Monday, October 14, 2013
Week #4-- Ask Dumb Questions & Leadership
Dear Group:
...
Please accept any weird comments below because I am opening this next week before we hold the class. (I-- Hal-- am out of town for the rest of the week.)
Please share your experiences as you work with dumb or powerful questions. How did people react to your authentic curiosity and questions? Let us know about your feelings as you frame the questions-- for example, what is the role of the VOJ? How about the reaction? Did you get your answer and maybe more?
You can even try questions with strangers-- so long as you genuinely want to know the answer. Many of us REALLY like to share of knowledge if someone asks and is interested...
What have you found?
LEADERSHIP--
We covered a lot of material about leadership and we encourage you to share any reactions or questions that were stimulated.
Any thoughts and observations about:
++ Management Mindsets
++ Emotional Intelligence
++ Aesthetic Intelligence
++ Integrative Thinking
Which of the ideas seem like they will be useful for you now and in the future?
FINALLY, we went through the d.School innovation process in preparation for your watching the IDEO video. I also suggested that after we have seen and discussed IDEO, we can consider whether there is interest in trying to work through a "design challenge" as part of the secoond half of the course. Any thoughts and ideas can be incorporated into next week's class conversation.
Have a great week,
Hal & Julie
PS: Here is the link to the video (also on the Moodle page if this does not work...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taJOV-YCieI
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Interesting video about IDEO process.
ReplyDeleteOverall, the "Design Thinking" process of today is still the same as presented in this video.
There is a lot of techniques to be efficient in a brainstorm (the one I like is the post-it method: http://izwanismailblog.wordpress.com/2013/01/11/design-thinking-method-1-post-its/). Whatever the method, during a brainstorm session, the most important is to encourage wild ideas, work together, combine these ideas and always keep the discussion on target.
Every week at work, I use the Design Thinking approach. We love to brainstorm in group (a multi-disciplinary team: strategist, technologist, designer… no silo!) and find a solution to resolve an issue. Basically, we start every project with a workshop session (in-depth research such as ethnography). It's a good way for us to immerse ourselves into the problem. We can identify insights & opportunities and, the resulting vision is the key to create concepts. And then starts the wheel of prototyping (Concept > Test concept > Learn > go back to concept, etc.) . With this iterative mode, we continually improve our concepts. We can fail, we can succeed, everything is authorized… as we can see in this IDEO video.
During this iterative mode, yes, it's always the time to ask dumb and powerful questions.
For instance, the last week I shared on this blog my experience about an immersive mobile experience for a soccer game.
Mine were "What is a mobile experience during a game?" (dumb question) and "why a smartphone should be the "best friend" for a fan?" (powerful question, I think).
As I wrote the last week, we had followed a group of fans and we were surprised how many times their smartphones were at the center of their behavior. The mobile isn't unnecessary, it's helpful to connect people together. For instance, sharing a moment on social networks means they are a part of something. For a fan, it's like to be a part of a brotherhood. It's all about being together. It's all about people.
During a creative process, there is a personal exercise that I try to apply every time I have to present a project to my director or clients: it's a "Tweet So What" which is a simple idea but, not easy to accomplish:
In one sentence, I try to synthesize my idea (I don't care about 140 characters, it doesn't matter). And If I can do that, I am able to explain my idea in different ways with always the same focus.
There is an interesting movie about the Design Thinking process here: http://designthinkingmovie.com/
If you go to the minute 1:00 (see Preview), there is a quick overview of this guy who creates the awesome fixed-gear bicycles in SF (Mission Bicycle Company: www.missionbicycle.com).
