Activating stakeholders
during co-creation workshops

Full transcript

Daria: Well, people think really that innovation or co-creation is about taking smart people, you put them in a room, you give them sticky notes and yay! You know, magic happens. Not quite true you know? It doesn't work that way, there might be post-its at the end, but might not necessarily be a good outcome necessarily.

Jay: Hey, Daria, how are you doing?

Daria: Hi, how's it going?

Jay: I'm doing great. Thanks for joining me today.

Daria: Absolutely.

Jay: Daria, you're going to be talking today about activating stakeholders and you have this position at Avast where you're the head of innovation. What I've noticed is that in the innovation space, we want people to come and bring their big and bold and best ideas. And as much as I've tried to invite those people to bring that, bring that like, that bold thinking, I've noticed that if I don't give them the prompts and allow them to do that, they stay very safe, they stick with the people that they know. And so, as you and I were talking about how you activate stakeholders, I was really excited to see the techniques that you use to get people moving and bringing their best ideas forward.

Daria: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that is one of the hardest parts of the story, right? It's like, how do you bring together people and then really activate them so that they can collaborate with each other and really ultimately come up with an outcome that is what you're hoping to get, right? Which is innovation. It's very hard, it's a hard task. I've found that over the years you know, I like to look at challenges as opportunities and so one of the things that I observe is that people, we, human beings, we have a tendency of trying to stick with those that, you know, the things that we recognize. And so we try to stick with like-minded people, we try to stick with people that come from the same background, the same discipline, you know, et cetera, et cetera. It's kind of a normal behavior, honestly. But the problem with that, when you want to activate people in a setting where you want them to be creative is that we in fact, we find that speaking with like minded people is not necessarily conducive to great innovation because you're entering this loop where you keep on coming up with the same things over and over and over again.

Daria: And so really what you want to do in fact is kind of in a way break that cycle, right? And you want to really try to find a way to, of course, create a safe environment, but at the same time create stimulating environments. And so to me, really what I think is that, of course there are many elements that are needed to create this space and, you know, perhaps today I would like to focus on three in particular that I found over the years to be quite important. And I always ensure that those are in place, right, regardless of the context. And so the three steps that I usually ensure that are taken into account are, first carefully select the participants. Who you select makes a huge difference in the outcome. The second one is really to be very deliberate and utilize the design language to scaffold the experienced.

Daria: And by this I mean to really create the structure that is open for people to find their space, but at the same time to add a structure, a scaffold, to enable that collaboration and to really make the scaffold based on design elements, make it very practical, very hands-on. And the third one is really to find ways as you design the scaffold to push the participants outside the comfort zone. And what I find is that a good way of pushing people outside their comfort zone is to remove their focus from what their discipline is and their biases that come with that, you know? The tendency is to focus on those directions. It's actually removing that focus and moving them towards focusing on the customer on the user, because that way you create the central point. We as human beings relate to the outside world, you know, we are all different and richly beautiful, in our differences, but we do have some stuff in common. We've got eyes, we've got hands, we've got ears, we've got noses, right? So we've got like our bodies are, in a way, is a commonality. And we always said having a way to articulate your ideas in a very hands-on and practical way, by drawing, by making, by building, by breaking. That is actually something that comes very natural to everyone, regardless who they are. And also, again, focuses them on the problem versus on the tension between individuals - kind of becomes a mediation between the individuals. And so all this is to say that you know, to sum it up, right, there are some ingredients that are very fundamental. Who is in the room is very fundamental, right? How do you create the game experience A to Z? Fundamental. And will you create your experience in a way that you focus all those individual tools, one common goal, that has nothing to do with what is the call forth, but it's got to do with, with what is the right thing to do in the moment, right? Which is in my opinion, the end user, the end customer that you want to serve with your work. So this is kind of a bit of a summary of an example.

Jay: These are great. I'm sure that it sounds like you get a lot of good participation and you've managed to figure out a good recipe for activating folks, which is the whole point of getting the group together. So thanks for sharing these tips. These have been great. I hope that if you're, if you're watching and you've learned from Daria, you're able to get a group of people together to talk about ideas that they're not, you know, just not the same old ideas, and you really can create a space for them to come and bring some big, bold thinking to these conversations. Thank you Daria.

Daria: Thank you. Thank you very much.

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