2024/02/23

I didn’t work Friday, because I needed to switch up my days – so these are quick late notes.

• Most of my week was geared towards a workshop on Thursday afternoon. it was one of those sessions trying to bring people together from different teams. A few people described it as ‘Brave’. I think is one place where consultants can be really helpful, bringing those groups together as an (almost) objective outsider gives it a different dynamic than any one person or team trying to ‘lead’ the conversation.
• One thing I try to reinforce in advance and at the start of any workshop like that is that ‘we’ll be doing things a bit differently to what you’re used to’. I find this helpful to set the tone, especially if you back that up with how you communicate and work in the session. My two top tips would probably be:
• Print stuff. The preparation it takes to print something immediately sets this conversation aside from 90% of the ones people are in day in day out. For this session I printed some big A0 map templates (pretty standard stuff) but added some of the client/project branding. The thing I was more proud of was printing some ‘people cards’ using Open Peeps illustrations. This was to help groups add people into the processes they were mapping out, and because I felt it would break the ice a bit too. They’re fun illustrations. You can download a PDF to set to a printer if you want.

• Set ground rules/principles or similar for how people need to show up to the session. Every session is slightly different, but this is the spiel I used for last Thursday. You might find it helpful:
  • You may not be aware, but there is no magic to big printouts and post-its, even if they are printed by a consultant. They in themselves will not make this a productive workshop. That’s down to us in the room. Collectively your experience and understanding of the opportunities, as well as some gentle inspiration from public digital’s work so far and others from [Client] will make this a productive time. In our experience different teams coming together and sharing the different perspectives they might have is a much better approach than doing things in isolation. So to that end, lets set out some some guiding principles or terms of reference for this afternoon:

  • Actively listen to your colleagues – This means listening to understand, not listening to respond. Everyone is here because they can bring something, please let each other contribute.
  • Aim for progress – We’ll be working at speed, aiming to get through a lot in a short space of time. There might be points you can’t resolve. Document them and move on. Disagree and commit if you will, in order to make progress.
  • Acknowledge what’s outside this our control – Sometimes you might discuss something that you know someone else would need to make a decision on. That’s OK – for the sake of this session, you are able to make that decision, but please document
  • Remain present in the room
  • Be prepared to be comfortably uncomfortable
• The session was full of positive conversations, lots of follow up on, not much ‘solved’ there and then, but there was positive feedback and appetite for more collaboration. A win I think.

Given this weeknotes seems to have taken a bit of ‘this is how I be a consultant’ angle. Why not read this other post about how to be a design consultant.