Asking "dumb" questions had led to surprising and positive results. One example was during a meeting to which I attended a few minutes late. Various teams were working together to re-design a complex process workflow, contributing ideas vigorously. Everyone seemed to be engaged and focused on the task, and I felt embarrassed to ask what was the purpose of the discussion (VOJ). During a pause in the meeting, I apologized for attending a few minutes late and asked if we had set context for the meeting and its goals. The moderator said this had not occurred, and he proceeded to set context. What was interesting was what followed. It appeared that many attendees were not clear as to why the meeting was called or what were the meeting objectives. This led to a discussion that helped better define the requirements, clarify the meeting goals and enroll the meeting participants. With renewed focus, the teams were able to make substantial progress. Another example was when I met with a friend who I had known for several years. As he was explaining what he has been up to lately, I perceived a change in his priorities. Since I had known him for awhile, it seemed awkward for me to ask him what he was looking for in life (VOJ) - but I did ask because I wanted to understand. That question led to a conversation about his life priorities, and how he now valued stability more than adventure. This was news to me, but thanks to asking the question I was able to gain a deeper understanding and become a better listener.
ReplyDeleteDoes the IDEO design process leverage the concept of "integrative thinking" to produce better results? This seemed to be the case during the earlier creative design stages (shopping cart), as the teams identified key factors and analyzed causality. The video showed how the IDEO team members consulted experts to get up to speed quickly on the main shopping cart design ideas, and how they further refined them to achieve greater design effectiveness. The IDEO team members built upon each other's ideas in order to develop a more effective hybrid solution. The concept of "integrative thinking" was also leveraged during the decision making stages, for example, with regard to the four shopping cart design finalists. Conventional thinking may have suggested that one of the four finalist designs would be selected outright, but IDEO instead continued the approach of selecting and integrating the best ideas to produce a better "final" hybrid solution design - which was unconventional by existing standards. And even after the "final" solution design was received favorably by the grocery store representatives, the IDEO team was still incorporating their feedback to improve it further.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the video about the IDEO shopping cart experiment. It's a great example of integrative thinking, inspiring creative solutions, and it clearly showed that creativity flourishes in an environment where freedom and chaos are allowed. The different team members were specialized in different fields and considered each others' input. Employees are allowed to design their own work spaces. I liked the idea of employees hanging their bicycles from the ceiling. I'd love to try this at my workplace, very corporate place though (VOJ trying to keep me from trying...). Team members were encouraged to come up with wild ideas. After I watched the video, I went to the IDEO website and found the following TED talk by David Kelley, about creative confidence: http://www.ted.com/talks/david_kelley_how_to_build_your_creative_confidence.htmland how creative confidence is blocked by our VOJ, negative experiences from childhood that become ingrained into our adult lives. He also talks about fear of judgment and overcoming fear (by "guided mastery"), changing fear into familiarity, making MRI experiences for children less scary and traumatic. He also talks about purpose in life (after he got diagnosed with cancer), and helping others find their purpose in life. Once people realize that they are creative, once they find their creative confidence, they do things that are really important to them and come up with interesting things and solutions.
ReplyDeleteNow about my experimenting with dumb questions this past week. I received an email that wasn't clear. Nobody else asked for clarification, and my first inclination was to not ask anything either out of fear that I'd be the only one not understanding, but then I remembered my assignment for this week and asked for clarification after all. Immediately after I asked my questions, I felt relieved and I could continue with my work, even though I didn't receive a reply on time. I guess I did understand the request and I provided the correct information after all. There were several other situations where initially I was afraid to ask a question but eventually did. I felt so much better, I could continue with my work, and I was amazed at how quickly things got resolved.
Ask "Dumb" questions! That's pretty easy... right? Interesting practice, and in my case, the most difficult one, not because I can't think in "dumb" questions but because it really requires courage to give them voice! I must confess my VOJ won several times during this week, when I found myself stopping from asking things that I wanted to do, I found something even more interesting: people who asked me kind of "dumb" questions instead!, the kind of makes you stop and think: wow.. I haven't really thought about it!, the point is, that even if I didn't ask the questions, I could realize that so many times, we just do things in "automatic mode" like a robot and let ourselves fall in a routine. When someone ask you something pretty simple, like: why do you...? You have the chance to stop and really put your mind in it for a few seconds and start seeing lots of things that you may miss before.
