We’re on an evolutionary journey at Bromford Lab. Recently, we’ve been giving some thought to the way in which we can maximise the impact we are having whilst at the same time continuing to grow and develop our approach to innovation and design at Bromford. On reflection, over recent times we’ve found ourselves involved in three core types of change; continuous improvement, step change and radical innovation. Arguably, our potential can best be realised through step-change activity and radical innovation, but we have increasingly found ourselves spending a lot of time involved in continuous improvement activity which is really valuable to the organisation, but is often able to be delivered and driven by colleagues if they are given the right frameworks and support to do so. These reflections have led us to think about adding a new mission to our purpose - to democratise innovation and design by designing ways to support and enable continuous improvement in a safe and controlled way, whilst also freeing us up to concentrate more of our time on more radical change activity.
On Thursday, Adam and I ran our Introduction to Design Thinking workshop with colleagues as part of the Bromford Essential Leadership Academy. Whilst, in essence, we were delivering a practical workshop/training session that could form part of a suite of tools we can use to assist in the democratisation of innovation and design, what we were also doing was using it as a learning opportunity, a prototype, to help us learn more about what democratisation really means.
During the day, we introduced 22 colleagues to Design Thinking and stepped through our innovation and design methodology, sharing tools and techniques to help small teams work through two practical design challenges.
We structured the session around discovery, problem definition, idea development and delivery and focused on the following key areas:
What we mean when we say design
Truly understanding and defining the problem we are seeking to solve
Developing, testing and iterating ideas into a scalable solution
Thinking about design as a whole end-to-end process
Adopting the right mindset
The links between leadership and design
We explained how the Bromford DNA supports innovation and design activity and links to key aspects of design thinking activity:
BE BOLD - Lead change by being confident. Be comfortable with ambiguity. Start with just enough insight and build on it as you go. Manage risk, rather than avoid it. Leave your ego at the door and collaborate; it’s a team sport.
BE BRILLIANT - Deliver results by being curious. Be collaborative. Start and end with people. Move from a position of thinking to a position of knowing. Enable better (more informed) decision making. Empower and inspire people to think differently.
BE HONEST - Drive purpose by being comfortable admitting you don’t have all of the answers. Be empathetic. Learn to see things through different sets of eyes. Look for insight and inspiration everywhere. Link to strategy. Celebrate your failures and learn from them.
BE YOU - Unlock potential by being more in love with problems than solutions. Focus on why rather than what or how. Motivate and inspire. Combine logic and emotion. Focus on relationships. Coach the project team; do with not for.
We used practical tools and activities to help move colleagues through each stage of the design process, including activities such as Chindogu (the Chinese art of creating unusual tools) to help people think expansively before taking the key principles of their idea and making it ‘wiser’.
Translation: Unusual (珍 CHIN) Tool (道具 DOGU)
Through a combination of both theory and practical activity we were able to demonstrate some key principles of our approach with colleagues, including:
Trust in the process and be comfortable with ambiguity;
You don’t need to have all of the answers to get started;
Iterate and don’t be afraid to kill off bad ideas;
Be more in love with the problem than your solution;
It’s about the destination, not the way you get there;
Inspiration is everywhere, be open to new experiences and don't be afraid to be analogous in your thinking;
Design is about rigorous processes, not soft furnishing;
Design brings together people, business and technology and takes us from a position of thinking to a position of knowing;
And most important of all - Collaborate. If you start and end with people the solution will always be the right one.
We learned a lot about what did and didn’t work in terms of the session content and delivery as well as understanding more about how colleagues view innovation and design and their role in it. We’ve gained some key learning around how we might run the session in the future and also how we might go about designing more ways to help us democratise design.
If you are interested in learning more, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
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