How to Manage Lots of Teamwork

At ID, we work in a lot of teams. Some say too many. But we get used to it, and we get better at it.

Things become difficult when you have four or five teams facing similar deadlines, working on unrelated projects that change rapidly. Here are some things that have made my life easier and my work better:

1. Become a thought leader on your topic early in the project.
- Read everything about it (my first searches are with Business Source Premier, which scans major business publications like the Journal, the Economist, etc.).
- Interview people in the field (read an article that helped you understand the insurance industry but need more info? Call the author.).
- Understand trends and the big picture. Constantly ask "What are we really talking about?"
- Build a binder with everything printed, highlighted, and tagged. Sort by topic. Use blue sheets to divide topics.
The main idea is to put yourself in a position of knowledge so you can make good decisions throughout the project. This may sound obvious, but when you're working on six projects exhaustive research can be rare.

2. After you divide up tasks among your team, finish your task as early as possible. This prepares you to cope with the unseen issues that your project will without doubt face. Rather than catching up on your work, doing it early positions you to be able to dedicate time to solving these new problems.

3. Come to every meeting with a perspective and an argument for where the project should go. Meetings are times to solve problems and make decisions (see earlier post). If everyone has done their homework and has formed a defensible perspective, meetings can be great places for healthy debates that can lead to better results.

4. "You have to care," says Tom Peters. He's right.

How to Listen

The following is based on Prince's "The Practice of Creativity," pages 41-45.

Many people view listening as the attempt to figure out as quickly as possible the essence of what somebody is saying, then the concoction of a response to this main point. This results in people talking at one another, rather than with one another.

Example:
A. Isn't the traffic ridiculous?
B. No kidding! I was stuck for over an hour this morning.
C. And then you have to deal with parking, which is a nightmare.

Typical responses evaluate what is said to you, from your own point of view and in your own frames of reference. True listening occurs when we listen with the intent to understand. Listening's goal is to understand the expressed ideas and attitudes from the other person's perspective, to gain a sense of what it feels like to him, to see things from his perspective.

Tips for becoming a better listener:
1. Restate what was said to you before expressing your own opinion
2. Use phrases such as: "Say more..." or "Tell me more..." or "Can you explain that more..."

How to Hold a Creative Meeting

The following is based on Prince's "The Practice of Creativity," pages 37-41.

The point of a meeting is to solve problems. Inform and read on your own! Solve problems together! The most valuable resource at a meeting are the minds of the people in attendance. Therefore to run an effective meeting you must position the minds in attendance to solve problems in the best possible way.

Positioning minds requires you to keep aggressiveness directed toward solving problems and away from personalities. People are emotional and attached to their opinions and ideas. The smallest slight or put-down damages a person's ability to contribute to the group.

Here's an example:

John: What if we made seat belts that fasten themselves?
Tom: That doesn't solve our problem. We're talking about overall safety, and seat belts are only part of the solution.
You: Tom, I think that John's idea actually does solve a big piece of the safety issue (this is your chance to protect John and his way of thinking). And you're right that we're talking about safety in the big picture (don't devalue Tom). Maybe you could think more about defining total safety while we look at John's idea?

This approach allows people to understand problems in their own way and keeps people valued and engaged.

Summary of effective meeting model:
1. Meetings are for understanding and solving problems. Inform people through email, don't bore them with lectures.
2. Protect each person's sensitivity and give direction for aggressiveness.
3. Recognize that a meeting is (to some extent) a personal competition that makes each person vulnerable.

For another source on meetings, see Seth Godin's post here.

MBA v. MDes

What are the differences between MBA and MDes students?

1. MBAs make decisions quickly and march toward a known goal, while design students allow answers and direction to emerge from the research they conduct. As a result, design students have a higher tolerance for ambiguity than MBAs. Designers spend more time figuring out what the core human-related issues are, which takes time and is rarely clear-cut. MBAs spend more time developing and executing strategies that point toward a specific direction.

