Design Thinking in a Lean Startup

- by Stephan Huerholz & Anton Chernikov

How to do more with less

Learn to think like a designer and become more aware of how to
solve your customers needs and waste less time.
The structure of this masterclass will be as follows.

Introduction
Lean Startup / How to Fail Well
Design Thinking Basics / Tools of the trade
Exponential Organisations
Mastering The Workshop
Talking to Customers
Creating Great Teams

Our philosophy is simple. We focus on the essentials. We base our masterclass on

tangible day-to-day tasks so that you can start taking action as soon as possible.
 Our intention is to give you an essential
What day to day guide to participatory user centred design
impact will this so that next time you face a problem you
will know how to handle it. You will no
masterclass longer jump into the first solution you can
have for you? think of. Instead, you will know how to
design a process that brings together the
right people to find the best possible
Every great answers in a way that builds consensus
entrepreneur is
first and foremost
rather than tension. This masterclass
a designer. combines theory and practice. It goes
beyond design, and lays down a great
- Peter Theil foundation for what it takes to lead in the
21st century workplace.
 It is not the strongest
of the species that Why this masterclass matters
survives, nor the most
intelligent that
survives but the one
There are many qualities that
that is able best to
adapt and adjust to the separate successful businesses
changing environment from struggling startups. These
in which it finds itself. are the qualities we think are most
important; resilience, adaptability
- Darwin
and leadership

If you want to go fast, Lean startup makes you resilient. Design

go alone. If you want to thinking makes you adaptable. Leadership
go far, go together. comes when you can embed the practice
of lean startup and design thinking into the
- African Proverb. culture of your team.
 All startups are short on time and
resources. As an entrepreneur you
have to find a way to make the little
resources you do have, stretch a
long way. This means adopting a
lean startup mindset and making
sure you are focussing on the right
things by testing your product
assumptions. Spending years
building a product you think people
want will most likely end in disaster.
You need to launch fast and iterate.
Very rarely does an idea stay the
same over the course of a startups
life.
The Magic : Lean Startup
Meets Design Thinking.
If we think of lean startup as the data
driven analytical side of innovation, then
we must also seek out the more intuitive
and creative side. This is where
participatory user-led design thinking
comes into its own. When we combine the
emergent creativity that is sparked by the
design process with the evidence based
feedback methods of the lean startup
we are left with an approach that is
perfect for navigating the unexpected
storms of startup life.

Leadership in the 21st
century requires having the
humility to accept that no
one person can have all
the answers. It is our ability
to create the conditions for
collaboration and critical
dialogue that will lead us
towards the breakthrough
innovations that our world
needs.
Our world desperately needs a
more design led approach to
problem solving
The big challenges facing society are getting more complex,
more contested, more technically demanding and arguably
more serious than at any time in human history. We cannot
carry on as we are and expect different outcomes.
Life is messy and complicated. Design thinking recognises
this and gives us a framework for making decisions and
creating solutions that works. It also has a unifying and
motivating impact on your team. If your entire team is part of
the design process, they will be much more invested in the
outcome. Everyone will be aligned rather than divided.
About the Author

Anton Chernikov is the Founder of

The Exponentials and Studio X
Online. He is a self-taught designer /
entrepreneur and has supported
dozens of social ventures in
securing over 4million in funding
and deal flow over the past 4 years.
About the Author

Stephan Huerholz graduated from

the HPI school of design thinking in
Berlin. He is now a partner at The
Exponentials where he supports
startups and social enterprises grow
through workshopping and design
facilitation.
Design thinking is nothing
more than a process for
problem solving, and it is
fast becoming an
essential leadership skill.
Tip: Encourage everyone
in your team to learn the
basics of design thinking
and lean startup. It will
make everything you do
better. Teamwork.
Product development.
Individual productivity.
Decision making.
Design thinking is for everyone
When most people hear the word design they think of
creativity and aesthetics. As a result certain tasks are
delegated to the designers in a team, rather than
being seen as a collective responsibility. It is true that
some people can draw, communicate and visualise
their ideas better than others. However, design is not
just about making things look good. Design is a
mindset that helps all of us solve problems in original
ways. It requires diversity and participation. It
requires leadership. And it can do wonders for the
effectiveness of your team. Design thinking really
does empower you to do more with less.
Exponential Coaching
(Design Thinking)

There is only one way of getting better at design

thinking:

Do it and then do it some more.

It can help to have a few sessions with a coach to
enable you to learn the process whilst you have
someone there who knows the process inside out.

Sign up for a free 30min Exponentials

Coaching Skype Call.
If you are interested in getting a workshop or some
coaching please feel free to contact us
stephan@studioxonline.com
Introducing the Startup Methodologies
 Until you can figure out how Fail fast and fail often, while
to sell the product there is no
point spending any eliminating waste
engineering time on it.

Kill things that don't make Lean startup is a highly customer-driven approach to
sense, and bet big on the
ones that do.
practical innovation. It helps you to systematically
break down your business into it's component parts
Its all about getting high and regularly test each part.
quality and regular
feedback.
It's easy to kid yourself about what you think your customers want.
It's easy to learn things that are completely irrelevant. Thus, validated
dddThe Lean Startup
learning is backed up empirical data collected from real customers.
movement was born out of
Success is not delivering a feature, success is learning how to solve
the Toyota production line
the customer's problem.
thinking of the 1970s.
 LEARN
The Lean ideas

Startup Spiral. MEASURE

data
A key principle of the Lean
Startup is the Build Measure
Learn Methodology loop.

We think of it as a spiral.
Each time you repeat a cycle
your understanding of your
market and your customer A business
need grows. that really
works!
BUILD
p ro d u c t
Great questions to keep The Pivot. Often you cant see point
asking yourself C at point A. You need to move to
point B first.
Does a product fit the need of
the customer?
How did a customer solve a

i g n o ra n c e
problem or need in the past?
What are the current costs
created by the customer C
POINT
POINT
problem?
Should we adapt or change our
course?
Are we ready to scale?

B
POINT
 It's less about inputs
and more about Templates change the bold
outcomes.
Keep the user front and We believe 'this statement is true'
centre in your thinking. We will know we're right/wrong when we see the following
The best ideas need to
feedback from the market: insert
prove themselves. Make
sure you can really qualitative feedback and / or quantitative feedback and /
measure and observe or key performance indicators (KPIs).
your MVP. Dont ask
users to give you As a user persona I want to accomplish something so
feedback on everything. that some benefit happens.
Figure out the most
important things and then
We believe that doing this for these people will achieve
get feedback on that.
this outcome. We know this is true when we see this
market feedback.
 Define what success will look like and
Further Reading how you will be able to measure it before
you dive into design and development.
Dont assume anything, validate your
learning at every step.

The sooner you can find which features are worth

investing in, the sooner you can focus your teams limited
resources on the things that really matter to your business.
Dont built what you want, build what your business
needs.

No business plan survives first contact with a customer.

-Steve Blank
The Business Model Canvas
is a great way of breaking down your business
functions and identifying where your strengths
and weaknesses lie Create a Canvas Online

C U STO M E R
R E L AT I O N S H I P S
KEY
ACT I V I T I E S

VA L U E C U STO M E R
KEY S E G M E N TS
PROPOSITIONS
PA R T N E R S

KEY
RESOURCES D I ST R I B U T I O N
CHANNELS

C O ST ST R U CT U R E R E V E N U E ST R E A M S
The Happy Startup Canvas

PURPOSE Purpose
& Why are you doing what you are doing (other than profit)?
VISION Vision
What change to you want to see happen in the world?
Values
Which values are core to the fabric and culture of your
company?
VA L U E S STO R Y Story
What story do you want to tell people about your
company?
Problems
PROBLEMS SOLUTION
Focus on 3 opportunities and / or problems?
Solutions
What are your specific solutions?
VA L U E P R O P O S I T I O N Early Adopters
E A R LY A D O P T E R S
Who are your core customers / users?
Value Proposition
What have you got to offer them?
Ingredients for building a Advice for digital platform startups
successful startup

