If you follow us on Twitter or Facebook, you may have seen a status update the other evening about launching an intense period of learning for Brainzooming as we undergo a process change the next few weeks. We’ve been in the midst of introducing a new online collaboration tool over the past several months. In the next few weeks, we’re incorporating this online collaboration tool into multiple strategic thinking sessions with varied objectives, formats, and group sizes.
In the midst of designing and facilitating these new types of strategic thinking sessions, there have already been ample opportunities to have session participants play new roles within the Brainzooming methodology. Whenever that type of process change happens, we benefit and learn many lessons as new individuals carry out what we’ve designed.
I imagine it must be similar to a playwright seeing his or her written work interpreted and brought to life by actors. There are bound to be nuances and lessons in these performances the playwright didn’t envision.
12 Process Change Lessons
Thinking back over the first half of this week's strategic thinking sessions, here are twelve lessons from loosening or completely turning over the reins to others in bringing the Brainzooming process to life.
So far, I have . . .
- Become reacquainted with little things we do without thinking that make a significant difference in helping people perform more productively.
- Realized anew how we create a visual and photogenic depiction of an organization’s strategy.
- Seen how others approach resolving open questions and issues in alternative ways that make sense to them.
- Taken process suggestions from others causing me to use skills I don’t use that often now because they aren’t as fun.
- Been forced to stick with a strategic thinking exercise I didn’t think was working (but ultimately worked very well) because a client wouldn’t let me skip to another one.
- Gotten to see what others expect they will need or will have happen during a successful strategic thinking session.
- Needed to marry our new technology with other client technology to integrate remote participants in a strategic thinking session.
- Used our new online collaboration tool in ways I hadn’t anticipated in order to be more personally productive.
- Cut down the development time for what we do by weeks because of a client’s limited availability.
- Tried to figure out fewer things ahead of time to give our strategic thinking process more capacity to adapt to a client's current needs.
- Screwed something up without freaking out which allowed someone else to help troubleshoot the problem and fix it with little notice.
- Accepted “better done than perfect” more readily than I prefer.
These dozen benefits didn’t take much time to list. But being able to identify them depended on being willing to exercise less control, embracing experimentation, and being open to mistakes.
Step Back, Experiment, and Learn with Your Own Process Change
When was the last time you stepped back from a process you know inside and out to experiment, learn, and see how it plays out under the influence of others?
My advice is, if you haven’t pushed for this type of process change recently, figure out a way to make it happen right away and starting learning new lessons! – Mike Brown
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming blog email updates.
The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you enhance your strategy and implementation efforts.
