- Creating products and services today
is inherently multidisciplinary.
Whether it's a technologist and business strategist
or physicians and interaction designers,
everyone on the team brings a different set of skills
needed to make a great product.
One of the biggest challenges and failure points
is keeping all of that skill, expertise, and passion
focused on the same goal.
Agreeing on the problem you are trying to solve
and why you're solving for it
will set the stage for your team's
successful design-thinking collaboration.
One of my favorite tools for team alignment
is the Mission Countdown.
It's a 45-minute activity that takes a team
from those long, verbose, and hard to follow
mission documents that are often created,
down to a tight, four word summary
of what we are trying to do, why, and for whom.
At the end of this activity,
you'll have a four word mission statement like
"Accelerate Health Through Relationships."
This answers what are we trying to do, accelerate health,
and what's driving how we do it, through relationships.
The team will dig into that as they design,
but they can always ask themselves,
"Is this solution facilitating relationships?"
Whether they're working alone or collaborating.
Of course, there's a lot more behind those four words,
like relationships for whom?
In this case it was research physicians
and health entrepreneurs.
Or where do those relationships happen?
In this case, it was a newly built medical city.
Having that memorable statement
helps everyone keep it in mind.
Let me walk through how this works.
You're starting your activity with some mission document
that's probably pretty long,
it's got a lot of goal stuff in it.
You're getting your team together
and you're taking that and in 16 minutes,
you're going to reduce those documents
down to just 16 words.
Then in the next eight minutes,
you're going to reduce it further
down to eight words.
Then in the last four minutes,
you get down to your four word mission statement.
It's a fast, tightly time-boxed exercise
done by a group.
Let's walk through how that works.
Head to the course files
and snag the mission statement worksheet.
There's a formula on that worksheet
that you use for this activity.
In the first two worksheets,
the formula is "Our mission is to..."
What are we trying to do?
"In order to..."
Which is why.
And then finally "For..."
Where you're talking about who you're designing this for.
The activity is really tightly time-boxed
to keep things moving,
and it's intended to stop over-thinking.
As you go through this,
you have here, you've got 16 lines to fill in.
Then here you've got eight lines to fill in.
At this point, you don't have the formula anymore.
You're just looking for the four most important words.
While these steps are tightly time-boxed,
between each,
there's a short share out.
The share outs are important because you do this
in small groups and you want everybody to hear
the terms that are coming up for all these mission statements.
You want people to be able to steal from each other.
Now you have a set of four minute mission statements.
In the final ten minutes or so,
bring the groups together
and discuss the ideas and priorities
that emerge from reducing those goal documents
down to those four word statements.
Select the statement which best expresses
your team's mission.
Then write it large on the wall or a whiteboard
and refer back to it frequently.
At this point, you have a mission statement
that should help orient your team
around the long view of your program.
Like "Accelerate Health Through Relationships."
A good mission statement should align the team on the goal,
and it should be memorable throughout
all stages of design and guide the work
for all the disciplines on your team.
It should also help your teammates
communicate what the program is about
with other parts of the organization.
In a few days, hide the mission statement
and see if anyone can remember it.
If not, do the activity again.