Guide to Conducting an Event Storming Session
Event Storming Session

Developing a comprehensive understanding of business systems is hard work. It usually involves high-level modeling or complex process mapping. This can be a highly technical and laborious process that involves a lot of trial and error. Creating BPMN diagrams or UML schematics can be very useful in understanding the broader functioning of a business, but they are fundamentally technical in nature and can exclude non-technical domain experts.

Domain-Driven Design 

Domain-Driven Design is a methodology that establishes a technology-independent language that allows for a detailed understanding of business needs and processes. This allows stakeholders to communicate their domain knowledge to the rest of the team in a language-agnostic manner to develop a shared understanding of systems.

What is Event Storming?

Event storming is a workshop-based approach to Domain Driven Design that brings technical and non-technical stakeholders together to explore complex business domains. It focuses on domain events that are generated in the context of a business process or business application. It usually involves product owners, domain experts and developers. 

The event storming method was introduced and publicized by Alberto Brandolini in Introducing EventStorming. It is used as a technique to rapidly capture a solution design and improve the team’s understanding of the design. 

Event storming is a form of group learning and is a fun way to integrate development and product teams to create alternative solutions together. Event storming may also be useful for teams with mature products to order the process and find out about bottlenecks and areas of conflict.

An event storming session is usually conducted to:

  • Create a business model for the development of a project.
  • Gain a “big picture” awareness of the product model in all its complexity, highlighting its goals and needs.
  • Visualize the product model and brainstorm alternative solutions.
  • Find bottlenecks and areas of conflict on mature products.

The Benefits of Event Storming

While building a product it is important for the development team to be well-versed in the business domain the product operates in. It allows for a clearer initial analysis and a more focused build. A workshop like an event storming session can boost the overall co-operation between business and product teams.

Quick: Most other business process modeling techniques are an in-depth deep dive into the operations of the business. They involve using complex data models and can take weeks to depict an accurate picture. Event storming is a rapid approach to modeling domain-driven design. An event storm is usually a single-day event where a complete business process can be mapped in a few hours. 

Shared Understanding Between Technical and Non-Technical Stakeholders: Unlike UML, an event storm creates a representation of a business process that can be easily understood without any prior technical knowledge. 

Collaborative: The core concept of an event storm is to encourage participation and interaction between domain experts. It creates an engaging environment to create business models and results in the discovery of more valuable insights. 

Effective: The greatest benefit of event storming is the conversations it starts. Teams can use the knowledge gained in the workshop to inform future modeling processes and build products, or can simply use event storming to better understand business processes and make better decisions going forward.

Conducting the Event Storm 

To conduct an event storm you need to gather various stakeholders with specific domain expertise together. This can be done in a physical location or virtually using a collaborative whiteboard tool like Creately. It allows you to conduct the entire session remotely on a single, infinite canvas and can be used as a shared space where stakeholders can exchange thoughts and ideas in real-time.

Step 1: Domain Events

The first step is to identify domain events. They are factual statements about the things that happened in a business system. Participants brainstorm and list down all the things that happened in a system that triggered important reactions. Then they list down these events as colour-coded notes on the virtual canvas. It is important to phrase these statements in the past tense so participants can frame this as a ‘what happened’ statement. As participants add events to the canvas, you can begin to organize them according to the time frame in which they occurred. 

Example of domain events

Step 2- Commands

The next step is to identify why the event occurred. In this stage, the team analyzes what triggered the events. While events are factual statements about the past, commands express our intent for something to happen in the future. Commands are usually listed down on blue notes. While events are captured as past tense statements, commands are listed down as present tense intentions. Commands may be documented as both user and system actions. 

Event Storming Template for collaborative domain design
Event storming template (Click on the template to edit online)

Step 3- Aggregates

These are the things that happen in a system that generally take place in a group of events. They are higher-order business entities that should be represented as nouns.

For example, ‘Order Process’. An aggregate usually consists of a collection of notes on the canvas. 

It is represented by a cluster of events with corresponding commands and the responsible actor. That aggregate can then be named and placed on a larger color-coordinated note on the canvas. 

Step 4 – Bounded Contexts

This is a high-level structure that consists of categorizations of functionality that group related entities together. The team begins to group together modules within an element called bounded contexts by drawing a box or circle around the related modules. You can then begin context mapping by illustrating how modules within a bounded context interact with other contexts. Simply put, all related events would fall into the same bounded context. For example, all events related to shopping carts would fall into the shopping cart bounded context.  