Vision - What you do? Identify a pain point or use case for a customer.
Purpose - Why you do it? Identify a core value unit or social object in any
Business Model - whats interaction between a producer and consumer.
your fuel? (remember that many people will be both producers
Wow and uniqueness and consumers use this peer-to-peer angle to your
factors - What sets you
apart?
advantage)
Values - How you do it? Design a way to facilitate that interaction. Then see if
you can built it as a small prototype that you can
What is the idea in its curate yourself. If it works at that level, it will be worth
purest form? - Perfect taking to the next level and scaling.
your pitch Determine how to build a network around your
interaction. Find a way to turn your platform user into
an ambassador. Before you know it, youll be on a roll.
We run Apple like a startup.
We always let ideas win
arguments, not hierarchies.
Otherwise, your best
employees wont stay.
Collaboration, discipline
and trust are critical.
- Steve Jobs
Applesculture is built around five
points...
1. Leverage core design capabilities.
2. Form small teams of changemakers
extracted from the larger organisation
3. Send those teams to the edge of the
organisation
4. Combine design with cutting edge new
technology
5. Utterly disrupt a legacy market.
The Doblin Model - Ten Types of innovation
1. Profit Mode. How you make money
2. Network. How you connect with others to create value
3. Structure. How you organise and alignyourtalent and assets. You dont always
4. Process. How you use signature or superior methods to do your work need a radical new
5. Product Performance. How you develop distinguishing features and functionality. product idea to
6. Product System. How you create complementary products and services build a business.
7. Service. how you support and amplify your offerings to customers and users. There are many
8. Channel. How you reach customers and users dimensions that
9. Brand. How you represent your offerings and business could give you the
10. Customer Engagement. How you foster compelling interactions edge.
 Assign people problems to
solve not tasks to complete. Lean UX is an exercise in ruthless
It shows trust and allows the
team to come up with their
prioritisation. It's all about
own solutions and drives a determining the product focus.
deeper sense of pride and
ownership in the solutions the
team implements. Continuous The key is to ensure that the ideas that have the most
discovery is the ongoing value get the most resources How can you
process of engaging the
customer during the design
recognise which feature has the greatest impact
and development process. and then focus on making the feature the best it
The team needs to can be?
collectively understand the
why and the how.
Adopt a work culture based on experimentation. A
designer's role must evolve towards design
facilitation rather than direction.
 As you navigate through the
rest of your life, be open to
Great Questions to Ask
collaboration. other people and
other people's ideas are often
What am I trying to learn?
better than your own. Find a
group of people who challenge What are the main signals that I need from the market
and inspire you, spend a lot of to validate my hypothesis?
time with them, and it will Are there any other signals I can test for that will
change your life.
serve as indicators for my main signal?
- Amy Poehler What's the fastest way for me to find this information?
Is there a need for the solution I'm designing?
All life is an experiment. The
Is my solution usable?
more experiments you make,
the better. Is their value in the solution?
What tools will empower teams to work together?
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Often the biggest failures deliver
the greatest insights.

When failure is not an option you end up with

safe, incremental innovation, with no radical
breakthroughs or disruptive innovations.

By integrating experimentation as a core

value and adopting approaches like Lean
Startup, enterprise failures - while still
accepted as an inevitable part of risk - can
be quick, relatively painlessand insightful.
Design Thinking
 Lets Dive in: Design Thinking Basics

Dream big but start small

A good design
challenge is like a great
playground. Big enough
to explore but small
enough to not be
overwhelming.
Introducing The Design Thinking Process

A continuous interplay between divergent and convergent thinking

 The Design Thinking Process
The design thinking process consists of six individual steps and
then iteration. Each step has its unique role and purpose but they
are very much interdependent.
3 Elements of Design Thinking

The Right The Right

Team Process

The Right
Environment
Where You Want To Be
Insanity: doing the same Focus your attention
thing over and over again
and expecting different
and energy on your
results. user. Trust in the
Albert Einstein process. Flow in and
out of the phases. They
Iteration: Doing the same will guide you and your
steps over and over again
and getting the perfect
team towards creating
result. world class products
and services.
 Design is a Team Sport!
NO MORE DESIGN
HEROES.
Many designers want to
The most effective way to rally a team around a design
be heroes. But is feeding
the ego of a single direction is through collaboration. Shared understanding
design hero worth and feelings of ownership. Teammates who trust each other
sacrificing the are more motivated to work together to produce higher-
productivity of your entire quality work.
team? The goal is to
enable cross-functional Its simple teams that enjoy working together produce
collaboration and an
better work. The team, not the individual, must own the
outcome-focused culture.
Designers should strive product design. Instead of hiding behind a monitor for days
to add facilitation as one at a time, designers must bring as many stakeholders as
of their core possible into the design process, seek their input, and build
competencies that insight into the design. Doing so will begin to break
down silos and allow more cross-functional conversation to
take place.
Learning to look at Creativity and adaptability are inseparable.
We must be able to look at our experiences and ideas from
the world through multiple perspectives / dimensions, not just the obvious ones.
multiple lenses When we work hard on a problem or idea, our minds narrowly
focus because of the strain and effort involved. Thus our
viewpoints and possibilities are reduced.

Develop the habit of suspending the need to judge everything

that crosses your path.

Try to see your work at a distance. Internalise the voice of your

master Cultivate a kind of pleasure in pain. Feel a
heightened sense of connection to reality.

It is essential to build into the creative process an initial period

that is open-minded.
Learning to look at We all view reality through our own lenses and perceptions.
When you focus on the black you see three pies, when you
the world through focus on the white you see a triangle. Both answers are
correct. Both answers are also incorrect. This is the nature of
multiple lenses most complex decisions.

Most poor decisions are made not due to poor judgement, but
due to incomplete information. When too little time is spent
understanding the complex problem space from as many
different viewpoints as possible, mistakes happen. It is the
unintended consequences, the unknown unknowns, the
surprises that derail a project.

The role of the design thinking process is to bring to light all of

the different perspectives before jumping into solution mode.
You embrace your own ignorance, and involve a diverse group
of stakeholders / collaborators at the design stage so that you
can avoid expensive changes / problems later on.
A blog summary on brain pickings

A GREAT BOOK ON CREATIVITY

STEP 1: GATHERING RAW MATERIAL

STEP 2: DIGESTING THE MATERIAL
STEP 3: UNCONSCIOUS PROCESSING
STEP 4: THE A-HA MOMENT
STEP 5: IDEA MEETS REALITY
We pick out a few books : Points of inspiration
1.0 Tools of the trade
What to bring to a Post-it Notes & Dot Stickers
design thinking A design thinkers best friend. Colour code. Move
session around. Vote with dot stickers.

The Gong / Timekeeper App

Time restrictions create a sense of urgency that fuels
creativity and divergent thinking.
v

Movable Whiteboards / Furniture

Make the work environment fit your needs rather than
adapting your needs to the environment.

Artefacts & Magasines

Bring magazines, posters and objects that could
spark new thinking.
DIY Office With idea paint you can
Whiteboard Hack turn any surface into a
whiteboard
Make your own folding
Japanese petition walls
(using thin MDF &
hinges). Then buy some
idea paint and
v
you have
a light weight low cost
moveable whiteboard
for less than 100. Make
sure the petitions are
lightweight so you can
easily fold them out and
carry them into your
meeting room.
One picture is worth Be visual. Get people on
ten thousand words. their feet. Keep the energy
levels high.
Chinese proverb
Whenever you write something down,
try to be visual. Being visual has the
huge advantage of being able to
communicate faster and across
language boundaries.

Pro Tip: Dont be embarrassed about your

drawings. Practice makes perfect and we all
have to start somewhere.
1.1 Understand
THE DEEP DIVE
U N D E R STA N D I N G T H E C O M P L E X P R O B L E M S PA C E

KNOW / DONT KNOW A Q

DONT KNOW / KNOW A
Q A Q
A
A
A Q
TOPIC Q A
A
Q A
A
Q Q
DONT KNOW / A A
KNOW / KNOW Q
DONT KNOW
A

Beware the unknown unknowns!

