The popular myth should be broken – Design Thinking is not a skill that can be imparted, it is more of a mindset. Hence, it becomes very tricky when the workshop is started with the premise of mindset transformation. Which participant in the right mind will accept that they have a mindset issue? Further, participants expect the facilitators to be prescriptive. For example, while our narrative is to anchor the tools and techniques of Design Thinking for Faculties from Academia so that they can take the same as a credit course for their students, the Faculties expect a well structured curriculum – with powerpoint slides, examples, videos, assessment questions etc. – which actually defeats the purpose of the workshop. The faculties are expected to internalize these concepts and then contextually apply them two fold – apply them in their pedagogy in whatever they teach and curate a credit course for their students.

When someone reaches out to the School of Design Thinking for a workshop, there are a series of questions that help to understand the need for the workshop and subsequently design the narrative of the workshop.

1. Why Design Thinking and not anything else?
2. What are the challenges faced by you today?
3. What is the profile of the participants?

These questions help in deeper understanding of the current reality in the organization and also helps to curate the narrative of the workshop including the duration and the kind of faculties that are needed to anchor. During the runup to the workshop, there are private conversations with 4-5 participants to understand the current reality of their role in terms of what is providing them energy to work towards the organization goals, what are the energy drainers and what they would have done differently if the ecosystem provided that space.

Once the duration, venue, participant profile and commercials are finalized, the Design Thinking workshop is anchored with the following objectives:

• Identify areas of unconscious silos so as to promote co-creation
• Acknowledge the presence of problems / challenges so that there is scope to convert them into opportunities
• Together identify constraints and blindspots which stifle business growth
• How to have a big-picture mindset so that we move from ‘What could we do’ to ‘What should we do’
• How we can own the problem and work towards a feasible and viable solution
• Shift focus from ‘product development’ to ‘customer development’
• Leverage BELIEF® framework for 10X growth
• Actionable projects for changing the world-view of the organization’s next leap (From design through to execution)

During the workshop, our endeavour is to (a) bring people together for greater collaboration and co-creation and (b) make them change agents for the organization to catapult the organization into the next orbit. Employees by themselves are great performing their role but magic happens only when there is cohesiveness between teams / departments. Rather than getting into a blame game, complementing each other helps towards a Universe of Possibilities.

Post workshop, there is group coaching on the projects which the teams have identified. Workshops always give plenty of energy and vigour amongst the participants. However, when they go back to the workplace, there is a tendency to revert to old modes of thinking. Working on the projects (read as opportunities) helps the team to practice the learning during the workshop with application in a real-time work environment. This helps them more contextually and relatability. This is where with more practice, the team moves from the Science of Design Thinking to Art of Design Thinking. The success of Design Thinking is in Design Doing. The first coaching session happens 30 days from the completion of the workshop – 90 minutes per project and the second and final one after 45 days from the first coaching session.

The sooner, the organization becomes independent to apply Design Thinking concepts and principles and does not seek our help, we would consider ourselves successful.