Event storming session with bounded context
Event storming template with bounded context (click on template to edit online)

Tips for Conducting Your Event Storming Session

  • Participants: The key aspect of a successful event storm is organizing the right people. Participants should consist of key stakeholders with domain expertise across multiple domains. An effective event storm usually has a small group of stakeholders to ensure free-flowing conversation and a collaborative environment.
  • Plan Sessions: Set goals and intentions for the session. This allows you to be more focused on what should be involved in the session and what aspects should be left out.
  • Send Instructions Ahead of Time: Allow participants to understand what the point of the exercise is and what is expected of them. Send instructions of what the key is and what different colored notes represent, so participants have a clear understanding while conducting the session
  • Have Discussions in Nontechnical Language: Ensure conversations are not bogged down by the specifics of implementation. These conversations should be more conceptual in nature so that everyone can participate, regardless of their technical background.
  • Provide Examples: It is helpful to showcase a completed event storming canvas so participants know what they need to work up to.

Have Experience Conducting an Event Storming Session? Tell us About it.

Have you participated or conducted an event storming session before, we would love to hear about your experience and some of the learning you came away with. Let us know your thoughts in the comments section.

5 Effective Steps to Creating a Powerful Innovation Strategy
Powerful Innovation Strategy

Innovation is an organization’s path to survival. In a world of rapid change and increasing competition, innovation has become essential to maintaining business growth, competitiveness, and productivity.  

Innovation is one of the key activities in a company’s operations. Innovation is a long and complex process that takes an abstract idea and converts it into a successful product or service. A proper strategy in place to execute it ensures that you do it well. 

In this post, we are exploring 5 effective steps for developing a powerful innovation strategy.

What is an Innovation Strategy

“Innovation transforms insight and technology into novel products, processes and services that create new value for stakeholders, drive economic growth and improve standards of living.”

In the simplest of terms, innovation techniques is the process of bringing new, unique, and creative ideas into reality. An organization following an innovation strategic planning tools uses innovation to execute its business strategy. In other words, an innovation strategy guides the process of resource allocation, enabling the organization to achieve its long-term goals through the use of innovation.  

“An innovation strategy guides decisions on how resources are to be used to meet a firm’s objectives for innovation and thereby deliver value and build competitive advantage.” –

Mark Dodgson, David Gann, Ammon Salter (The Management of Technological Innovation: Strategy and Practice)

A company’s innovation strategy should specify how the different types of innovation fit into the business strategy and the resources that should be allocated to implement these innovations.

An innovation strategy paves the way to 

  • Improve the ability to retain customers 
  • Reduce competitive intensity
  • Improve product or service performance  
  • Increase the chances of becoming a market leader 
  • Preserve bargaining power in an ecosystem and blunt imitators

Types of innovation

  • Gradual/ incremental innovation (continuous innovation) is based on abilities that can be easily learned and developed in an organization and has a low-risk low return. 
  • Radical innovation (discontinuous innovation) on the other hand may change the structure of an industry dramatically and has a high-risk high return. 

Innovation Matrix

The innovation matrix as introduced by VIIMA helps categorize innovation based on two dimensions; the technology it uses and the market it operates in. It, thus, visualizes the most common types of innovation.

Innovation Matrix for Innovation Strategy
Innovation Matrix (Click on the template to edit it online)

Based on these categories, three major types of innovation an innovation strategy can be based on can be identified, 

  • Product innovation; occurs in the development of new products, modifications in established products, or in the usage of new materials or components in the manufacture of established products
  • Process innovation; refers to the development of and implementation of significantly improved organizational processes through the integration of new technologies
  • Business model innovation; refers to the improvements done to an existing business model or the creation of a new one to better meet the needs of customers

The Innovation Value Chain 

The innovation value chain model provides a framework to identify which innovation approach makes the most sense for a company to adopt. It enables managers to find the company’s weaknesses and become more aware of an apt approach to implement for success. 

The framework includes three phases 

  • Idea generation; creating and sourcing new ideas from internal and external environments to achieve a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
  • Conversion; selecting and screening the best idea and implementing them. While this involves transforming knowledge into innovations in the form of new products, processes, or organizational forms, special focus should be placed on the company budget and strict funding criteria to avoid shutting down the development of the idea. 
  • Diffusion; spreading the idea across the organization. Find the relevant communities in the organization to support and spread the new product or service, process, and practices across geographic location, consumer groups, and channels. 
Innovation Value Chain
Innovation Value Chain (Click on the template to edit it online)

How to Develop an Innovation Strategy 

Determine the innovation strategy objective 

Developing an innovation strategy should start with understanding the reason behind developing one in the first place or the objectives you want to achieve by implementing it. 

To identify your innovation strategy objectives, examine the overall business objectives that help the company achieve sustainable competitive advantage. This will clear the path for your innovation strategy as it should eventually support the overarching goals of the organization.

Get the executive team onboard 

Engage the leadership team in dialogue and ensure that they are aware of the innovation objectives established and what it means for them as well as the future of the organization. During the discussions also identify, 

  • External changes that could be occurring at present and in the future as a result of innovation 
  • The implication of such changes on the company 
  • Scope of innovation; identifying opportunities for innovation, whether to improve existing products or services or introduce brand new products to new markets
  • Business outcomes; financial results, social impact, new economic models, market leadership,  etc. 
  • The gaps that must be closed to deliver the chosen innovation scope, especially in terms of processes, skills, and resources needed and company culture
  • Barriers to and enablers of the innovation strategy.  Barriers can come in the form of embedded beliefs on how the business should operate and enablers can show up as core capabilities or resources.  