 If I had an hour to
solve a problem I'd The first step is to define your
spend 55 minutes problem space
thinking about the
problem and 5 Before jumping into solution mode it is vital
minutes thinking to first immerse yourself in the problem
about solutions. space. Look beyond the obvious. Embark
- Albert Einstein on thorough research. Try to see the
problem (or opportunity) from as many
If you rush ahead,
without appropriate
different perspectives as possible. The
levels of research and greatest obstacle to uncovering a
understanding of the breakthrough idea is a good idea that
problem space, you will
end up being does not get developed further.
emotionally tied to weak
ideas and poor
decisions.
 Never skip the
understand phase.
Reframing the problem can be an
innovation in itself.
Try to break down and map out the
complexity of the problem before
diving into solution mode.
Try the six thinking hats
The way we frame a problem
predetermines our solution
When you start your journey to solve a
problem you are passionate about, it is well
worth considering what frame you are using
to look at the problem.
What biases (mental baggage) are you
bringing into the problem space?
Are you locking yourself into a particular
viewpoint or solution before you have
opened up and really considered other
viewpoints?
 Its incredible how How to do research properly
often the research
phase is negated or
Effective research requires you to go deep.
rushed. Market and
Identify thought leaders in your niche. Connect with
competitor analysis is them. Try to get a meeting or a Skype call. Read
often reduced to a their blog articles. Understand the trends that are
few hours of emerging. Learn the terminology. Search on
angel.co for startups. Follow them on twitter and
Googling around and
see who they are following. Read the comments on
copying and pasting blogs. Follow the bread crumbs. Sign up to mailing
generic market data. lists. Build link lists. Capture screenshots of
Dont do this! competitor websites and products. Organise your
all research so that it can easily be shared with
others.
Posing questions rather
than making assertions,
and keeping an open mind
about your area of focus,
are critical to this research
phase. Expressing your
opportunity or challenge
as a question will help you
to keep focused on
exploring possibilities and
developing your
understanding rather than
closing down too quickly.
Ask Fundamental Questions
What is the current situation or way of working?
Why is this insufficient or untenable?
What needs to improve or what would be the
benefits of change?
What work has been undertaken in the past?
What alternative approaches have been tried?
How successful have these been?
What questions remain unanswered, what
possibilities remain
untested, and what issues and challenges remain
unaddressed?
Spending time and effort in
framing your challenge or Ask Fundamental Questions
opportunity is critical
to setting off on the right
path to find a solution and
will help prevent you from
designing something that
people may not really want
or need, or that fails to
address the underlying
issues. So identifying the
right question(s) to frame
your challenge or
opportunity is critical, but
getting it right can be
complicated.
Where are the most promising examples of
current practice?
What emerging examples in this field, or related
fields, might we want to pay attention to?
What policies or regulations are conditioning
the way we work?
What policy changes might influence work in this
area?
What other potential developments or wider trends
could influence the way we work?
 Example:
Jerry the Bear is a startup
that has developed a
personal robot to help kids
with type 1 diabetes. The
founder Hannah Chung
wanted to solve diabetes
after a family member
passed away because of it.
But taking on diabetes is a
near impossible task. So she
research and found that
there was an acute need for
helping kids with type one
diabetes deal with the
disease.
Dont be put off by the
competition, but be realistic
Inevitably your research will uncover
similar ideas and products. Just because
something exists or existed and failed
doesn't mean you cant succeed. Just be
realistic and try to learn from other
peoples successes and failures. Meet
with your competition. Understand them.
Partner with them. Search for your own
unique angle. Remember Doblins Model.
There are many ways to innovate and
gain an edge.

Anton Chernikov talks about
leadership
It is way better and less
painful to fall of the 1st rung
of a ladder 10 times than to
fall of the 10th rung of a
ladder once.
Wicked vs Tame problems
Some problems have simple linear
solutions. These are tame problems.
Design thinking problems are much more
complex. They are wicked problems.
Todays most effective leaders walk into the room not
with an answer, but instead they come with specific
questions and I draw the answer outfrom a wide variety
of sources. They are experts at knowing who to to bring
into the conversation at what point. This form of leadership
is at the heart of design thinking. The leaders role is not to
generate all the best ideas, but to focus the teams
collective brain power on the most important problems.
Wickedly complex problems require a lot of investment in
the understand phase.
Turn off your solution
engines and immerse
yourself in the problem
without wanting to solve it.
Be a sponge.

Observe

Learn about ethnographic
research
Ethnographic research is a method
for understanding people and their
motivations. Prepare to be wrong,
prepare to be sad, prepare to be
inspired. The key benefit of
ethnography is the fact that you can
understand a problem from the point
of view of the people who have the
problem and within the total context of
the persons life so that you are not
missing anything.
Observe
Youll learn as much from what is
not said, as what is said.
Online research can only take us so far.
Sometimes to really understand the problem
space we need to get out of the building and
start engaging directly with our customers and
users. This is about seeing the problem within
the context of your users or customers lives.
This observation can take many different forms,
from interview, product testing, questionnaires.
Make a note of every The ultimate goal is to observe every
detail, even the aspect and pain point of the problem
things that may seem scenario that a user might be facing.
obvious or trivial. These might seem unimportant and
Dont think, just write may later even be discarded but one
down everything you can often find surprising insights that
notice. You never lead to great solutions.
know what note will
transform into a At the point of collection we should
hidden info-gem. withhold judgement. This is to
prevent us from discarding potentially
viable information too early.
You can observe a lot by
OBSERVE METHOD
just watching.
Yoig Berra Be like a fly on
the wall

Try to find a place

where the problem
you are trying to solve
is happening and just
watch people.

Try to be non-
judgemental in your
observations and just
note them as you
observe.
OBSERVE METHOD
Prepare like a Pro:
Conversations vs Interviews
- have a list of questions you
Once you have identified your core user group want the answer to
(early adopters), one of the best ways to get to - make sure the questions
know about their problem is by talking to them. are open ended
These interviews should be qualitative (not - have examples ready in
standardised) and relatively unprepared. You case people cant relate at
want them to open up and be honest rather all
than overthinking theyr answers. Avoid having
a structured interview format. Instead think of it Be flexible. Use your
as having a conversation with intention. preparation as a guideline
When your guest stops talking allow for a short rather than a rule. Allow the
silence to see if there is more that they have to conversation to emerge rather
say. Give them the space to go deeper into than forcing scripted
their experience. This is where the best insights questions.
come from.
 DOs
Do ask why questions.
People will generally try to explain
themselves and asking why is a great
way of getting to the bottom of a
problem.
Do wait for the to answer.
Silence might be your best weapon. It
makes people feel uncomfortable to sit
in silence and if you can handle that
awkwardness better than them, they will
eventually answer your question (might
backfire in 5-10% of cases and results
in prolonged silence).
DONTs
Dont ask yes or no
questions
because they provide little
information and the person
you are talking to isn't
encouraged to talk.
Pro-Tip:
If possible conduct interviews with
someone else, where one focuses on
the conversation and the other person
on taking notes. Ask if you can record
when alone and take notes later.
 OBSERVE METHOD

Walking a mile in Do It Yourself

someones shoes or
living their life for a One of the best ways of approaching a design
day will teach you challenge is by becoming a user yourself.
things that even This isn't always possible or even helpful but
10 days of should always be considered. Many startups are
conversations born out of the frustration of the founders with a
certain way of doing things. The more you
wouldnt.
immerse yourself in the problem space, the
better your product vision will become. Some
entrepreneurs and designers even go as far as
only working on products which they would be
power users of themselves. The danger of this is
that you design a product that very niche and
doesnt appeal to the majority of customers.
Point of View (POV)
 Point of View (POV)
When you show
deep empathy toward
others, their defensive After the field work of observation
energy goes down, comes the lab work of synthesis.
and positive energy
replaces it. That's At this stage you want to be consolidating your findings into
a point of view that you will then solve the problem for. We
when you can get can solve a problem much better for a specific point of view
more creative in than we can for an entire population because it lets us
solving problems. channel our empathy. It is very hard to emphasise with an
entire nation or even a large group of people. Empathising
with a single person however is a much easier task. The
Stephen Covey POV enables us to focus our creativity on a specific field
and often enables us to generate ideas more rapidly.
We want to make sense of our observations and then
synthesise them into one or multiple useful points of
view.
 Sharing your observations / insights
Pro Tip:
Try to break down your
If observations were done in different teams, then it is time
observations into simple
to share your insights and get them all on post-its. This will
insights that can go on a allow for easy storage as well as reorganisation and
post it. Storing your clustering of your insights. Make sure that you thoroughly
research this way enables share all your data so that every team member has a
you to actually pick-out complete overview.
the relevant stuff and
move it elsewhere. Try to dig through this data for the most surprising and
unlikely insights that you have come across.

