Outline
Framing challenges workshop
Participants explore obstructions to a more open and innovative working culture, challenging
biases from old ways of working using design thinking techniques
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Design Thinking merges strategic and creative thinking to deeply understand a context,
explore user needs, and accurately define core challenges within an organisation. By
encouraging diverse perspectives, employees in your organisation uncover the underlying
emotions and motivations shaping how issues are experienced. This approach goes beyond
traditional linear models, ensuring decisions are grounded in real-world insights rather
than assumptions. Taking time to identify the right problem not only saves resources but
also reveals fresh opportunities for sustainable impact. Combining data-driven analysis
with a human-focused lens, design thinking ultimately leads to more effective, relevant,
and impactful outcomes.
Instead of jumping to solutions, they consider various stakeholders, lift every stone, and
examine different perspectives. This diverging leads to a wide variety of frames through
which the problem could be approached. Participants then converge to the most promising
ones. The methods used in the workshop are all easily transferrable to the employees' daily
work.
Ideating solutions workshop
In this workshop, democratising idea generation takes center stage by applying methods that
support a psychologically safe environment where building on ideas is encouraged, again
leveraging design thinking
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The ideation stage in design thinking is both fun and challenging. After clarifying a
well-framed problem, teams brainstorm a large quantity of solution idea directions,
withholding judgment to explore out-of-the-box ideas. The methods ensure everyone can
contribute and build upon each another’s ideas. By encouraging quantity before quality,
this phase counters mental biases such as anchoring or availability bias. Techniques
like “yes, and…” and structured brainstorming help prevent dismissing novel ideas too
early. The iterative process focuses on learning quickly to ensure solutions are as
effective as possible.
Participants generate a mass of ideas, pushing boundaries and self-imposed constraints. This
supports overcoming fixation on initial concepts. Afterwards, teams converge to promising
solution directions. Through rapid prototyping and quick testing, employees learn how to
obtain early user feedback, and adopt an iterative mindset.
While addressing a relevant issue, the workshops equip employees with design capabilities
that are applicable in their daily work. Each participant receives a one-on-one debrief
after each workshop to strengthen this learning, tapping into cognitive psychology
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Cognitive psychology examines how people perceive, think, and remember, offering vital
insights into learning and decision-making. In these debriefs, participants recognise
the mental shortcuts or biases that might have influenced their problem-solving. By
reflecting on these cognitive processes, your organisation's employees gain
self-awareness and the tools to shift unhelpful thinking patterns. This understanding
also supports a growth mindset, turning challenges into opportunities for learning.
By discussing the highs, lows, and cognitive biases, your organisation becomes better
equipped to engage in behaviours that support a culture shift towards a more open and
innovative work environment.
Engaging people workshop
Prompted with individual debrief summaries, participants reflect on cognitive biases they
struggled with or succesfully challenged. Next, we take a futures thinking and systems
thinking approach
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Futures thinking expands our view beyond immediate challenges, exploring possible
scenarios and strategic paths an organisation might face. Systems thinking complements
this by revealing how interconnected elements (people, processes, norms, external
forces) influence each other over time. Together, they help participants identify root
causes, anticipate unintended consequences, and design interventions that adapt to
changing conditions. Rather than reacting to one-off events, your organisation's
employees learn to see the bigger picture and create purposeful, future-oriented
actions.
Employees create future scenarios for the organisation and develop plans to support the
transformation by engaging relevant stakeholders. The participants will pitch these plans in
small teams.
