Values prioritisation
A simple method of understanding your design team’s stance within an organisation
How to do it
- Take a series of adjectives. Ideally from the set above, or from Ask The Sherwins’ excellent teamwords
- Get people to pick the top 5 words that represent how they like to come across (or feel they currently come across)
- Then get people to split 100 points across their top 5
- Gather the scores up and analyse which ones come out strongest in the team
How I discovered the approach
I was leading the brand redesign of RMA Consulting working with the brand agency SomeOne. One of the exercises we went through was to pick our favourite words from a list which we printed out and put on the wall. We dot voted and then discussed the words we chose.
‘Me too, or not me’?
After we had chosen the words, we discussed the colouring of those words. Blue words were ‘me too’/’reassuring’ and the red words were ‘not me’ /‘challenging adjectives’. Because we had to settle on 5 words, we had to be either a challenger or a me too brand.
To quote SomeOne
Words with Blue frame are commonly seen as ‘Reassuring’ words for brands to hold as character traits. Words with a Red frame are seen to be more challenging.
Of the five words selected, one can never have an even amount of both Reassuring & Challenging words, therefore we have to decide what kind of brand this is going to be — a ‘me too’ brand like Microsoft or a ‘not me’ brand like Apple.
We chose Pioneering, Smart, Essential, Expert and Caring.
As you can see, we were more red and challenging than blue. I liked that.
SomeOne then took us through a process where they developed an archetype for our brand based on our discussions.
Using with design and UX folk
When set a challenge for a particular client of mine around design being under recognised and undervalued, I decided to try and use this approach for their design team. It now appears in some of my design team workshops, although it still has value to an individual.
What has been interesting to me is how supporting and recessive design teams often are. Especially within corporates the UK. Sometimes, subservient.
Is it too much empathy? Not enough ego? I’m not sure, but I would like to see a little more confidence, and more of a challenger mindset. Without too much hubris. We need a little humility after all.
Explore more with Ask The Sherwins Teamwords deck and Todd Zaki Warfel
We carried out a similar exercise in a Todd Zaki Warfel leadership course hosted by InVision in London. I actually learned the 100 point distribution approach from that. Thank you Todd.
My friends David and Mary Sherwin from Ask The Sherwins have created a deck of ‘Teamwords’ cards that you can run different exercises with. I have a pack, but I haven’t used them yet. Knowing them their exercises are likely to be far better than my own and incredibly valuable. Check them and their cards out.
Want to find out more, follow the series
If you want to learn more about the Shaping Workshops I run, and what I have learned over the years, follow me, or read some other articles in the Medium Publication.
Keep your eyes peeled for another post tomorrow.
