WHAT DO BOWLING ALLEYS, CLIMBING HALLS AND KITCHEN STUDIOS HAVE IN COMMON?
That’s right, they’re the backdrop for many out-of-the-office team building events. And they are an equally bad choice. Sure, cooking tapas with your coworkers makes for a fun evening. But it doesn’t help to be more effective as a team or to build long lasting relationships with your coworkers.
ACQUIRE NEW SKILLS FOR YOUR WORK. NOT NEW PHOTOS IN THE INTRANET PHOTO ALBUM
We all remember the team event where you had to overcome some risky stuff with your team. Like rock climbing while your team mates secure you. It can be fun (well, for most participants) but why not get good at something you use in your day-to-day job? Instead of mastering the artificial rock climbing wall you could hack your product.
Once, everybody on your team was passionate about your product. So why not take the day to hack your product and have fun doing it? You bond over real challenges and legit succes, not artifical ones.
MY LEARNINGS
Success as a recipe
I coached teams for 10 years. In this work I found the only recipe for real, lasting, collaboration.
It’s achieving success. Together, as a team.
Winning teams have this build into their routine. Some teams achieve it via Agile methodologies, others by setting attainable weekly goals.
For years I run Design Sprints, a fast-paced workshop to design products, tackle big challenges or explore new ideas. Think of it as The Lean Startup, but 10 times faster. For every single sprint I did, the key takeout was the relentless positive energy the team left with.
This sparked the idea to use this fast way of thinking, creating and testing to really build teams.
Here comes the workshop Team-building by Product Building in play
Existing teams work on existing, real problems, ideate real solutions and validate the best solution. With real clients, of course. All this in 1 day. The program is based on the very succesful Design Sprint method. It’s like a hackathon, but everyone can join.
WHAT WE WILL DO
- Explain the Design Sprint methodology
- Learn about problems you have and pick a target
- Think of many solutions
- Pick the best solution
- Test that with real users
- Conclude
THE DAY WILL BE FUN, BUT NOT JUST THAT
The team will leave the day tired and satisfied. They’ll have:
✅ Practical knowledge of Design Sprints
✅ A start-up mindset of doing instead of discussing
✅ The ability to quickly test instead of build on assumptions
✅ A ton of solutions and a prototype of the best solution
✅ Indication whether the prototyped solution will work
And the best part: -all of this is done by the team itself.
AND WE END WITH A DRINK
To decompress and share experiences.
Is any challenge a good fit?
I have some example challenges down here. And the good news? The workshop allows for many different problems. If you’re unsure, let’s have a call to see if we can make it work.
How can we convince a lot of new users to try our service?
How can we best sell our products in this particular market segment? The current message doesn’t seem to work so well.
We want to put a chat bot on our customer service page. Is this a good idea?
However…
… Design Sprints compress months of time into a single week. This workshop compresses a Design Sprint into a day. So the outcome isn’t as profound as you can expect from a regular Sprint. If you want more, do know I offer full Design Sprints as well.
Is it for my industry?
Design Sprints work for many problems. And so does this super-compressed workshop. I have experience in many fields.
DIGITAL
FOOD
PUBLISHING
SERVICES
FINANCIAL
Let’s have a chat!
I’m sure I can build your
team while you build your product.
Are you interested? Maybe you’re unsure what problem to solve? I can help you. Reach out to me for a chat, or a quote for your team.