2. Design students understand how stimuli affect people and can identify what motivates customers. Design students turn this into concepts that fulfill needs or achieve certain reactions from customers. MBAs turn this knowledge and these concepts into ways to make money. In essence, designers keep MBAs informed as to what people actually want or need.

3. The social environment of a design school shapes students differently than the social environment of business school. Design school fosters a culture of understanding and improving while business school builds a culture of winning. I've seen a change in some of my best friends since they started b-school last year. They seem to have switched their brains into an "always win" mode, which I am guessing stems from the fact that they're surrounded 24/7 by people who have pretty much mastered the art of winning at everything they do. I remember watching a football game over winter break with my buddies and wondering, "why are they trying to win at watching tv?"

How to Host a Workshop

If you are looking for a way to incorporate other people's opinions or ideas into your concepts or designs, a concept generation workshop can be an effective tool to employ. Here are some general thoughts to keep in mind while planning and hosting your workshop.

What it is:
A group of people at a table (or in a room) talking about the same topic, generating and recording ideas and solutions based on personal knowledge or experience. Many times people are separated into smaller working groups (4-6 people).

What it does:
Generates ideas, concepts, or connections that you haven't thought of yet.

ok, here goes.

1. Start early.
People you want at your workshop have busy schedules. Pick a date two months or more in advance and get your workshop into your contacts' calendar as soon as possible.

2. Understand the problem you're trying to solve and how your guests can help you solve it.
Pretty much everything builds around this question. If you are looking for creative answers, get creative people at your workshop. If you need to develop solutions for assembly line workers, get assembly workers and/or the people who plan the lines. We had design planners at our most recent workshop, so we used them to plan out our designs. Don't assume people can play a role other than who they are (don't have 25 year olds guess what baby boomers want).

3. Moderate well.
This means when your small group (4-6 people) is coming up with new crazy ideas, you may want to think about these things:

- There are no bad ideas. Any negative comment stifles creativity and shuts groups down, so every idea is encouraged and recorded. This is difficult because even giving somebody a weird look or making a small sign of disapproval can make people feel insecure about contributing. [this is also a useful method to help people recognize how critical they can be toward others--a sure way to deflate a group, or a person]

- Build off of ideas. Offer improvements or push an idea further. The wilder the better for idea generation.

- Keep the team on target. Bring them back to useful space if they're hung up or in a rut.

- Stay flexible. You might spend hours designing a structure for your workshop only to find that your participants don't need it or don't understand it. This isn't necessarily bad because your participants will most likely think about your problem in a different way than you do (why else would they be at your workshop?).

- Record every idea. Whether on a post-it, a piece of paper, or a white board, write everything down. Edit later!

4. Keep things fun and light.
People tend to generate creative ideas better when they're having fun. Once things turn serious, people can become analytical and turn their creative switches off. A group brainstorm is serious business, but it should be fun and engaging. IDEO did an interesting workshop about brainstorming. They sent their team up on stage and intentionally committed all the cardinal sins of brainstorming, like answering a cell phone, shooting down ideas, not participating, and pressuring people to come up with big ideas.

Extras:

Material:
- post-its/paper
- black sharpies (can read at a distance)
- big white board
- digital camera (to capture ideas after they're generated)
- video camera/tripod (to film any presentations at the end)

Potential Timeline:
- intro (5 min)
- small group intro and instructions (5 min)
- structured brainstorm (30-45 min)
- group cluster / major them discussion (30-60 min)
- present results from each group (5 min per group)

Why Do This?

First of all, I'm addicted to Google Reader. I never regularly read any blog before subscribing to this. Now I feel dialed in to lots of smart minds on a variety of topics that affect my daily life, like marketing or illustration or networks. So blogging's a topic that's hot in my head.

Secondly, I think it's important to document the things I've been learning in school, both as a future reference and as a way to see how my thinking and abilities change over time.

Finally, design's importance is still growing in the world, and perhaps there are people out there who are curious about what is taught at design school or how design may help improve what they already do.

So, hopefully I'll be able to write about what I'm learning, and hopefully somebody will find it interesting.