Their involvement is necessary to create a shared vision of success with innovation at the core.

Gather customer insight 

Understanding customer needs will inform the direction of the development of the innovation idea. It will also enable you to formulate a strategy that works and create value-creating innovations that will ultimately generate a good return on investment.

In order to create value for potential customers with your innovation strategy, you need a thorough understanding of your market and the customer segment you are catering to. 

B2C Buyer Persona
B2C Buyer Persona (Click on the template to edit it online)

(Utilize a customer persona to gather insight on customers’ demographic characteristics, needs, challenges, and ambitions and apply that knowledge to generate a solution.)

Allocate resources 

When allocating resources for new areas for growth and renewal, reserving resources for the core business growth should also be taken into consideration. By conducting a comprehensive audit on the current innovation landscape of the organization you can determine and understand how much time, effort, and money are allocated to different innovation initiatives. 

The Harvard Business Review has introduced the Innovation Ambition Matrix to determine how to allocate resources based on the type of innovation initiative.

The-Innovation-Matrix-By-HBR-
The Innovation Matrix By HBR

The matrix describes 3 types of innovation and how resources should be split among them,  

  • Core initiatives – refer to efforts to make incremental changes to existing products and incremental inroads into new markets. For example, through new packaging or added service convenience. Such efforts can draw on resources the company already has. 
  • Transformational initiatives – refer to creating new offers to serve new markets and customer needs. This may require assets the company is unfamiliar with. 
  • Adjacent innovations – involves leveraging something the company does well into a new space. This type of innovation allows a company to draw on existing capabilities but necessitates putting those capabilities to new uses.

Research conducted by HBR shows that companies that allocated about 70% of resources to core initiatives, 20% to adjacent ones, and 10% to transformational ones outperformed their peers.

However, the right balance will vary from company to company and according to factors such as industry, competitive position, and the company’s stage of development.

To learn more about striking and maintaining the right balance between the allocation of resources and the innovation initiative, refer to this article here.

Develop an innovation system 

Not all organizations are likely to possess the capabilities to execute successfully at all three levels of innovation ambitions identified above.

However, HBR emphasizes that the companies that have got it right, have usually focused on five key areas of management that help them excel at the three levels of innovation ambition, and hence enable them to maintain a sustainable innovation system with the organization. 

  • Talent: includes the skills needed to execute core, adjacent, and transformational innovation initiatives. 
  • Integration: refers to organizing and managing the skills in the right way, with the right mandate, and under the conditions that will help them succeed.
  • Funding: refers to determining how to fund the innovation initiatives. Core and adjacent innovations can be funded by the relevant business unit’s P&L through annual budget cycles. Transformational innovations, on the other hand, require a sustained investment that comes from an entity (i.e. executive suite and the CEO).  
  • Pipeline management: mechanisms to track and monitor ongoing initiatives and ensure that they are progressing according to plan.
  • Metrics: what measurements should inform management. While traditional financial metrics are appropriate for measuring core and adjacent initiatives, a combination of noneconomic and internal metrics should be used to evaluate transformational efforts.

Developing an Innovation Strategy 

The innovation strategy of a competitor or an industry leader may not work for you. While you can learn from their best practices, an explicit innovation strategy to match your own competitive needs will be effective in the long run. 

Follow the innovation strategy steps explained above to formulate a robust strategy and better coordinate your innovation process. 

Got anything to add to our guide? Let us know in the comments below.

A Guide to Conducting Design Sprints on a Visual Workspace
A Visual Workspace For Design Sprints

One of the most important frameworks for designing great user-centric products is design thinking. It is an iterative process that teams use to understand challenges, question assumptions, and create innovative solutions that can be prototyped and tested. 

A design sprint is a highly interactive, experimental, and user-focused process that implements the practices of design thinking in a time-bound manner to derive tangible benefits that can be executed immediately.

It consists of 5 phases that are usually spread across 5 days. It starts with design thinking and ends with a user-tested prototype.

The 5 Stages of a Design Sprint

Define – Where a team uncovers a design problem.

Ideate – Where teams create solutions around the target problem.

Decide – Teams lock-in on a solution and develop a prototype.

Prototype – Teams build a realistic prototype to test with users.

Test – Teams conduct studies to validate the solution. 

One of the most important aspects of running a successful design sprint is assembling a cross-functional team. This requires individuals with expertise across a diverse range of topics. A typical design sprint consists of:

  • A customer service executive to provide user insight.
  • Designers to provide expertise on system designs and user experience.
  • Developers to understand and identify technical limitations.
  • A marketer who can assess the market value of the idea.
  • A decider who has the authority to make a final decision. 

