Five Things I’ve Learnt at Well Thought
As my time at Well Thought comes to an end, I wanted to take time to reflect on what I’ve learnt and the things I’ll take forward in my innovation tool box. Here are my top five, ranging from big ideas to practical tools.
1. Building facilitation skills
By the time I leave I will have helped design and co-facilitate a number of in-person and virtual workshops. With each one I developed my facilitator voice by learning what to listen for, when to step in, when to challenge, and when to step back. Watching Well Thought in action I learnt that the key to facilitating is being adaptable and open. Each group was different and challenged me in different ways, and so quickly learning on the spot what the group needs and how to cater my style to them was a skill that I’ve really enjoyed developing so far, and will continue to hone. Alongside the listening, practical skills that helped me immensely was having a copy of the day’s agenda, marking down times, being clear with the group how much time they had left, and notetaking through the initial conversations so that I could quickly synthesis and draw conclusions to help steer developing ideas.
2. Transforming & translating ideas into outputs
For anyone that knows Andy or Sam in person, it’s no secret they have two very different ways of thinking and processing information and ideas. To be able to listen, take the right notes, and translate the thinking into a tangible output tailored to the thinker is a skill I’ve been able to workshop during my time here. This was helped immensely by the power of visuals; when explaining a concept, idea, process, anything really, there is no better tool to use than a drawing. No matter how messily scribbled, a visual representation guided by a conversation helps get the message across much faster — plus, it’s fun. Another element of this was refining how I receive feedback. The ability to give perceptive constructive feedback is already a skill in its own — taking that feedback and applying it is another. I’d take those notes, refashion them into a plan and work from there — depending on the project, I’d either work in small iterative feedback stages or go away for a day and present back what I’d done. I’m thankful to have worked in an environment that encouraged two-way openness, and I never felt discouraged after receiving feedback.
3. Managing projects
Through a client project I was able to expand my project management skills, working with a timeline of three months and six teams. I really enjoyed the visual practical element of making things work through various calendars and timelines, and learning how to present that information back to clients in a style that spoke to them. I learnt where flexibility within a project lies and where firmer approaches need to be taken, and to work with two different scopes, one eye on the present and the other on the future.
4. Defining my personal working style
A big part of my experience has been adapting and developing how I work through tasks, processes, tools, and preferences. This has been important from a productivity standpoint, but also as a benchmark to experiment and learn when to break my comfort cycle and push myself. I’ve been better able to gauge what tasks to do when in the day to work with my energy levels, how to structure my day at home vs in the office, when to use Miro vs InDesign, and so on. I’ve been able to explore many new programmes and skills, my favourite being wireframing on XD and Figma. Understanding how I work best helps me communicate my needs and opportunities better to my coworkers, which is essential to hybrid working.
5. Being open to opportunities
It always amazed me how Well Thought actively found and pursued opportunities with people and organisations to make projects work. From random coffees to train conversations, people were really interested to hear about the Future of Work project we were doing and share their own experiences with managing hybrid work policies. Through various LinkedIn posts, events, offhand comments, Well Thought saw value and possibilities, using “What if we?” as a guide to see where opportunities could lead. Witnessing these connections happen have made me more confident and open to talk about my work, and challenge myself to see the connections before they happen.
So these are the 5 top skills that I associate with my time at Well Thought, although if I were to break it down there would be many many more tools to add to the list. I’m excited to see how my skills will build in the next phase, but for now I am grateful that I have such a solid foundation to work with.