- What did you expect?

Remember: - What didn't you expect?
Be visual. If you can - How has the observation phase changed your view of the
draw an insight, do it. problem?

Out of this exercise you will gain a lot of interesting points to

focus your POVs (personas) around.
Different templates for clustering your observations

SEEING

THINKING

S AY I N G
FEELING

HEARING
DOING
 Different templates for clustering your observations

GOOD

CHEAP EXPENSIVE

BAD

2 by 2 Venn Diagram Concept Map

Different templates for clustering your observations

Scenarios Journey Map

Create Personas Creating personas is a great way to keep yourself and your
team focussed on the end user. It is easy to get distracted
and default back to designing for yourself rather than your
target user.

When creating a person try to imagine a real person. Get

into the detail. What kind of colour does he/she like? What
kind of car would he/she drive?

This exercise will serve you for the rest of the design
process.

Draw a map with the greatest possible detail of your

customer / clients journey / experience. The more
specific your observations are, the greater your ability to
innovate and give a remarkable experience.Keep records
of all people you have engaged with. This all adds up to a
goldmine of information that you can sort and review to
unlock all sorts of new connections.
 The Point of View Formula

[USER] needs to [USERS NEED]

because [SURPRISING INSIGHT]

This short sentence can act as a great

anchor as you dive into brainstorming
solutions and ideas. No matter where your
brainstorming takes you, you must always
come back to your core customer / market
Insights on your customer
experience is what shapes a insight.
product.
Ideate
 Ideate
The best thing about
young children is that It is now time for crazy and fun
they dont care what brainstorming / gamestorming session.
others think and are
oblivious to judgement. Dust off you crazy hats and let your
If they have an idea they divergent mind run wild. The goal is to
will tell you and they come up will as many ideas as
wont be restricted by possible.
reality. So yeah. Lets
build a lego rocket and
get out of here. Caution:
Whilst this step tends to be the most fun, it is important
to spend some time and effort on the previous steps.
The most productive ideation sessions tend to happen
with a good persona, a concise POV and lots of
observational data. So don't skip ahead to the ideation
phase without doing a bit of the ground work.
Warm Ups

When we arrive to a creative workshop or

brainstorming session we carry plenty of
emotional and mental baggage with us.
As a facilitator it helps to lift the energy
and focus of your participants by playing a
short and silly creative game. Once
everyone is relaxed and taking themselves
a little less seriously you will be much
better placed for creative ideas to flow.
Get everyone to introduce themselves in a
surprising way. Unleash creativity from the very
beginning. You want to get the group to shift to an
open, active and creative mode vs closed, passive and
critical mode.
 Embrace the Warm Up - Soundball
crazy, awkward
and absurd. Get everyone in a circle and throw a sound
from one person to the next. Make sure the
Saying a crazy idea sound is as silly as possible and to involve
out loud might feel everyone. The person receiving the sound has
awkward at first, but it to repeat it and then throw a new sound to
doesnt have to be. someone else. Encourage people to be clear
Your role as a facilitate and loud. If they feel this is embarrassing then
to to create a space it is the right kind of sound. As soon as
where everyone can everyone joins in, people wont feel
be themselves and embarrassed anymore. It is great to start with
confidently share their people that command respect as others are
ideas with the group. more likely to follow.
Warm Up - Rock, Paper, Scissors War
Starting in pairs, people play rock, paper,
scissors with one another. The winner moves
on, the loser, becomes the winners "biggest
fan." By the end the two people will play for the
title each with a massive cheering section.

Warm Up - People to people

People walk around at random until the organiser
says "people to people"; then you lock one arm
with whoever is next to you at that moment. Then
the organiser mentions two body parts, for
instance "elbow to toe". The 2 people have to
touch their elbow with the other person toe and
freeze in that position. Break and repeat. You can
also do it with 3 or 4 people at a time.
The Active Listening Icebreaker
Say Hi to the person to your left and find
out who they are. Then we go around and
you have to introduce the person you have
just met. This gives people an added
incentive to really listen and remember
their partners name.
Warm Up - Shake and Unravel

The first goal is to meet as many people

as possible. You meet by shaking hands.
In this game, you cannot stop shaking
hands with one person until you start
shaking hands with another person. At
some point during the game, call out
"stick" which means that they can no
longer let go of anyone's hand (explain
this point while giving the original
instructions). Have the group continue for
a few seconds until everyone is holding
two separate peoples' hands. Pause the
game and inform them that they have just
created a human knot, and that they
must untangle themselves.
Warm Up - Crazy Post It Note
Association Game

Pick a question or a theme and

then you brainstorm all the
different words that jump into
your head. Everyone write on
dozens of post it notes and
sticks them to the wall. You then
use this wall of post its as
sparks for ideation and
discussion later on.
Crazy Cow Exercise
This is a good exercise to get the
creative juices flowing and to get
everyone into brainstorming mode.
You have one cow. Its name is (Linda, Betty,
whatever really, but give it a name)
The cow must not be harmed or killed.
Think of as many ways as you possibly can to
make money with that cow.
5 ideas = you suck
150 ideas+ = your team is great at divergent
thinking
Anywhere in between is also good but again
go for as many as you can.
Time limit 10 mins.
 Prepare How might we
questions (HMWQ)
How might we questions are one of the
essential tools to make ideation session as
productive as possible.They are intended
to spark your imagination and give you a
point of focus to embark from. They also
provide you with the great opportunity to
run multiple sessions on the same general
area with different points of focus.
Ultimately you can get a lot of ideas around
very specific part of your problem space
with good HMWQs.
The Formula:
How might we help [User] with
[Users need/problem]
Examples:
- How might we help Steve, a 69
year old pensioner, utilise his
computer better to get quick
medical advice from his doctor.
- How might we help Carol, a 18
year old High-school senior,
choose the best major that will
both satisfy her and her
parents.
 Tools:
This is where you will be needing the Time constraints
time keeper and the gong the most.
If possible make sure each team has a
time keeper that is always clearly
visible so that people know what how
Set a time limit of a maximum of 20
much time is left. It also helps if teams minuets (less is better) and set a
feel the pressure a little. specific challenge for the group like
The gong is used to signal the end of coming up with as many ideas as
the activity clearly to everyone and possible. In general the tight time
should be respected as a signal to
stop and listen to the coach/leader and frame will inspire creativity and also
to come back together as a bigger give people an exact reference as to
group if the group had split up into
smaller teams.
when it is over. A challenging target
like 100 post it notes on the wall /
ideas can be a fun motivator.
Brainstorming Guidelines