ReplyDeleteAbout the IDEO video, the things that get my attention was:
1. The fact that everyone has a different profession, before start watching the video I thought I would find a group of expert designers, maybe industrial designers working together in the shopping cart... but. surprise! we had a group of people with really difeferent backgrounds and it's amazing the way and results that their interaction can produce.
2. Definetely the idea of a "genious" locked in a lab, producing amazing ideas is kind of old and cliche, the true is, for having results that worth it, is necesary, first a complete understanding of the problem that you want to solve, and second, the process shouldn't be something like isolated the problem and study it, is pay attention to the context of this problem, is make research, and let all this information melt with your creativity for coming up with a good idea.
Asking dumb question! Actually, I do that a lot :-) I use this trick through hiding behind my origin (Swedish) and being a foreigner. I can start a dumb question with: Maybe this sounds like a weird question, but you know I am not from this country, so I wonder about this bla bla.... Can you please explain for me....?
ReplyDeleteMy experience from asking dumb question it that people always love to explain things! They are so happy to help out.
I really like David Kelley and the video about Ideo/shopping cart. I recently had Mr Kelley (and Tina Seelig from d.school) as speaker at a event and he is extremely thrilling to listen to. Maybe the expression “Think outside the box” is worn out, but I like it! If we just can use a bit of the innovation approach that Ideo use, I think we should develop a lot, both in private and in business.
IDEO calls design thinking; To integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success – it sound very easy... To watch the movie with people working in smaller groups and see what they come up with in just five days, is very educative.
It definitely took a bit of courage to start asking "dumb" questions. At work I am on a committee that is currently in the process of updating our organizational values and working on an implementation plan.
ReplyDeleteDuring this process, there was a requirement from the leadership team was that we call out behaviors that constitute "unvalues" that can be corrected. Listening to my VOI, I determined that focusing on negative behaviors too strongly might give way to a defensive, passive-aggressive vibe. So, instead of just following along and keeping my mouth shut--I asked why it was fundamental for us to focus on unvalues.
Long story short, asking the question led to a nice discussion that led to the entire committee brainstorming constructive ideas for addressing employee behavior that is not aligned to organizational values. With this, I feel that the more I practice the 'dumb' questions, the easier it is to try it out in other context and find new ways to approach controversial issues.
Hi all,
ReplyDeleteFor those are interested, there is a public crash-course introduction to Design Thinking at Stanford's d.school Wednesday, October 30th from 12:45 to 2:45 pm: http://dschool.stanford.edu/blog/2013/10/23/join-us-at-the-d-school-for-a-crash-course-on-oct-30/
Hi! Thanks for the info, looks really interesting! =)
ReplyDeleteI always remember my father saying: there is no dumb questions, dumb is to keep the doubt and never ask...
ReplyDeleteThese week "live-with" brought me back to the second week "relaxing the VOJ". My VOJ is always stopping me of making any question that I judge being dumb.
In the beginning ask some questions made me feel embarrassed. But then, I realized how enlightening and useful some answers were, that ended up being not as dumb as I thought. And suddenly the dumb question in my mind was "why I didn't ask it before?"
And so, live-with asking dumb (or not) questions, was actually kind of a wise decision, because as much questions I was making, more knowledge I was acquiring and the result of being a little dumb was getting a little smarter. Such a good deal...
Ask questions is embarassed for me anyway. Many times I think I should know the answer of my questions. I know it is stupid because if I have a doubt I need to ask an explanation about it. But my VOJ is powerful and many times blocks me.
ReplyDeleteAsk dumb questions has been hard for me and I don't feel totally comfortable to do it, but I have tryed Yvonne's method to start it saying "I am not from this country" and it has helped me a lot.
For sure it is better make questions even if they are dumb but it is not easy when the VOJ is present. I have practiced the exercise "relax the VOJ" everyday and I have had a big advance about it, but I feel I need to practice and work hard and hard on it.