One of my favorite things to do with my teams is to challenge the status quo. To pick an area that is almost on autopilot and ask, how can we shake this up? How can we innovate and get ahead of our competitors? Design Thinking is a great way for teams of all makeups to see the limitations of their own thinking and assumptions and to get comfortable challenging the status quo.
One of the design thinking workshops I love facilitating is aimed at exploring the evolving landscape of proposal delivery. The focus is broad, considering not just technological innovations like Artificial Intelligence (AI) as it's become part of everyday, but also socio-economic shifts, regulatory changes, visual changes and evolving client expectations. Thess workshops employ the core phases of Design Thinking—Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test—to thoroughly examine potential future scenarios.
Challenge:
The primary challenge was to empower participants to proactively envision and prepare for various potential future changes affecting proposal processes. This requires a deep dive into how different factors could transform traditional proposal strategies and client interactions.
Objectives:
Utilize the Design Thinking framework to explore a wide array of impacts and opportunities in proposal delivery.
Foster an adaptable and innovative mindset among participants, equipping them with the skills to handle future challenges and opportunities.
Generate actionable insights and strategies that anticipate changes, ensuring proposals remain effective and competitive.
Observe participants to identify those with the mindset to lead and innovate teams.
Approach:
Warm Up: Being creative is hard when you've been conditioned to follow rules or don't practice a creative activity. I have found engineers have immense creativity but are so used to following guidelines and standards that they lose touch. The same applies with support and administration personnel. They are used to being told what to do and to follow strict processes, so I like to start with a simple fun activity, like the circles activity to get participants' creativity activated.
Empathize Phase: We begin by gathering insights into current pain points in proposal delivery, understanding participant experiences, and discussing perceived future challenges and opportunities.
Define Phase: Defined the key areas of focus based on insights gathered during the Empathize phase. This included technological advancements like AI, as well as broader factors such as global market trends and changing regulatory environments.
Ideate Phase: In brainstorming sessions, participants generated a range of creative solutions to address the defined challenges and opportunities. Ideas have ranged from integrating AI to enhance data analysis and content generation, to strategies for maintaining a human touch in increasingly automated processes.
Prototype Phase: Small groups work to develop rough prototypes of adaptive proposal strategies and documents. These have included templates and workflow diagrams that incorporated both technological tools and traditional methods tailored to various hypothetical future scenarios.
Test Phase: Prototypes were tested through role-playing exercises and peer reviews, where participants simulated both the proposal team and client roles to evaluate the effectiveness and adaptability of the strategies.
Results:
Broadened Perspectives: Participants gained a holistic understanding of how diverse factors could impact the proposal process, preparing them to think broadly about future changes.
Innovative Strategies Developed: The workshops have produced several innovative strategies that were adaptive and future-ready, balancing technology integration with essential human elements.
Empowered Participants: By using the Design Thinking process, participants felt empowered and equipped to lead their teams through future changes, fostering a culture of innovation and adaptability within their organizations.
Future Leaders were identified. It became clear in some sessions that some current Pursuit Team leaders were too regimented or just not interested enough to respond to future changes and were not actively thinking long term or broad enough. These sessions gave powerful insights to management to enable them to make better business decisions.
These Design Thinking workshops have successfully prepared participants to navigate the complexities of future proposal delivery. By thoroughly exploring potential impacts and developing tailored strategies, the participants are now better positioned to adapt to and capitalize on changes, ensuring their proposals remain compelling and competitive in a dynamic business environment.
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