Think user-centric!
Stay on topic!
Go for Quantity!
Encourage wild ideas!
Build on the idea of others!
Defer Judgment!
Be Visual!
One Conversation at a time!
 The Guidelines Explained
Be Visual!
Again very simple. If there is a way to draw it, then
draw it. Easier said than done but give it your best.
I still suck at this but you have to start. Even if it is
crude drawings of stick figures.
One Conversation at a time!
Simply means that if somebody is talking, you
shouldn't be. If you have an idea that cant wait,
write it down and wait for the person to finish. Dont
talk over each other. Wait for one person to finish
and pay a little bit of attention if somebody wants to
say something. If this is hard. Look at Silent
Brainstorming.
Defer Judgment!
This one is simple. DONT say no in this phase.
Just dont do it. Also dont roll your eyes or sigh or
judge in any way no matter how stupid you think it
is. You can criticise later but brainstorming just isn't
the space and time to be doing that.
Think user-centric!
Always focus on the needs of your persona and what they
would want.
Stay on topic!
Make sure the ideas you are generating are relevant to the
topic at hand. If you notice that you are going off topic
gently bring the team back.
Go for Quantity!
At this stage you want as many ideas as you can possibly
think of. Even if they are crazy and unattainable, you want
to have them included. You can always discard an idea
later, but adding ideas is a little more difficult.
Encourage wild ideas!
Encourage wild ideas. If somebody says something crazy
always say yes at this stage. Get other people to break
their shell by making sure that wild ideas are admired.
Build on the idea of others!
If somebody says something good, just follow up with a
yes and in order to add your idea or expand his.
 The PRE-MORTEM
Imagine your venture has
failed completely one year
from today. Brainstorm all
the things that could have
gone wrong. This is a great
way of drawing out
potential risks .
PRE-MORTEM
ORIGINAL GOALS W H AT W E N T W R O N G ?
ORIGINAL PLAN
Reverse Brainstorming
This is a particular method of brainstorming that I have often
found useful when a team got stuck. Rather than thinking
about how to improve the situation you are tackling, try to think
about how to make it worse. So how could we achieve the
opposite of what we are trying to achieve.This can not only be
tremendous fun (and lets face it we all have that evil side
inside) but can also give you completely unexpected insights
into where you might improve the problem. It simply shifts your
attention towards to different aspects of the problem. And
shifting the attention away from the common approach does
quite often result in unexpected ideas and solutions.
When to use:
This method can be particularly useful if we think about
user experiences in shops or on websites.
It is also a great tool to make a team unstuck.
 When to use:
The participation of all team
members is essential when it
comes to actually implementing
an idea that comes out of the
ideation phase and if you know
you tend to have quiet members
around, this is the best tool to
use in order to make sure they
are included and not overrun.
The value of
introverts!
Silent Brainstorming
This is a very effective method if you
have many quiet (introverted) people
and a few louder (extraverted)
people that seem to be constantly
talking. Rather than asking for a free
for all where everyone just shouts
out their ideas, suggest 2-5 minutes
of silence where everyone writes
down their ideas and then shares
them with the group.
Gamestorming
A great book on how to run creative workshops

Gamestorming is a framework for exploration, experimentation, and trial and

error. As a facilitator you create a game space, with boundaries, rules for
interaction, artefacts and goals. You open the world and then you close the
word, remembering to separate divergent and convergent thinking. Is it very
difficult to ask people to be creative and critical at the same time. There are
five key steps to Gamestorming;
1) Opening
The goal is to generate ideas and
options, to provoke thought and reveal
possibilities, to jump start the brain.
Sense of energy, optimism and new
perspectives.
- How would you define the problem?
- What are the biggest problem areas?
- What do we want to explore?
2) Navigating
Summarising and making sure the group is aligned.
- Are we on track?
- Did I understand this correctly?
- Is this a useful discussion thread? Should we leave it for later?
- Does our goal still make sense or should we adjust it based on
what we have learned so far?
3) Examining
Narrowing the focus of inquiry on details, specifics making abstract
more concrete. Challenging fundamental assumptions
- What is it made of? How does it work? What are the pieces and
parts?
- Can we get some examples? Real life scenarios?
4) Experimenting

Try to break it, throw it, spin it, invert it and so on. Going beyond
the obvious..

- What else works like this>

- What are we missing?
- What if all barrier were removed?
- What if we changed the context / environment?
- What if we are wrong?

5) Closing & Follow Up

Its important the day is ended with a sense of accomplishment

with actions for tomorrow

- How can we prioritise these options?

- Whats feasible?
- What can we do in the next two weeks?
- Who is going to do what?

If you organised the workshop, it is your responsibility to follow up

and hold everyone accountable for their commitments.
 Different Criteria:
Synthesis
Cheapest
Most likely to succeed After you have come up with your ideas, it is again
Most likely to delight the user time to cluster them and crystallise them into real
Most economical tangible things. To progress from the ideation phase,
Fastest to implement your team should democratically choose a few ideas
Best in addressing all needs that they want to prototype.
Select these ideas along criteria that are important for
you but also the user. To the left are a few examples
BRAINSTORM > CLUSTER > DOT VOTING of criteria that might be useful in clustering. This is
CLUSTER CLUSTER CLUSTER also a way to accommodate more than one idea and
to make sure that someones favourite idea is not
directly thrown under the bus. But ultimately
CLUSTER
democracy should rule and ideas shouldn't be
CLUSTER
preferred based on who came up with them.
Remember design thinking is a team sport.
 Prototype & Test

The point of the prototyping phase is not to

come up with a sophisticated product but
rather something that resembles what you
want to build and can be tested.

Your primary focus should be that its fast and

cheap. It doesn't have to look fancy but it must
be able to communicate the point of what you
are doing clearly. If you can make it look fancy
Think without spending too much time on, by all
with means go ahead and you can learn all about
how to make things fast online in one of our
your featured masterclasses.
hands
Gathering instant feedback
from customers is a critical
driver of product
development.
Refer back to The Lean Startup
 The more you fail, the more
you learn. The more you
learn the better you will be.
Failure is part of the design
thinking process and a very
important one as well.
If youre not others and that people can at least on some
embarrassed by the
product when you
launch, youve
launched too late.
- Reid Hoffman,
Founder of Linkedin
Let your Prototype speak
for itself
Treat your prototype like a grown-up or at least
should be. It should speak for itself and not
require its parent to constantly interfere.
Make sure that your prototype can be shown to
crude level interact with it without having to be
explained to much. This is important for testing.
You want the interaction because it teaches you
a lot and the less explaining you have to do the
better.

Im an adult.
Let me speak
Users never behave exactly as
the designers of the system
expect or want them to.
Dont over-explain your prototype
Treat your prototype like a grown-up. It
should be able to speak for itself. The less
you talk the better.
Apply the same mindset that you apply in
the fly on the wall observation phase. Be
careful not to ask leading questions and to
encourage testers to confirm what you want
them to say. Be prepared to let go and to
potentially find out that your idea isn't the
solution you hoped it would be.
Ask for feedback in the right way
http://www.slideshare.net/robfitz/mom-test-customer-development-30m
http://www.slideshare.net/xamde/summary-of-the-mom-test
http://www.slideshare.net/robfitz/how-to-actually-do-customer-development-and-
not-waste-your-time?related=1

People try to be nice.

Therefore they lie to you
without realising it.
Also, ask the right people for feedback, e.g.
designers & leaders in your field. General feedback
from customers, friends & family often lacks deep
knowledge of your market and can give you a false
sense of security.
Dont defend your idea,
just listen!

Often when founders are getting feedback on their

product they are quick to say: Yeah I thought about
that already and we will change it. Rather than
defending your prototype, let people comment on it
without interruption. Respond to criticism with a
question and a smile. You want to gather the most
honest feedback possible from each tester.

Sometimes the user will be right, sometimes you will

be right. The goal is to draw out as many
perspectives as possible so you can make smarter
choices in the future. Just beware you own in built
sunk cost bias!

Have a designated devils
advocate in your team. His/
Her job is to simply point out
all the potential flaws in the
project and to force the team
to critically reflect upon them.
In order to not become
frustrating this role should
change often so that
everyone puts on this
thinking cap for a while.
Expose yourself to rigorous
questioning and constructive
criticism.
You want to get smart people who really know your
market / product niche to grill you on the details of your
business. Get feedback from a wide range of mentors.
This is the best time to learn the important lessons,
rather than six months and tens of thousands of pounds
down the line. Seek out both internal (team and close
advisors) and external (customers, users and potential
investors) feedback. Sometimes you can get too close to
your product or idea, and the external perspective can
make a big difference.
 Different types, require a
different response:
Paper-Prototype
You want people to talk you through
their thinking
Websites
You want to observe how people
interact with software and also
gather what they say and analyse
the difference
Physical prototypes
You want to observe in person and
also you filming unobserved if
possible and again get the direct
feedback.
Get your testers to narrate
their experience as they use
your prototype.
As much as possible let people interact with what
you build and ask them to speak their mind out
loud. You want to find out what they are thinking.
So get them to walk you through their thought
process as they are interacting with your prototype.
Specifically ask them to highlight what they like
and what they hate. Get them to literally talk
through everything they are doing. Different
prototypes require different things. If you can
accurately track peoples behaviour like the clicks
on a website then they don't need to talk as much.
You can do this virtually using Skype or simple
QuickTime screen and audio recorders.
 Keep asking
Does a product fit the
Iterate
need of the customer?
How did a customer solve
a problem or need in the
past?
The final part is that you want to go back
What are the current costs and forth between the steps. The
created by the customer process doesn't end with testing, it
problem?
Should we adapt or merely beings there. In order to finish a
change our course? product or get it market ready you might
Are we ready to scale?
have to run through many iterations of
this process. But the great thing is that
with every iteration you learn something
new and the process gets more deeply
imbedded into your mind and becomes
your default mode of thinking.
How to make design thinking a habit
How to build & change
your habits

