Igniting Growth

I often start and end an innovation workshop with a personal "weather report".  What are you? Sunny? Cloudy? Stormy? Breezy?  It is a simple way to understand how people are arriving to that moment or how they are leaving.  A couple of metaphorical words and you understand a lot. It doesn't really matter what their weather report is as much as it matters to understand where a person is. Being stormy is not in some way better or worse than being sunny, though I often see "stormy" people a bit shy about offering that report.  With innovation work, the key is to be present and tapping into your personal weather report is a simple way of being so. ..

In the beginning of any new skill, you work hard to "stay in the lines" and maintain control, to 'do it right'.  The same is true for design thinking. People want a play book, the rules, the steps they can logically follow each time.   To leverage design thinking this way is to dumb it down.  I think its power is from its principle based flexibility which sets it up for discovery.   ..