- As you reflect on the activities and topics
covered in this course, you may find that some of them
are not business as usual within your organizations.
And some of them might even seem impossible to implement.
There are many common barriers.
They can be, "The sales team will never let us
"talk to a customer," or,
"The next open cycle with the dev team
"is in three months, we don't have time to prototype."
Bringing a making-based problem-solving mindset
to your company is often a culture change
as much as it is about the internal workings of your team.
So examining the openness of your organization
to these new ways of work
and identifying the likely barriers and advocates
will help you spread these ideas within your organization
and set your team up for success.
At the start of the next program, I recommend
you set up a meeting with representatives
from parts of the business you expect
your final solutions to touch.
It might be the sales team or marketing,
or the development teams or outside partners.
At that meeting, share with them
how you want to run this effort.
Describe the human-centered approach.
Highlight the emphasis on making
light and fast experiments and prototypes.
Note the intensity of the collaboration you're planning,
and be honest about the amount of ambiguity
that may enter into what the outcomes will be.
And then, ask them to provide feedback
about how this will work for them.
Approach the conversation with optimism,
and be sure to communicate
both the expected gains and acknowledge
that this may not work, and appreciate their feedback.
One way to do this is to use Post-It notes
and have all of your participants share
what they see as the opportunities or enablers
in the organization that might align with
or support your initiative,
and to indicate key blockers which might get in your way.
You might use one color, like green, for the enablers
and another, red, for the blockers.
But however you structure this,
time box the activity to get a good list started.
Generally about 10 to 15 minutes is enough time.
Then engage your participants in helping you
identify potential solutions for the blockers.
Maybe there's a skunksworks dev team
that's seeking a new project
that maybe can help you get over that three-month hurdle,
or a new head of sales who believes the sales process
needs to become more collaborative,
who you might approach to champion this project.
These can be hard conversations.
But understanding the readiness of your broader organization
for the change you hope to bring will help you
be more strategic in how you involve stakeholders
and communicate and expand the impact of your work.