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?
list=PLECCE8D709FD777FB
Habits can never be erased, they
can only be replaced! When
initiating new habits and breaking
out of old ones it is
worthcommitting to a period of
surveillance, where you recordand
track every hour of your day.
There is tremendous power in ritual. Repetition is
the mother of mastery. When devising your own
routines give yourself arbitrary deadlines to meet
certain standards, constantly pushing yourself
past perceived limits. In this way you develop
your own standard for excellence, generally A meta habit :
higher than those of others. Start an online journal, where you
regularly capture and reflect on how you
do things and the results you are
having
What we can learn from
Airbnb, GitHub, Google, Netflix, Quirky, Tesla, Uber,
Waze, Valve, Xiaomi.
Ten years ago we had five
hundred million internet
connected devices. Today there
are about 8 billion. By 2020 there
will be fifty billion and a decade
later well have a trillion Internet-
connected devices as we literally
information-enable every aspect
of the world in the Internet of
Things. The Internet will
literally become the worlds
nervous system, with our
Exponential Thinking mobile devices serving as
edge points and nodes on that
network.
Linkedin and Facebook together
are worth over $200billion and
thats just a result of digitising
our relationships and turning
them into information.It is our
belief that most great new
enterprises in the years to come
will either build their businesses
off new sources of information or
by converting previously analog
environments into information.
Any company
designed for success
in the 20th century is
doomed to failure in
the 21st century. -
David S. Rose
Welcome to an Exponential World!
An information-based environment delivers
fundamentally disruptive opportunities.
In 2010, the world has 1.2 billion people online globally. By
2020, that number will reach five billion. Nearly three billion more
people and their brains will be available to work via
smartphones, tablets or at Internetcafes. The capabilities that
will be unleashed are beyond imagination.
What were witnessing in today digitally enabled knowledge
economy is a new breed of organisation that is scaling and
generating value at a pace never before seen in
business.Rather than using armies of people or large physical
infrastructure, Exponential Organisations are built upon
information technologies that take what was once physical in
nature anddematerialiseit into the digital, on-demand world. In
the 21st century knowledge economy the mindset required to
succeed is radically different from our industrial consumerist
past.
ExOs scale outside their
organisations boundaries by
leveraging or accessing people,
assets and platforms to
maximise flexibility, speed,
agility and learning.Read this
book by the co-founder of
Singularity University
Exponential Organisations
Innovation Model
MASSIVE TRANSFORMATIVE PURPOSE - MTP
SCALE - Right Brain - Creativity / Growth / Uncertainty
S - Staff on Demand
C - Community & Crowd
A - Algorithms
L - Leveraged Assets (Rent dont own)
E - Engagement
IDEAS - Left Brain - Order / Control / Stability
I - Interfaces
D - Dashboards
E - Experimentation
A - Autonomy
S - Social

Keep up to date with the latest
technology trends by following the
Singularity Hub & Fast Company blogs
How is your business going to
leverage tomorrows exponential
technologies?
A new wave of revolutionary breakthrough
technologies have begun to make their
mark: AI, robotics, nanotech, biotech,
Bitcoin, 3D printing, local manufacturing,
composite material, green energy, cheap
analogue sensors, Big Data, augmented
reality, open learning, mobile everything,
neuroscience, bitcoin, autonomous vehicles
(drones), and more They are going to
transform you industry, so dont get left
behind.
A new approach to
ownership.
In the past value has always
been generated by owning more
land, more equipment, more
machinery, more people.
Ownership was the perfect
strategy for managing scarce
resources and ensuring a
relatively predictable, stable
environment. The more you
had/ owned, the wealthier and
more powerful you were.
Hierarchies were established to
managethe people require to
manage all of these assets.
Bigger and bigger. Slower and
slower.
What if rather than owning assets or
workforces and incrementally seeing a
return on those assets, organisations
began to leverage external resources to
achieve their objectives?
Exponential Organisations maintain a very small core of
employees and facilities, allowing enormous flexibility as
margins soar.They enlist their customers and leverage offline
and online communities in everything from product design to
application development. They float atop the existing and
emerging infrastructure rather than trying to own it. These
organisations grow at incredible rates precisely because
they arent dedicated to owning their market, but rather to
enlisting it to their purposes.
New information-enabled technologies will power
exponential cost drops not just in sales and marketing, but
also across every other business function.

Now that the astroid
of digitised
information has hit,
the global economy
has changed forever.
The era of traditional,
hierarchical market domination
by dinosaur companies is
coming to an end. The world
now belongs to smarter,
smaller and faster-moving
enterprises. This is certainly
true now for information-based
industries, and it will soon be
true for more traditional
industries as well.
Today, the outsider has all the advantages.
With no legacy systems to worry about, as well
as the ability to enjoy low overhead and take
advantage of the democratisation of
information and - more important - technology,
the newcomer can move quickly and with a
minimum of expense. The lean new ventures
will attack more establish profit margins,
pushing the market and humanity forward.
For decades, scale and size have been desirable traits in an
enterprise. A bigger company could do more, the argument
went, because it could leverage economies of scale and
negotiate from strength. Thats one reason why, for
generations, business schools and consulting firms have
focused on the management and organisation of extremely
large companies.Today, exponential technologies mean that
you can achieve much more with a lot less. Just read
Instagrams story.
Today the only constant is
change, and the rate of change
is increasing. Your competition is
no longer the multinational
corporations overseas, its now
the guy or gal in the Silicon
Valley or Bandra (Mumbai)
garage using the latest online
tools to design and cloud print
their latest innovation.
Thirty years ago if you wanted to
reach a billion people, you
needed to be Coca-Cola or Get,
with employees in one hundred
countries. Today you can be a
kid in a garage who uploads an
app onto a few key platforms.
Our ability to influence humanity
has been democratised.
The old paradigms of employment are
rapidly changing. Full-time exclusive
employment relationships where people
are paid for the amount of time they spend
at a common location organised in
hierarchies and lines of command and
control are going to become a thing of the
past.
In years past, having a large workforce differentiated your
enterprise and allowed it to accomplish more. Today, that
same large workforce can become an anchor that reduces
manoeuvrability and slows you down. Also there is the
challenge of attracting on-demand high skilled workers who
want and expect greater flexibility.Today, ithas become
effortless and strategically essential to outsource
anything that is not core to your organisation.
 W D / WORLD OF A
RO SSE
C
The Exponentials T H E TS

Guide to Social S E R S /
C U STOMERS /
FAN
S
U
Business
O R K S / STA F
W F O
ET N
N
This is a working model that we L D