The aim is to assemble the right mix of personalities, skills, and disciplines to ensure a productive, free-flowing environment for thoughts and ideas. In our experience, we’ve found that teams no larger than 7 work best.

How a Visual Workspace Helps:

Running a design sprint can enable teams to find solutions, innovate products and explore strategies, over the course of a few days. It allows for cross-company team building and demonstrates a rapid framework for innovation. But, one of the biggest hurdles to running effective and regular design sprints is the logistics involved. Co-ordinating schedules across various teams and getting them together in one location for an entire week, especially if the teams are distributed can prove to be near-impossible.  

Having a single, connected visual workspace where teams can work together in real-time and freely exchange ideas and opinions like they are in the same room is the perfect way to get the most out of a design sprint. Creately’s visual workspace allows teams to work on pre-made templates created for various design thinking frameworks and enables teams to run the entire design sprint on one canvas. 

Conducting the Sprint: 

Once the team has been identified they can access the same Creately canvas to begin the sprint. It helps to have a designated facilitator that will take the team through the various activities of the sprint. A facilitator will answer any questions about the methodology and make sure they stick to the schedule. Across the 5 day period, the sprint team will participate in various group and individual tasks, including:

Monday: Map

The first day of the sprint is where teams participate in structured discussions and charter a course for the rest of the week. It involves mapping out challenges, collecting data, and narrowing down on an ambitious but achievable challenge that can be solved within a week.

Many times it involves reverse-engineering the problem or destructing the problem to understand its root cause.

Customer Journey Maps

Creating user-centric products involves a deep dive into understanding user needs and how they will potentially interact with your product. The customer journey map tool is a valuable asset to use in the early stages of the design process. It helps teams empathize with users and identify opportunities to enhance the overall experience.

Customer journey map template for design sprints.
Customer Journey Map Template (Click on template to edit it online)

Empathy Maps

Empathy maps are another great tool that the team can incorporate into the design sprint. It serves as a collaborative visualization process that articulates what we know about a particular type of user to create a shared understanding and aid in decision-making.

Empathy map template for design sprints.
Empathy map template ( click on template to edit it online)

“How Might We”

The next stage is to create ‘How Might We’ notes on the visual workspace. After identifying some obstacles or potential problems in the customer journey mapping process, the team lists down possible opportunities to improve the user experience, framed as ‘How might we’ questions, for example, ‘ How might we improve the onboarding experience?’ 

How might we template for design sprints.
How Might We template ( Click on template to edit it online)

Tuesday: Sketch

By Tuesday, your sprint team should fully understand the problem and should decide on what aspect they will be focusing on for the rest of the sprint. The day is dedicated to looking for possible solutions and involves remixing old ideas that already exist and looking for ways to improve on them. Each team member ideates separately and creates a basic prototype. This can be through illustrative storyboards or by creating low-fidelity wireframes just to indicate what the product will look like.

Wire frame template for design sprints.
Wireframe template (Click to edit template online)

Wednesday: Decide

By the 3rd day of the sprint, your team should have created a list of potential solutions for the problem. Wednesday is all about selecting the best solution and creating a final storyboard. It involves discussions and voting on which idea will be storyboarded and prototyped for user testing.

There are many techniques that can be used to arrive at the best solution. One such method is to use the thinking hats framework that assigns a new point of view to each team member. This technique helps groups think more effectively and organizes the thinking processes in a detailed and cohesive manner.

Six thinking hats template for design sprints.
SIx Thinking Hats Template ( Click on template to edit it online)

Thursday: Prototype

The 4th stage of the design sprint is to actually build the product or a version that can be tested by users to gain feedback. This can be done through mockups, sketch designs, videos, or online demonstrations. Creating a prototype is an experiment in order to test out a hypothesis. This means you have to think critically about what you will build in order to get the feedback you need to validate or invalidate your hypothesis.

Prototype Storyboard - what is prototyping
Prototype Storyboard (Click on the template to edit it online)

Friday: Test

The last day of the sprint involves testing the prototype on customers. The aim is to gain feedback and incorporate changes back into the design. This can be done through usability testing where potential users actually interact with the prototype and share their thoughts and opinions. Testing can also be done through surveys or by showing users mockups that are close to a finished product.

Concluding the Sprint:

The design sprint doesn’t result in a finished product, but it does help to validate ideas quickly and affordably.  At the end of the sprint, you can expect one of the three outcomes.

A successful failure: Even if the sprint doesn’t end with a validated product, you learn valuable information from your prototype and avoid spending huge amounts of time and effort creating the wrong product. 

A flawed win: Here you have clearly identified what works and what doesn’t and can now fine-tune adjustments so you can test it again.

A complete win: This is when your prototype solved users’ problems or even exceeded their expectations. You now have a clear direction to work towards when developing your final product. 

This structured and condensed form of innovation is a great way to uncover great ideas and continually improve your product offerings. The learnings gained from this 5-day process can provide a wealth of insight and can have an organizational-wide impact. Do you have any valuable learning from conducting design sprints? We’d love to hear from you in the comments.  

