Lessons from NouLAB’s Academy
Why is multi-stakeholder engagement essential for problem solving?
We at NouLAB believe that in order to solve the sticky problems of the world, the people who are directly working and affected by the issues need to be a part of co-creating solutions. The reality is that problems don’t exist with predefined criteria, which means that to tackle a problem, people who are often not involved, need to be. Different and differing perspectives are essential to innovation and so are having people with the power to make change happen. This mash-up of people, power, and perspective is rarely found around boardroom tables. Yet, getting them in the same room, on the same team, and working together is essential to make tangible shifts in how lasting solutions are created.
NouLAB has been developing and working on the best way to do this since our inception. This article gives some insight into the approach we use in our Academy program, which facilitates these multi-stakeholder teams and guides them through from problem framing to prototype testing in five days.
The Academy has been NouLAB’s core offering since we began as an organization in 2015. It’s premise is simple, give time, space, and new tools to teams working on complex problems. Over the years there have been shifts in how we approach the process. In February of 2018, the NouLAB team redeveloped the program to run over a 5 day sprint, loosely modelled after Google’s Sprint process. Since that initial offering, the NouLAB team has run this process in multiple settings and in both french and english 7 more times, making subtle yet important changes based on feedback. We have found the biggest value of the consecutive time is that it allows teams to build a strong understanding of their problem together and build momentum to carry them forward after the week.
Team Building
Although teams are assembled before they come to the sprint, they may have never actually worked together. To get them interacting and building trust, we get them sharing and talking as much as possible in fairly informal ways before the workshop. To begin the entire session, we do a check-in circle to ensure all voices are heard early on and a safe space is established. Research shows that when it comes to working in groups, the earlier someone speaks, the more likely they are to continue using their voice. To help make sure all voices are heard we establish some guidelines for good conversation: Speak from experience, Listen to learn, Be aware of your impact, and Capture themes.
The Academy is designed as a residential experience so that people can really take a step away from their day-to-day and have that much needed white space for new ideas to bubble to the surface. The time away also allows deeper connection to happen within the teams. They eat together, go for walks together, and although a break from work is strongly encouraged, they can put in some extra time on things if needed. Our observations have been that the teams that bond over their time together will unsurprisingly have the better chance at succeeding with implementation. To encourage this bonding, it is important to allow for a solid amount of time of uninterrupted work. This allows the group dynamic to unfold naturally and for emergent ideas to come to the surface. The value of simply being in the same room is sometimes just as important as the new tools and methods we are teaching.
Questions as feedback
Engaging the entire room in the Academy can be a challenge, especially because of the multiple topics that at first glance may not seem related. To utilize the collective intelligence in the room, we do a process of feedback in the form of questions. In practice, a team will volunteer or be selected to present something they have been working on. The other teams will gather around the presenting team to listen to a short (2–3 minutes) explanation of what they have put together. Before receiving feedback, the team should ready themselves with at least one notetaker, two is preferable to capture rapid-fire questions. The observing teams will then ask any questions that arise from the presentation and here is the important part, the presenting team DOES NOT ANSWER. They will simply record the questions as they come. This allows the team to integrate and address anything that is or was not clear in their presentation. The intention behind this process is to help teams let go of any defensiveness they may have for what they have just created in the last 60–90 mins. All design is open to change at this point and it isn’t important to get it right. In the real world when your product/service is being used, any questions users have won’t be answered by the designers and the product/service will have to stand on its own. This is a way to practice designing things to be as self-explanatory as possible early in the design process. With all the questions recorded, the teams are given time to integrate those questions or not. The team has the agency to disregard the feedback they receive if they don’t feel it has merit.
Liaisons
Doing group work is challenging. It is made more challenging when working in new and unfamiliar topics and processes. The 5 day sprint is packed with activities and they are designed to build off one another. This makes it important for teams to reach certain milestones moving through the hours and days. Members from the NouLAB team are assigned as ‘liaisons’ to help teams with a quick understanding of newly taught concepts and activities. Liaisons work with one team as advocates, supports, and guides through the process. There is a flow and a balance to the liaison relationship with a team. It’s important to not guide too heavily and let the team figure out their dynamic naturally. Liaisons also give lessons to the whole group so they must make the transition from teacher to a teammate seamless. Through the process of the sprint, there are sometimes moments when you must agree to disagree in a sense and move to the next item. This means that you may have to loop back to certain decisions and work from a ‘can we live with this’ mentality. Another good principle to keep in mind is that if someone doesn’t have an alternative idea they should reserve their disagreement until they do.
If you want to find out more about the Academy and how NouLAB can help your team get to the bottom of a problem you are facing, contact us at innovate@noulab.org.