A
have designed which explains how

EM
N
SO

AN
we operate. We have a small core

PER

D
team of partners that invest in
CORE TEAM
building strong personal networks / PA R T N E R S
of potential collaborators and
advisors. We then work through our
personal networks to attract users,
customers and fans. Theses fans
will then mobilise the crowd and in
doing so will unlock untapped
leveraged assets. We focus 80% of
our efforts on the centre and let the
magic of peer-to-peer digital
technology to the rest.
We must acknowledge that
the smartest people in the
world dont work for you and
they never will.However,
they might just collaborate
or partner with you if the
opportunity and timing is
right.
Constant learning is
critical to stay on the
exponential curve. In the
exponential (information)
age each individual can and
should manage themselves
as a business.
Exponential organisations think in terms of
community, which is made up of core team
members, alumni (former team members),
partners, vendors, customers, users and
fans. The crowd can be though of as
everyone outsidethose core layers.
True community occurs when peer-to-peer
engagementoccurs. Interacting with community is not simple
a transaction. The more open the community, the more
traditional and best-practice-oriented the leadership model
has to be.One key ingredient for anexponentialproduct or
service is the question How likely is it that you would
recommend your company / product / service to a friend
or colleague?
Try to find the unique
insights that will give
your business the
edge.
Study people in their problem
space. What are the things that
you can observe that people
dont even know about
themselves? Which past
assumptions no longer apply?
What unconscious biases and
habits are driving peoples
decisions?
This is why design thinking
matters. It helps us to discover
the details, the secrets, the
insights that will give us the
competitive edge.
The question that leads to exponential
business ideas How do we harness the
spare capacity that exists all around us?
How do we leverage untapped assets that are often ignored?
Before Airbnb, travellers had little choice but to pay high prices
for a hotel room, and property owners couldnt easily and
reliably rent out their unoccupied space. Airbnb saw untapped
supply and unaddressed demand where others saw nothing at
all. The same is true of private car services Lyft, Uber and
BlaBlaCar. In fact BlaBlaCar transports more people each
month that Eurostar, and Airbnb is now the worlds largest and
most profitablehotel.
Digital brings the marginal cost of supply to zero. Airbnb
incurs no cost when another host joins their system.
It costs Airbnb essentially nothing to add an additional
property and host to its virtual hotel. How can your venture
leverage this new reality?
The sharing / circular economy & collaborative
consumption open up new opportunities for
breakthrough innovations

Watch The Story of Stuff Video

 EXPONENTIAL
OLD: The Old Product Development Process
GROWTH

1. Idea generation
DISRUPTION 2. Idea screening
3. Concept development and testing
LINEAR
4. Business analysis
5. Beta and market testing
6. Technical implementation
TIME
7. Commercialisation
When you think linearly, when your operations are
8. New product pricing
linear, and when your measures of performance and
success are linear, you cannot help but end up with NEW: Crowd-powered innovation process.
a linear organisation, one that sees the world
through a linear lens. This is the story of the tech
giant Nokia. 1. Crowd Powered Ideation
Top-down and hierarchical organisationculture. 2. Rapid Prototyping
Driven by financial outcomes. Linear, sequential
thinking. Inward looking for innovation. Risk
3. Product Launch (and iterate)
intolerance. Process inflexibility. Large numbers of
staff employees. Strongly invested in the states quo It takes Quirky 29 days from idea generation to
with many liabilities (assets under its control /
ownership). No wonder Nokia has fallen from grace.
seeing the product on sale at your local store.
Quirky mobilises a
community of almost
1 million inventors.

They have recently partnered with GE.

This is a model to learn from.

GE Garages - Partnership between GE,

Skillshare, Quirky, Make and Inventables.
https://www.inventables.com/
http://makezine.com/
http://www.gegarages.com/

Ask yourself
How can we reduce the distance from our team
and our customers?
How could you leverage the power of the crowd to grow
your business exponentially?
 Exponential Questions

These are the questions What does enabling agility and learning in organisation really mean?
youneed to ask yourself How can we bind collective aspirations?
not just once, but every How can we attract top talent across our networks?
month or even week. How can we establish a co-operative non-political culture?
What does it take be How do we enable fresh perspectives to enter the problem space?
become and stay How do we form stronger bonds among the core team?
exponential? What are the interfaces that we will use to mobilise staff on demand?
What gives an organisation meaning?
What will compel employees, customers and even members of the
general public to devote themselves to the success of your enterprise?
How do we leverage community to build out ideas?
How much have you internalised the philosophy of being an ExO? How
does it inform your daily operations in terms of autonomy and social
technology?
How efficiently do you use the right tools, from dashboards to
interfacing? And how open are you to risk, to experimentation and even
to failure?
 More Exponential Questions

These are the questions Who is your customer?

youneed to ask yourself Which customer problem are you solving?
not just once, but every
month or even week. What is your solution and does it improve the
What does it take be status quo by at least 10x?
become and stay How will you market the product or service?
exponential?
How are you selling the product or service?
How do you turn customers into advocates
using viral effects and technology to drive
down the marginal cost of demand?
How will you scale your customer segment?
How will you drive the marginal cost of supply
towards zero?
 Exponential To what extent do you use full time employees vs. on demand
contractors?
Questions To what extent do you leverage external resources to perform business
operations?
To want extent do you own vs. rent the assets in your organisation?
These are the questions To what extent do you manage and interact with your community (users,
youneed to ask yourself customers, partners, fans)?
not just once, but every How do you engage your Community?
month or even week. Do you actively convert the crowd (general public) into Community
What does it take be members?
become and stay To what extent do you use Gamification or Incentive Competitions?
exponential? To what extent are your products / services information-enabled?
To what extent is Social functionality and collaboration a central element
of your product / service offering?
To what extent do you use algorithms and machine learning to make
meaningful decisions?
Do you share strategic data assets internally across the company or
expose them externally to your community?
 Do you have specialised processes for managing the output of
Exponential externalities within your internal organisation?
Questions How replicable and scalable are key processes outside your core
organisation?
Which metrics do you track about your organisation and your
These are the questions product innovation portfolio?
youneed to ask yourself Do you use some variant of OKRs (Googles Objectives and Key
not just once, but every Results Autonomous Management Methodology) to track individual/
month or even week. team performance?
What does it take be Does your organisation constantly optimise processes though
become and stay experimentation, A/B testing and short feedback loops?
exponential? To what extent do you tolerate failure and encourage risk taking?
Does your organisation operate small multi-disciplinary, self-
organising teams?
To what extent is authority/decision making decentralised?
Doyouuse advanced social tools for knowledge-sharing,
communication, coordination and/or collaboration?
What is the nature and focus of your organisational purpose or
mission?
Focus relentlessly on
something youre good at
going that is also in demand
and will create value in the
long term.
When Steve Jobs returned to
Apple, he slashed product
lines to focus on the handful of
opportunities where Apple to
create 10x improvements.
Instead of pursuing
many-sided mediocrity
and call it well-
roundedness focus on
the one best thing to do
and the do it.
Find Your Rocket Ship
I sat down with Eric Schmidt, who had just
become the CEO, and I showed him the spread
sheet and I said, this job meets none of my
criteria. He put his hand on my spreadsheet and
he looked at me and said, Dont be an idiot If
youre offered a seat on a rocket ship, dont ask
what seat. Just get on. - Sheryl Sandberg
Sometimes joining a fast growing company is better than
running your own business at a snails pace. Owning just
0.01% of Google would mean that you own more than
$35million.
What will the world The Engineering Question
look like in 10 and Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements?
20 years from now,
and how will my The Timing Question
business fit in? Is now the right time to start your particular business?

Great companies The Monopoly Question

are build around Are you starting with a big share of a small market?
unique market and
product insights The People Question
specific reasons for Do you have the right team?
success that other
people dont see. The Distribution Question
Do you have a way to not just create but deliver your product?

The Durability Question

Will your market position be defensible 10 and 20 years into the future?

The Secret Questions

Have you identified a unique opportunity that others dont see?
Peter Theil and The PayPal Mafia