Your Guide to Collaborative Design
Guide to Collaborative Design

Many of us think of design as a separate function, far removed from most business operations. But the importance of incorporating the ‘designers toolkit’ across departments can be of great benefit to an organization. Because, collaborative design, to enhance the product, user, and service experience puts the customer first. It can provide real measurable results while ensuring a competitive advantage.

What is Collaborative Design?

Collaborative design, also known as participatory design, is a design strategy that helps foster effective collaboration among different stakeholders. It brings together different ideas, roles, and team members to create a multi-staged user experience. Plans and strategies are developed using user feedback. It is usually an iterative process designed to maximize customer satisfaction.

Why Everyone Should Think Like a Designer?

It is important to establish that collaborative design is not a designer-exclusive activity. The more diverse the group of people involved in this approach, the greater the chances are of coming up with innovative solutions. Assembling a cross-functional team that participates in the design process allows you to bring two essential perspectives to every problem: empathy and creativity. 

Getting varied opinions and inputs allows you to develop a richer understanding of your customer which enables you to find the right problem and gives you enough creative freedom to find the right solution. 

Benefits of Collaborative Design 

Creates a Shared Mission: 

By not relegating design to the ‘design’ department, collaborative design keeps a team on the same page. So you can work parallelly on a project, right from when it begins until it is handed over. It can also help team members get more involved so they can really focus on the nuances of a project.

This type of approach isn’t just good for individual projects but helps to establish a more inclusive and democratic culture, where opinions and inputs are valued.

Establishes a Sense of Ownership: 

By involving multiple stakeholders in the early stages of the design and development of a project you make them more invested in its outcome. They are more motivated to contribute their best work to it. 

Unlocks Creativity and Innovation: 

Collaborative design sets up an environment for lateral thinking and innovation. It allows team members to apply their diverse knowledge base to a task at hand and come up with creative solutions to a problem. It prevents teams from being caught up in echo-chambers by involving them in the early stages in a workshop-based approach. 

Promotes Stakeholder Buy-In:

With everyone involved and actively participating in the design process, it’s easy to establish collective decision making and faster alignment. After the project is completed it is easier to get a final sign-off and reduces the amount of back-and-forth required. 

When to Use Collaborative Design: 

Some examples of problems where a collaborative design session can help to produce great results:

  • To define the strategy for an organization, product, or service.
  • When kick-starting by bringing people together with different backgrounds.
  • To Generate and discuss ideas in an effective and inclusive way.
  • To solve a specific design problem.
  • Designing the life cycle of a product or service.
  • Sharing insights from previous research and prototype on top of them.

Visual Tools for Collaborative Design: 

Online whiteboarding:

In a typical design session, a team huddles around a whiteboard and sketches out ideas. Using an online whiteboard from Creately allows for greater collaboration amongst remote teams and helps cross-functional teams contribute, discuss and develop ideas with greater ease. 

Creating wire-frames is a great way to understand user experience and allows teams to discuss different options and on a shared platform.

Wireframe templates to help in the collaborative design process.
Wireframe Template (Click on template to edit online)

Affinity Diagram

An affinity diagram tool is used to organize data gathered from a brainstorming session, research, or meetings under meaningful categories that are based on common relationships or themes. These themes are referred to as affinity sets or affinity groups.

Creating an affinity diagram is a great way to promote collaborative design. It produces more effective results with no more than 5-6 individuals who are experts in the subject that is being analyzed. This way you can collect different and useful insights, opinions, and perspectives to help arrive at faster solutions or better innovation.

Affinity diagrams to collaborate better with teams and improve the design process.
Affinity Diagram Template ( Click on template to edit it online)

An affinity diagram is created in 3 stages: 

Idea Generation

First, the collaborative design team writes down facts or ideas on individual cards. Do this on post-it notes or on collaborative software like Creately.

Idea Grouping

Once the ideation session is complete, the team can analyze the output. Then, sort the card into distinct categories and group them based on the similarities they have to each other. This is done by natural grouping and shared understanding among the group members. 

Creating Header Cards

After the ideas are grouped, members look for a common thread that links ideas together in a group. This idea can be a phrase or a sentence and should be easily understandable. Similarly, you can also create super headers that establish a relationship of a group with several other groups

Design sprints:

A design sprint is a collaborative design process where developers, design architects, and testers are involved in the process of validating, testing, recommending, and approving ideas. 

It is usually a time-boxed activity that follows a similar sprint cycle of any Agile project.

Design sprint schedule. ( Click on image for more details)

Using a Monday to Friday schedule, the design sprint will include:

Monday: Set goals, create maps with respect to design priorities, seek expert validation, and gather suggestions.

Tuesday: Draft or sketch a rough design so that the design team has an idea of how to go about the actual design process. You can search for similar products that could be used as inspiration and create quick remixes.

