Find Customer-centered Business Opportunities with the Smart Sailboat
Strengthen your team's collaboration and prioritization processes with the Smart Sailboat, a design thinking activity that drives customer-centered alignment of business objectives.
In this article, you’ll learn how to use the Smart Sailboat exercise to center your team on the right problems to solve. We’ve included an example that demonstrates how your team can apply the activity to your projects. You’ll also learn when it's best to use the Smart Sailboat.
The Smart Sailboat is one of three activities in our Problem Prioritization toolkit, along with instructional videos and templates to optimize your team's success. Get access to it here, and continue reading to learn how this powerful activity can effectively enhance your team's success rates during sprints.
How to Use the Smart Sailboat
Define and Align on Customer Problems
For each quadrant, work quietly and individually for 2-3 minutes to generate ideas. 1 idea per sticky. Then, spend 30-60 seconds per person reading your ideas.
Harbor: Each person shares 1-2 ideas to identify the broader mission. Consider prompts like,
What is the user’s ultimate goal?
What does success look like for our customers?
What promises for a better future are we making to our customers? What promises do we want to make?
After sharing, group common stickies and define themes. Commit to focusing on one overarching Harbor as a team. Depending on the project, your Harbor could be a themed group of stickies or one specific sticky. For most projects, we recommend the latter.
Wind: Each person shares 1-2 ideas to answer the question, "What similar wins have we already achieved for our customers?" For existing products, consider wins that are as close as possible to the Harbor you committed to as a team. For new products, consider other wins for the same target customer. After sharing, group common stickies and define themes.
Anchors: Each team member shares 1-2 current challenges or obstacles that prevent our customers from reaching the Harbor. Consider prompts like,
What pain points is the customer experiencing in their pursuit of the Harbor?
What obstacles are in the way of success for our users?
What problems or challenges is the user-facing?
After sharing, group common stickies and define themes. Choose 3-5 ideas that you’re interested in exploring. If you want to take it one step further before committing to a set of ideas, create a user journey from your Anchors to visualize where and when pain points are happening, then choose an area in your journey as your focus.
Icebergs: Each team member shares 1-2 future challenges or obstacles that could prevent our customers from reaching the Harbor. Consider prompts like,
What’s happening in our industry that, if it escalates, could make the customer’s challenges worse?
What’s happening in the economy or culture that, if it escalates, could make the customer’s challenges worse?
What changes are on the horizon that might cause our customers to use a competitor’s solution instead of ours?
After sharing, group common stickies and define themes. Choose 3-5 ideas that you consider to be most likely to happen, most impactful, or otherwise important. Use these to define potential future experiments or to communicate risks in your project plan.
Condensed Version: Wind and Anchors
Sometimes, Harbors and Icebergs detract from the conversation instead of adding to it. Maybe your teams is are already aligned on their Harbor, or perhaps that’s a decision from above that needs to be communicated rather than decided. Similarly, future-looking icebergs can be less-than-helpful for a team that’s focused on right-now issues.
Try a lightning version of Smart Sailboat: Wind and Anchors in that situation.
Note: the condensed version works best for the customer version of this exercise, not defining business objectives. Harbors are an important starting point for that use case.
Define and Align on Business Objectives
For each quadrant, take 2-3 minutes, working quietly and individually, to generate ideas. 1 idea per sticky. Then, spend 30-60 seconds per person reading your ideas.
Harbor: Each person shares 1-2 ideas to identify the broader mission. Consider prompts like,
Where are we headed?
What are our goals, KPIs, and financial targets?
What does the ideal future look like for our company, team, or product?
After sharing, group common stickies and define themes. Commit to focusing on 1 overarching theme as a team.
Wind: Each person shares 1-2 ideas to answer the question "What have been some recent wins?" related to the Harbor theme. After sharing, group common stickies and define themes. You can use these later in a prioritization exercise to help the team focus on ideas that leverage organizational strengths.
Anchors: Each team member shares 1-2 current challenges or obstacles the team faces that will make it harder to reach the Harbor. Consider prompts like,
What organizational norms, changes, or context will make it difficult to achieve our goals?
What resources are we lacking?
What has caused similar initiatives to fail in the past?
After sharing, group common stickies and define themes. You can use these later in an impact/difficulty activity to identify the resources you’ll need to achieve your goal.
Icebergs: Each team member shares 1-2 future threats that might exist. Consider prompts like,
What’s happening in our industry that, if it escalates, could prevent success?
What could cause this project to fail?
What has caused similar initiatives to fail in the past?
After sharing, group common stickies and define themes. You can use these later in a pre-mortem exercise to identify, communicate, and mitigate risk in your project plan.
Example: Smart Sailboat in Action
Imagine a team working on a campaign to increase families' recycling habits. Let's walk through how they would use the Smart Sailboat exercise to align on customer problems and business objectives.
Harbor: The team members share ideas about the ultimate goal of their campaign. They decide that their Harbor is to "educate families about recycling benefits and inspire them to adopt sustainable recycling practices."
Wind: Each person shares examples of similar wins they have achieved for their customers. They might discuss previous successful environmental campaigns, community events, or educational programs that promoted recycling.
Anchors: The team members identify current challenges that prevent families from adopting sustainable recycling habits. Some examples could include a lack of knowledge about recycling, inadequate recycling facilities, or confusion about which materials can be recycled. The team then chooses to focus on increasing recycling education and improving recycling facilities in the community.
Icebergs: The team members discuss future challenges, such as increasing plastic consumption, resistance to changing habits, or new regulations affecting recycling programs. They decide to monitor these factors and adapt their campaign accordingly.
When to Use the Smart Sailboat
Consider using the Smart Sailboat exercise in the following situations:
When initiating a new project or product, to help your team align on goals and objectives
When your team is facing roadblocks or struggling with prioritization, to refocus on customer problems and identify areas for improvement
When the market, industry, or customer base is rapidly changing, to anticipate future challenges and adapt your strategy accordingly
When onboarding new team members, to help them quickly understand the project's objectives and challenges
Wrapping Up
The Smart Sailboat exercise is a versatile and effective way to kick off a project, helping teams align on customer problems and business objectives. By focusing on the Harbor, Wind, Anchors, and Icebergs, teams can identify overarching goals, existing wins, current challenges, and future obstacles. The exercise can be adapted to suit the specific needs of a project, such as focusing only on Wind and Anchors for a more targeted approach.
By using the Smart Sailboat, your team can make more informed decisions, prioritize effectively, and ultimately improve the success rates of your projects. Give it a try in your next sprint, and see how it can help your team navigate toward success.
