The Benefits of a Design Thinking Workshop

Krista- Thanks, Andy, for joining us today. Today we're talking about the benefits of a Design Thinking Workshop. So, I've done a Design Thinking Workshop with you. Done quite a few Design Thinking Workshops now with you, tell me about the benefits other than getting people a little uncomfortable and making people feel weird. What are the benefits of a Design Thinking Workshop?

Andy- So, I think the biggest benefit, especially for a business, is that it creates alignment. So, a lot of in a Design Thinking Workshop you're spending a lot of time problem solving but you're also spending an equal amount of time prioritizing and agreeing on what are the next steps we need to do, right? Workshops are about getting things done. And so because people are, they're really engaging, they can be fun, especially if you're doing them right, they're really fun and so because they're so engaging everybody gets an opportunity to share what they're thinking and by doing that you're generating buy-in to whatever the final solution is or whatever the things that need to be done are. So, you're creating buy-in but more than anything you're creating alignment. You're allowing everybody to agree on what the thing that's going to be done is and then the company or the team can move as one to accomplish that rather than having a whole bunch of different perspectives on what needs to be done and really having a hard time wrangling the team to get it done.

Krista- So, if you're struggling with executive buy-in or getting a leader to sign off on something, really a Design Thinking Workshop can enable them to think holistically and see that the company is thinking holistically towards one goal.

Andy- Right, so, I would say if you're working on something and you know that you need leadership buy-in, invite them to a workshop, you know. They can be there and see that what the team is doing but then they also get an opportunity to share their two cents about what they think the solution should be. So, there's a great book, Sprint, and in that book they basically talk about how Design Workshops can also have a decision maker, right? So, if you invite your CEO or your manager or anyone to be the decision maker at that meeting, you're basically creating this pool of ideas and allowing your team to show where they believe the most value is but ultimately you get to allow someone to make a decision about that and so you're creating accountability but you're also creating alignment.

Krista- I love that.

Andy- Awesome.

Krista- Well, thank you for joining us

Andy- Of course.

Krista- And talking about the benefits of Design Thinking Workshops. We hope you'll be back soon.



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