Wednesday: Decide on the best idea, create storyboards so that all the design elements connect together in a meaningful way.

Thursday: Convert storyboards into prototypes and create an early sample of the final product. The prototype should be close enough to the final product so that you can test and validate design ideas.

Friday: Test with users and gain feedback. Make constant iterative changes to arrive at your final product.

Conclusion

Collaborative design ensures everybody contributes towards product development. It has proven to be a better way to solve user problems and creates a more well-rounded product. Tell us about your experience with collaborative design and some of the success/ challenges you have faced while incorporating collaborative design into your development process. 

The Essential Guide on How to Brainstorm Online

With more teams having to work from home this year, it’s important to identify how to streamline work processes now more than ever. 

Especially a process like brainstorming online, an organized, detailed and sometimes even painstaking activity.  Even done on-site, brainstorming requires the full-on engagement and attention of the participants. 

And when everyone is working from home, it presents more hurdles to overcome. 

Have you read our Ultimate Guide to Working from Home yet?

Read on to find out how to effectively brainstorm online with your remote working team in 6 steps. 

Step 1: Identify the Attendees 

While it’s generally effective to keep the number of attendees between 8-10 when you brainstorm online, having a diverse team is critical for a successful brainstorming session. 

Based on the purpose of the meeting, the attendees may vary. Make sure that the team you choose includes individuals with different skills and expertise relevant to the subject being discussed. 

Make things more effective by including a mix of introverts and extroverts, and creative and non-creative participants. This will yield more diverse answers.  

On-site all you have to do to verify their availability is to turn around and ask. But when everyone is working in different parts of the continent/ world, it’s important that you take extra effort to check with them before deciding on a time for the session. 

Step 2: Send an Introductory Email to the Meeting

The purpose of this introductory email is to let your team know what to expect and allow them to prepare for the session in advance. 

The email should include details explaining the goal of the session (i.e. the problem and the solution you are seeking), any supporting material, the agenda, links to relevant tools or resources, calendar event, and the email invite to the meeting. 

Once the email has been sent, follow up with them (either with another email or via your chat platform) and verify that they received the invitation. You can also make it an opportunity to remind them to do some research around the topic to gather ideas ahead of time which in turn will save time during the session. 

Step 3: Choose an Effective Tool to Brainstorm Online

Whether your tool of choice is a messaging platform, video conference call, or an online whiteboard, make sure that it’s powerful enough to cater to the needs of your remote working team.

Slack

Slack is not just a chat platform, but it can also serve as a dashboard for brainstorming. Select a specific channel (or create a new one) for the session and notify everyone of the time and purpose, either via an email invitation or on the channel itself. During the session, everyone can contribute their ideas as new messages. At the end of the session, you’ll have an entire list of ideas that you can later analyze and prioritize. 

Google Hangouts Meet

This is a great tool for video conferencing, especially with a large group of people. While just like during an in-person brainstorming session, you can discuss matters during a video call, you can also use the chat option to enter a text message. However, to keep things more effective, it’s better to assign a facilitator who should take the responsibility of writing down the ideas of others.   

Creately

Creately is an online whiteboard where teams can collaborate in real-time on ideas using visuals or diagrams like mind maps. Prior to the meeting, create and name a document and share access to it by adding their email addresses or by simply sharing the document link in your Slack channel to give instant access to your team. You can also use the Creately plugin for Google Drive to create and manage your files right from Google Drive. Once the session starts, everyone can share their ideas on the canvas (changes will be reflected in the preview of the link you have shared on your Slack channel as well).

Step 4: Set a Time Limit and Stick to It 

One thing that gets overlooked during a remote brainstorming session is the time. However, it’s important to be respectful of the participant’s schedule as any additional time spent on the meeting will cut into his/ her personal time.  

Sometimes distributed teams aren’t always in the same time zone. Although it might be just after breakfast for you, taking an extra half an hour to conclude the meeting may interrupt their lunch hour. 

Step 5: Rely on Suitable Brainstorming Methods 

While there are plenty of brainstorming techniques out there, not all of them can work during an online brainstorming session. For example, a technique like role storming may fit best if everyone’s in the same room.

And not all techniques may help with the topic you are brainstorming around either. For example, mind maps work best for idea generation, while a technique like 5 whys or cause and effect analysis may help better with solving a problem or finding the root cause of an issue. 

Mind Map Template for Brainstorm Online
Mind Map Template for Online Brainstorming (Click on the template to edit it online)

It’s important to mention the method that will be used at the beginning of the session and clarify rules or guidelines associated with the technique as well. 

Here’s a list of useful tools for idea generation. They are linked to resources explaining how to use them.

Step 6: Conclude the Meeting

After you have gathered as much information as you want, take time (should also be included in the agenda) to spend on sorting through and summarizing them.

Our affinity diagram tool can help you categorize data, prioritize them and present the results to the team as well as the stakeholders.

