Image by Midjourney prompt by the author.

How we did it: turning our workshop output on its head

People are brilliant at producing ideas. And within each idea lies a treasure: an assumption of what the customer needs and which value we can offer.

A good workshop enables people to share what they believe in, imagine and assume. And the “idea” is a wonderful way to help people get to that output because it’s natural and motivating for people to articulate themselves through producing ideas.

But I also have an exceptionally high respect for the craft of ideas. It’s a profession, an expertise. Anyone, anywhere at anytime can have the most brilliant idea, but to be able to craft that idea into something that can be understood and motivate people, that can both produce value to the person using it and the person investing in building it. That this idea is fit for the need and the situation it is supposed to serve, that it is feasible, viable and desirable (1). That is serves an important unmet need (the customer cares). That its understandable, significant, useful and current .. all this takes craft. Years of training and expertise.

It’s like me.. I can pick up a violin at any time and play a sound, but to play a symphony with it .. that takes craft.

Illustrations by Midjourney prompts by the author.

768 ideas

A while back we ran a workshop that created 768 ideas. An amazing output. Not because of the ideas themselves, but because of the thinking that went into them.

What did we do next?

Everyone attending a workshop brings with them what they assume to be true. And they articulate it in the shape of an idea. We can then dissect this idea. Turn it on its head and ask: what is the underlying assumption about value to the customer and value to the business that led to this idea?

So we did that.

We analyzed every one of the 768 ideas in order to identify what the underlying assumed value proposition was and also what customer need this value proposition was there to support.

We came to 21 different assumptions of value propositions and customer needs.

This was (according to us) what the workshop participants had been trying to tell us through their ideas: these are the needs we think we can see our customers care about and this is the value we as a company can offer the customer to support those needs and bring value back to us.

An idea should be positioned in the yellow area of the diagram. Demonstrating an opportunity where the customer need and the organization’s need is aligned. Illustration by the author.

The 21 value propositions where tested with customers and prioritized down to nine. Then we started prototyping solutions to fit and we kept learning that even if we were getting the value propositions and needs right we still needed to get the solutions right which needed further rounds of trying and failing.

But these rounds are learning opportunities. Every time you make a prototype that fails you learn something. And you still have your direction and strategy in place because the value proposition and the need keeps being confirmed.

(important hat tip: always test your value propositions and needs separate from the solution as the solution is just one out of a million ways to solve for the customer value. And its important to know if its the solution that is wrong or the underlying value proposition.)

Running workshops to create ideas is a win-win. People are good at it and they feel productive. But these ideas are not finished products they are not products at all .. they are windows into what the expertise in the organization knows and assumes about the customer. So you turn the output on its head in order to learn what the expertise is telling us about what the customers’ need and value, which we can offer.

But these ideas are not finished products they are not products at all .. they are windows into what the expertise in the organization knows and assumes about the customer.

Ideas are windows into the conscious and unconscious. It is an indirect method of asking people what they think their customers need and what value the organization can offer. It can sometimes be a better way of getting people to externalize their own assumptions and expertise.

An idea is not only an invitation to go make MVP’s, it’s also a tool to collect insights.

An idea is a window into the assumptions held by its creator. Icon by thenounproject illustration by the author.

Sources:

(1). Jack O’Donoghue, IDEO’s Desirability, Viability, Feasibility Framework: A Practical Guide, https://makeiterate.com/ideos-desirability-viability-feasibility-framework-a-practical-guide/