How a Strategic Planning & Roadmapping Session helped an essential program adapt and evolve in a very short amount of time to support the growth of the business.

When each of us thrive, we all thrive, and from this spirit my Sprint For Good program was born. The program is a way to bring deserving organizations and missions a chance to meaningfully move their business, product and/or service forward. That includes the opportunity to participate in full-blown Design Sprints, Strategic Planning Sessions, and more.

What do purpose, adult friendships, languishing and Barack Obama have in common? My latest reading list, as a matter of fact. This installment explores themes across community and relationship building, as well as examining present-day problem solving.

I’ve curated a list of 3 principles that will help you nail the facilitation of customer interviews, manage different personalities, and extract the quality feedback you need to move your product or business idea forward. When we share insights with each other, we all benefit! And it all starts with a proven process.

Whether you’re leading an hourlong workshop or a five-day Design Sprint, there are a few things you can do to protect yourself from feeling emotionally drained and completely exhausted. My hope in sharing these 3 steps — which are my own learnings that I practice every day— is that they save you from feeling burnt out and get you back to the things you love.

Testing is arguably one of the most critical parts of the Design Sprint process. If you’re running a remote process, here’s a straightforward and streamlined way to stay organized and collect this key feedback from testers.

Jackie believes in service. She has been volunteering for most of her life and has worked with organizations in the Twin Cites such as Amicus (Prisoner mentorship program), Free Arts Minnesota, and as a hospice volunteer. When she started her business, she committed to giving back to help her community thrive. Each year, she offers her services pro bono.

The ways in which we collaborate have changed a lot as a result of the pandemic. More virtual meetings, more screen time, more A/V issues, and way more sneak peeks into our colleagues’ lives. While it’s certainly not a perfect reality, certain aspects of shifting to a remote model have resulted in a lot of positive outcomes for facilitator. Here are 4 examples.

Your job as a facilitator isn’t to show off with your knowledge of the business; it’s to drive people through a process that lands on a desired outcome. A few learnings have completely transformed the way I facilitate today.

Have you decided to lead your first Design Sprint and need some support? Or, maybe you’ve done it before and are looking for ways to make the experience even smoother and more productive. Every situation may be unique, but the DNA of the Design Sprint is hardwired to guide effective outcomes. With that in mind, and thanks to my own trial and error, I’ve honed in on what I think are the key pillars for a successful Design Sprint.

I am often asked to have coffee with people who are thinking about starting their own thing. They want to go solo, fly free, run their own show. Sometimes they are interested in focusing on Design Sprints, but often they are interested in something adjacent: digital strategy, digital transformation, product leadership, brand strategy, etc. Here’s my advice.

Design Sprints are a great way to test ideas before you invest a ton of time and money in building them out. You could certainly make something up without understanding your customer but you’ll get more out of your Sprint if you know a little something about the people you aim to help before you start.

The Job Story method takes the team deeper into the needs of the people we are solving a problem for. This means they are more likely to create a solution that meets those needs and as a result, make something people value.

When Justin Kaster and I first started talking, he was in the midst of working on the next iteration of his business ideas and wanted help defining what his team could do next. I ran a 3-day Design Sprint with Justin’s team to design, test, and get feedback on new concepts that could help him evaluate the best next direction for his business.

The magic of the Design Sprint is its ability to neutralize politics. When I work with teams, I have frank conversations about politics and team dynamics going into the Sprint. The agenda I design takes into consideration the realities of those dynamics. I use methods to draw out ideas from everyone in the room and facilitate sharing and dialog so that politics aren’t what matters and great ideas can shine through.

These methods used are both a means to solve the challenges at hand and as practice so that educators walk away with tools they can use to continuously improve and refine on their own. First: we identify our “to solve” and refine by putting the human beings we aim to help at the center of our problem solving. Then: we come up with new ideas rapidly. Last: we define solutions that will be tested and tried after our work together.

To stay relevant in today’s rapidly changing marketplace you must change. ‘Adapt or die’ in evolutionary terms. If you stay the same or move too slow, you put your business at risk of not being here in the future.

Language is a tool people use every day but words can fail us. Drawing feels uncomfortable and intimidating to many of us. But even the worst (and I’d argue that there is no bad drawing — the only bad drawings are the ones that aren’t drawn.) Drawing communicates volumes compared to a sentence.

From low-fi, hand-drawn sketches to wireframes or clickable demos, we recommend prototyping with both your stakeholders as well as target users. Sometimes our prototypes are solely for the internal team to vet out interaction patterns. We often focus on an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) release. However, MVP is not an excuse to suck.