Affinity Diagram Template for Brainstorm Online
Affinity Diagram Template (Click on the template to edit it online)

Creating an action plan comes next, which in itself would require another meeting. Or if you have scheduled that into the agenda as well, you can use an action plan template to quickly figure out the items.

Action Plan Template for Brainstorm Online
Action Plan (Click on the template to edit it online)

Ready for Your Next Online Brainstorming Meeting? 

Online brainstorming is more effective than in-person brainstorming for a few good reasons. It reduces the moments where dominant participants take over eclipsing their more introverted peers. As it heightens the feeling of anonymity, virtual brainstorming encourages these introverted participants to share their creative ideas more eagerly. 

Moreover, since everyone’s not in the same room, when you brainstorm online it increases the diversity of ideas; as the chance of being influenced by the ideas of others is minimal, it’ll bring out multiple various ideas from the participants. 

Got any tips on how to successfully brainstorm online to share with us? Let us know in the comments below. 

The Easy Guide to Kotter’s 8 Step Change Model
The Easy Guide to Kotter’s 8 Step Change Model

Change is difficult. Especially in the context of an organization, change could interrupt the status quo and lead to conflict. But change is needed. And to successfully implement change, you need to rely on a proper framework.  

This is where Kotter’s 8 step change model comes into play. It outlines how to systematically and effectively implement change in an organization. 

This post explains the Kotter’s 8 step change model in detail, simplifying the process of applying it to your organization.

What is Kotter’s 8 Step Change Model 

John Kotter’s 8 step change model is a popular framework for successfully implementing organizational change, and is used across many industries. It was introduced in his book “Leading Change” which was based on years of research that revealed there’s only a 30% chance of successful implementation of organizational change. 

Change can come as new technologies, mergers, and acquisitions, new strategies, cultural transformation, etc. 

Kotters 8 Step Change Model
Kotter’s 8 Step Change Model (Click on the template to edit it online)

A Bit about Kotter 

John P. Kotter, professor at Harvard Business School, is known worldwide as the authority on leadership and change.

His best-selling book “Leading Change” which discusses mistakes organizations often make when implementing change and an eight-step process for successfully bringing about change, is widely referred to by managers as the bible of change across the world.

What are the 8 Steps in Kotter’s Change Model 

Implementing change isn’t always easy. Barriers can come in various forms; lack of teamwork or leadership, rigid workplace cultures, arrogant attitudes, general human fear, etc. can disrupt any change implementation project. 

Kotter highlights 8 steps organizations should follow to overcome such challenges and put large-scale change into effect successfully. Following these steps will ensure that at the end of the process, the organization will not only be prepared but also be committed to embracing the changes. 

1. Creating a Sense of Urgency

The process should start with establishing a sense of urgency among both managers and employees. Everyone involved should feel the need for change or that change is critical for organizational growth. Without their support, it will make it difficult to keep the momentum of the change initiative and achieve lasting transformation.

The objective of this step should be to prepare the employees for the upcoming change and motivate them to offer their contribution. 

For this step to succeed, roughly 75% of the organization’s management should support the change initiative. In order to create an environment where everyone is aware of the existing problem

  • Identify existing threats and opportunities affecting the organization. Here you can use a SWOT analysis with the team. Based on it you can then develop future scenarios portraying what could happen
SWOT Analysis Template for Kotters 8 step change model
SWOT Analysis Template (Click on the template to edit it online)
  • Openly discuss with employees about what is happening and why change is necessary at this time
  • Create a forum to talk about the issues, threats and the possible solutions
  • Ask support from stakeholders and industry experts to back you up on your stance

2. Putting Together a Guiding Coalition 

This step is dedicated to bringing together a competent team with the right skills, qualifications, reputation, connections and sufficient power to provide leadership to the change efforts and influence stakeholders.

The size of the team will vary depending on the nature of the proposed change. However, an effective team should include the following supporters,

  • The sponsor: this is usually a senior executive who will be responsible for the change initiative. His/ her responsibilities include providing executive-level support and the needed resources to carry out the change initiative. 
  • The senior guiding team: the members here are selected by the sponsor. It consists of individuals (leaders) with sufficient authority in the area to make decisions and gather the relevant resources and support for the project. The team will be responsible for developing the vision and strategies, providing the resources, removing obstacles, guiding the organization during the process, resolving conflicts and communicating with the stakeholders. 
  • Filed guiding team: this includes highly credible and respected people who represent the constituencies in the organization that have a stake in the change. Their role is to communicate the vision and guide the organization through the process.
  • Change teams: these are the groups of managers and supervisors whose responsibility is to make sure that the tasks are successfully completed on time. They’ll also play a part in the design and the deployment of the change program.  

