As a facilitator, I know that the best way to get diverse groups of people to talk is to provide a space that is considered safe enough to talk freely. I also know that in practice, if a senior executive or CEO is in that room, those freeform conversations do not happen. People want to either impress or placate the highest paid person in the room, even if the highest paid people in the room want to encourage speaking freely. This all ends up stifling creativity in the long run.
This is why before workshops I have one-on-ones with each participant so that they know why they are there and what to expect. But some people can still feel hindered during the workshop, because letting go of hierarchies is hard. Can anything be done to remedy this?
It can be helpful to have a “pre-workshop” where you can coach participants in giving and receiving good feedback. Chances are that your participants have not been taught about good feedback and critiquing technique. Giving and receiving good feedback can be tricky, but it can be taught and it gets easier with regular practice.
One great thing about using Object-Oriented UX and its ORCA methodology is that the crucial initial hunt for your most important objects cuts through the chatter and noise that often goes with the beginnings of new initiatives.
You can also use ORCA methodology to do a competitor analysis, which is a good idea for an early workshop. A competitor analysis is also a good start for teaching feedback techniques: since you are using a competitor as an example and not your own company, participants can feel less pressure to impress, which helps them to speak freely. This exercise helps encourage collaboration in a "safe" environment.
Workshop Steps:
1 - Noun Foraging
To get your group focused, ask your participants to gather available information on a couple of your competitors and what they do. This task can be done before the workshop. Fortunately some internet searching can quickly get you great places to get started, including:
- Website “About Us” pages, mission statements, or similar
- Case studies
- LinkedIn or Glassdoor reviews
- Product discussion boards
Using the found sources, your group will go on a noun foraging expedition: that is, they will look through these documents to find the nouns that come up again and again in the content for each competitor. Collect these nouns on a physical or digital whiteboard, and there may be a lot of nouns. Use one board for each competitor if you are doing more than one.
2 - Affinity Map
Once you have your list of nouns, you can affinity map as a group to filter through your nouns to find the most important ones to each business. Limit your list to no more than five nouns for this exercise.
This is where teaching feedback starts to come in by encouraging your participants to talk about their decisions starting with language such as “I think”, “I feel”, etc. Opinions with context are more valuable here than yeses and nos.
If you are using a digital whiteboarding tool, you could use your tool’s AI affinity mapping as a starting point, especially if the group is new to the affinity mapping practice.
3 - Define Your Top 5 Nouns
After you have filtered your list down to five nouns, have your group come up with a definition for each noun. Depending on your group size, you can discuss each noun as a group or split your group into smaller groups to define one noun each. This is additional practice for feedback techniques.
Once you do this workshop, not only will you have showed your teammates the power of good feedback and how to give it, but you will also have valuable information about at least one of your competitors. On top of that, you will have a headstart on using Object-Oriented UX and the ORCA methodology to transform your business.
Download a FREE Miro template for this workshop here in my online store. As always, let me know what you think.
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