nicole, Sofia and Edvin for helping us editing this article! And to Christopher-Robin, Amadeus, Marc, Sofia, Gabriel, Johan for giving us valuable feedback in our process!🙏