Once a team is assembled, focus on setting clear goals and developing an environment of trust and commitment. An effective team should 

  • Have a shared understanding of the need for change 
  • Have a common understanding of the mission and purpose of the team, as well as the goals and objectives it’s trying to achieve
  • Have a clear idea about the roles and responsibilities of each other as well as the performance measures
  • Understand the risks and challenges associated with the change initiative and the success factors
  • Have clear processes for measuring success, decision-making, tracking issues, and resolving conflicts
  • Have clear communications channels

3. Developing Vision and Strategies

The objective of this step is to create a sensible vision to direct the initiative and to develop effective strategies to help the team achieve it. It helps create a picture of what the future of the organization looks like once the change is implemented. 

The right vision help achieve change successfully by inspiring and guiding team actions and decisions. It should also define clear and realistic targets to help easily measure success and appeal to the interest of the company stakeholders. 

To set a clear and appealing vision, 

  • Align it with values central to the organization and the change initiative
  • Accept the ideas of employees when developing the vision
  • Make sure that it can be communicated easily and is easy to understand by everyone
  • Incorporate data such as forecasts, market research data, business trends, etc. 
  • Ensure that it is simple enough to be explained in five minutes or less

4. Communicating the Change Vision

In this step, the focus is on effectively communicating the vision and the strategies in ways that help encourage the rest of the organization to accept and support the change initiative. 

The goal here is to capture the hearts and minds of the employees; to get them to make sacrifices to support the change, to get them to believe that change is possible and the resulting benefits are for the best of the organization as well as themselves. 

To do this effectively, 

  • Communicate the vision and strategies as frequently as you can by incorporating it in the daily decision-making, problem-solving and actions
  • Walk the talk. It’s important that the senior management demonstrate the ideal behavior that they expect from the rest of the employees
  • Encourage feedback from employees and address their anxieties, problems, anger, and concerns openly and honestly 
  • Use simple words when communicating the message to avoid confusion and doubt 
  • Make use of all the organizational communication channels to get the word out. This may include platforms varying from emails and newsletters to the company intranet

5. Remove Barriers to Action

When implementing organizational-wide change, obstacles may occur frequently. Barriers may come in the form of insufficient processes, resistance to change by employees themselves, disempowering managers, organizational policies and its structure, etc. 

And in this step, the guiding coalition and the senior management should focus on removing such obstacles that block the organization’s path to achieving the change vision. 

  • Clearly understand the barriers within the organization that are blocking the implementation of change. The guiding coalition that consists of employees with different expertise can help in this step. And openly communicating with employees and stakeholders can also help identify the barriers. 
  • Make sure that organizational processes, structures, policies, reward systems, etc. are aligned with the new change vision.
  • Recognize and reward employees that actively work on implementing change
  • Empower employees to do their best and face challenges successfully by giving them the necessary training, coaching and mentoring.

6. Accomplish Short-Term Wins

Achieving complete real transformation may take time. Going so long without any victories to celebrate may discourage employees. To keep the momentum going and to encourage employees to keep backing the initiative, it’s important to have short-term goals to accomplish and celebrate early in the change process. 

A short-term win is an organizational improvement that can be implemented within a short period of time. Such a quick win should be visible throughout the organization, unambiguous, and related to the change initiative. 

  • Identify feasible short-term wins; for example, this could include efforts that may help cut back costs, improve processes, increase profit, etc. It’s important to thoroughly consider the pros and cons of the target you select as failing an early goal may discourage the team. 
  • Break down the change project into smaller parts with short-term goals
  • Acknowledge and reward those who are responsible for these quick wins to encourage other employees as well

7. Build on the Change

This step is all about sustaining the implementation of change by ensuring that the teams are working persistently towards achieving the change vision while measuring progress. It’s important to make sure that the team doesn’t declare victory prematurely after a few quick wins. 

To continue the momentum of change, 

  • After every win, identify what worked and what went wrong to decide what needs to be improved
  • Consolidate the gains from the quick wins and continue to work on implementing larger change throughout the organization 
  • Identify and remove unnecessary processes and inter-dependencies 
  • Continue communicating the vision and delivering benefits

8. Make Change Stick 

In this step, the change leaders work on nurturing a new culture where change can stick. This includes changing organizational norms and values, processes, reward systems, and other infrastructure elements to make sure that everything aligns with the new direction. 

To successfully implement change, 

  • Discuss the importance of the new changes by pointing out the benefits they bring 
  • Identify and incorporate norms and values that reinforce the change 
  • Incorporate these new norms and values when selecting and hiring new talent, promoting employees, etc. 
  • Create new training and development programs to help employees develop skills and competencies relevant to the new changes
  • Improve or eliminate organizational processes that do not align with the new culture. Also, remove individuals who are hindering progress. 

The Ultimate List of Change Management Tools to Drive Change Like a Pro

Ready to Implement Change? 

Implementing organizational-wide change is not quick or easy. It requires patience, preparation, and persistence. A good framework to help you keep yourself on track during this long journey is Kotter’s 8 step change model. By following these 8 steps, you can ensure the successful implementation of change within your organization. 

Got anything to add? Let us know in the comments section below.