006 | Facilitating creative sessions to a great result

EDITION 006 | More Room to Think (Archives) | Formentor Labs​
​READ TIME: 3 minutes

Facilitating creative sessions to a result

But first,

🗓️ New this week

I'm really excited to be back facilitating the Digital Growth Marketing program again with Toronto Metropolitan University. Nothing fills my cup quite like waving my arms / talking too fast / demonstrating a new idea in front of a class.

The students only have one thing in common and that is: in the beginning nobody wants to call themselves a growth person.

Often they've found themselves managing growth for their business out of necessity; there's no one else to do it inside their company and they showed a curious interest and - poof - suddenly it's their responsibility.

Our job is to shine a spotlight on that curiosity and help them set goals, make a plan, practice the skills and share progress with each other in weekly classes. They learn as much or more from each other as they do from the course facilitators.

I think this program is partly responsible for me wanting to write Room to Think. I admire students with incredible persistence, starting from scratch, who all graduate having built wildly impressive growth strategies inside their organizations. This generation is hungry and coachable and that's a scary-awesome combo.

Make a little room to think Now is a perfect moment to take a breath. 8 seconds in, pause, 8 seconds out.

🔬 This week's topic

THE PREMISE: Facilitation

We can upgrade our personal brand from "this person has a lot of ideas" to "this person builds great ideas" by steering a team to deliver something real and tangible for the business.

• Facilitating a creative session that sees our peers deliver a result
• Setting the table clearly: the goal, any constraints, methods to use
• Going broad, then narrow, starting with the Double Diamond​
• All to deliver a usable prototype to validate in our market - often in the form of a webpage, an email, a feature or an ad concept.

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT TO GROWING OUR IDEAS

The biggest impacts we'll make in our careers require teamwork.

My own career is the beneficiary of brilliance from a hundred other minds collaborating on ideas. Growth is a team sport.

Good ideas have more impact when we borrow and reuse them across the organization. We can solve our initial problem, and then learn from that to solve similar-shaped problems in other areas of the business. Good ideas are like snowballs.

Finally - our leaders are watching how we work with others. Facilitating a group to get a real result is not easy. Seriously. By showing that we can collab effectively, we're setting ourselves up to own bigger projects, run teams, and deliver what the business needs.

HOW WE CAN USE IT THIS WEEK

There are MANY facilitation methods and creative exercises that can spruce up a group session. We'll cover over a dozen of my favourites in upcoming Room to Think issues. (I can barely wait for some of the sillier ones...)

The method to introduce first is the design thinking Double Diamond approach. We clarify the problem at hand by studying it from different angles. Then, guide the team's creativity towards generating ideas and making decisions. Broad to narrow. The result is a clearly-defined 'top problem' and the 'best-possible solution' to tackle it.

It takes practice. Let's go get that practice.

• Pick our big hairy problem, gather a team of 4-10 peers, throw up the double-diamond template.
• Gather as much early evidence as we can using research, interviews and real data.
• Define the problem in as few words as possible, and get the room to agree.
• Brainstorm ideas - being inclusive and accepting of all suggestions - until we have too many to count. Take 15mins to group and organize. This is a great time for snacks.
• From those organized ideas will emerge a pattern - and now, for the first time, we welcome constructive criticism. Wittle down those many themed ideas until a single concept earns the "it's so crazy it might just work" title.
• And now we build it into a prototype.

Pssssst, hey

These are the early editions of Room to Think.
I could use any support to nurture my growing audience:

• Forward this to the author of your favourite marketing newsletter. Collabs are how newsletters grow.
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• I'm an active speaker and looking for more speaking stage and guest podcast appearances. A quick intro is more than helpful.

Did you learn something from this newsletter? Did you put it into practice? I'm dying to hear how it went. Please email letstalk@formentor.ca and share your thoughts.