Peter Theil, the founder

of Paypal & Palantir and
the first outside investor
in Facebook, offers some
very interesting insights
into entrepreneurship.
Nietzsche - Madness
is rare in individuals-
but in groups, parties,
nations and ages it is
the rule"
The single most powerful pattern
I have noticed is that successful
people find value in unexpected
places, and they do this by
thinking about business from
first principles The best place
to look for the next breakthrough
innovation is where no
one else is looking.
- Peter Theil
Ask Yourself: What valuable company
is nobody building? How do you create
an entirely new category of abundance
in the world?
What important truth do very few people agree
with you on? Most people believe x, but the truth
is the opposite of x because.
Whats most important is rarely obvious.
Every one of todays most famous and familiar
ideas was once unknown and unsuspected. What
is the market in your generation that is going to go
really big? How can you use your skills and
networks to break into this market and dominate
your niche?
Every business is successful to the
extend that it does something
others cannot. What is your unique
angleor insight that will help you
rise above the competition in your
niche?
Beware the copycat game where
you lose focus on your vision and
start focussing on your rivals
instead. What can your company
become the best in the world at?
One of the best question to keep
asking as an entrepreneur is how
can computers (tech) help
humans to solve hard
problems?
See Palantir.
Design Hybrid Systems. Think in terms of
technology-enable innovation.
Men and machines are good at fundamentally different things.
Thats why we need to build hybrid systems. The computer
flags the patterns and out of the ordinary content via a well-
designed user interface / dashboard and then the human
makes the final judgement.Software is great at extracting
patterns in data through statistical analysis of huge bodies of
text.The human brain is great at comparison and interpreting
complex behaviour. Actionable insight can only come from a
human analysts.
Computers are complements for humans, not substitutes. The
most valuable businesses of the coming decades will be built
by entrepreneurs who seek to empower people rather than try
to make them obsolete. Man and machine together can
achieve dramatically better results than either could attain
alone. What valuable businesses could be built around this
core principle?
 If you dont measure the details, you wont
Designing
know what is working and what is not
Exponential working. A carefully designed dashboard /
Systems interface for you business is essential for
sustained exponential growth.
Dive deep into
the meaning of Avoid vanity metricssuch as free users, free downloads, visitors, etc that
your data / might give you a false sense of security. Focus instead on the rate of
change month on month so you can better understand the seasonal cycles
metrics
of your market as well as noticing when you have a big drop or jump in
performance. Think about your real value metrics like repeat usage,
retention percentage, monetisation and the Net Promoter / Virality Score
(how many times a new user or customer is likely to promote your product
or service to their friends and colleagues).

Dont just think about the metrics. Think about how that data can be
communicated to your team (ideally in real time) so that they can make
better decisions. Too many numbers lead to confusion and paralysis. You
want to get everyone in the team to think creatively around how they can
leverage data to optimise their performance one small insight and change
at a time.
Deciding what to
Measure
Most organisation are set up to
scale efficiencies. In the new
digitised knowledge economy what
we actually need to scale is
learning. What is needed now are new
dashboards that measure the learning
capability of organisations.
Ask yourself
How many (Lean Startup) experiments
or A/B-tests did customer service run
last week?
How many innovative ideas have been
collected over the past year? How
many have been implemented?
What percentage of total revenues is
driven by new products from the last
three years?
All smart systems start as manual processes
that gradually become automated around
the edges. Eventually, the process becomes
a platform / digital interface that enables an
organisation to seamlesslyscale, especially
on a global level.
A good way to develop your business dashboard is to start by
mapping out all the activities that happen within your
organisation. Then brainstorm all of the touch points where your
organisation interacts with customers / users. Then brainstorm
all the metrics that you can measure and how you can collect
this data. Just keep digging down into the detail and intuit
which metrics are most important. Make sure you relate your
metrics to your finances (bottom line) as well as your long term
impact goals (purpose).
Deciding what to
Measure
Good metricslist for a digital product
Total users
New guests within last day
Total number of Personal Users (active)
New Personal User registrations
within last day
Percentage of New Personal
Users vs new Guests within last day
Total Pro Subscribers
New Pro Subscriberswithin last day
Percentage of New Pro Subscribers vs.
new Personal Users within last day
Total Cash receipts
Cash receipts within last 30 days
Cash receipts within last day
Capturing this information each month will
give you unique market intelligence and
customer insight.
Dave McClures AARRR Model
Acquisition: How do users find you? - growth metric
Activation: Do users have a great first experience? - value metric
Retention: Do users come back? - value metric
Revenue: How do you make money? - value metric
Referral: Do users tell others? - growth metric.
Ask these questions Periodically.
Who is your customer?
Which customer problem are you solving?
What is your solution and does it improve the status quo by at least 10x?
How will you market the product or service?
How are you selling the product or service?
How do you turn customers into advocates using viral effects and technology
to drive down the marginal cost of demand?
How will you scale your customer segment?
How will you drive the marginal cost of supply towards zero?
When designing a product or service think about how you will measure
performance from the very beginning. When you start to grow, you will be
thankful that you designed smart analytics into your product, trust me.
Most people think only in
terms of what theyve been
taught; schooling itself aims to
impart conventional wisdom.
What are the fields that will
matter that have not been
standardised or
institutionalised?
I never let my
schooling get in the
way of my education
- Mark Twain
Learn to Think Differently
From an early age we are taught the right way to do things is to
proceed one very small step at a time, day by day, grade by
grade. If you over-achieve and end up learning something
thats not on the test, you wont receive credit for it (so whats
the point in searching). However, In return for doing exactly
whats asked of you (just that little bit better than your peers),
you'll get an A. This process extends all the way up through to
university, where academics chase large numbers of trivial
publications instead of breaking new frontiers.
We are programmed with risk aversion all the through
school and university. When students enter the workplace all
they know is how to follow instructions, when what they actually
need to be learning is how to re-write the manual.
 Start with a very small market.
Always err on the side of starting
too small. The reason is simple:
its easier to dominate a small
market than a large one. If you
think your initial market might be
too bit, it almost certainly is.
The most successful companies
focus on dominating a specific
niche and the scaling to adjacent
markets. Focus on the customers
/ power user who really need
your product.
Leveraging Network Effects
To reap the rewards of the network effect
you must focus completely on your early
adopters / power users. By generating value
for your first customers you enable
networkeffects to kick in.
Kevin Kelly Ted talks
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=GS1xL1qcBa4
https://www.youtube.com/
A great article by Kevin Kelly watch?v=ap-ZC21bk18
 Think of your The essence of community, its very heart and soul,
is the concept of non-monetary exchanges of
network as your
value; things we do and share because we care
community for others, and for the good of the place (our
shared environment). Community is composed of
that which we dont attempt to measure, for which
we keep no record and ask no recompense.
Dont try to build a network. Instead try to grow a community through
many small acts of kindness and contribution. This is how you connect
with someones human nature rather. Community requires no currency,
contracts, government, laws, courts, police, economists, lawyers and
accountants It requires only ordinary caring people with a fabric of
trust. True community requires proximity, continual, direct contact and
interaction between the people, place and things of which it is
composed.
 Think of your The strength and reality of every organisation
network as your lies in the sense of community of the people
community who have been attracted to it, its success has
enormously more to do with clarity of a shared
purpose, common principles. and strength of
belief in them than with money, material
assets or management practices important
as they may be.

When an organisation loses its shared vision and

principles, its sense of community, its meaning and
values, it is already in the process of decay and
dissolution, even though it may linger with the outward
appearance of success for some time.

The simple act of creating
something with others and then
sharing it with the world is
addictive. Tapping into this
human desire to create and
share will unlock a whole new
generation of business models
and internet-enabled
innovations.
Todays exponential technologies
radically increase our ability to create
things together, to pool our free time
and particular talents into something
useful. We can literally create new
cultures of sharing and experimentation,
without taking on all the costs usually
associated with mobilising large groups.
The opportunity before us, individually and collectively, is
enormous; what we do with it will be determined largely by
how well we are able to imagine and reward public
creativity, participation and sharing.
 The most addictive and
engaging digital tools give
people the opportunity to
behave in a way that rewards
some intrinsic motivation.
Those actions, unleashed by
technology, are extensions of
our human nature.
Can we reimagine social
media as part of the real world,
as a way of improving the real
world?
The old view of online as a separate space,
cyberspace, apart from the real world, is
dissolving / fading. Our social media tools
arent an alternative to real life, they are part
of it. In particular, they are increasingly the
coordinating tools for events in the physical
world.
Challenge yourself to design products and services that
appeal to real human motivations. Ask yourself What human
desire will your product unleash? The desire to feel connected or
generous? The design for autonomy? The desire to share what we
have created? That sense of fulfilment and achievement that we
get when we accomplish something? To build great products we
need to dive deep into human motivation.
 http://www.cluetrain.com/
The money in this networked
economy does not follow the
path of the copies. Rather it
follows the path of attention,
and attention has its own
circuits. There is great value in
well-designed platforms help
organise stuff and make it
more accessible e.g.
platforms like Studio X Online.
Get your head in the cloud
Careers do not follow a path they follow
criss-crossing, multifarious, dynamically
changing pathways, which are being erased,
created and constantly changed in real time
by those just a few paces further up the hill.
We need a much looser definition of sectors and skills. A
much more profound understanding of the porous and
fluid nature of how value is created and progress is
made. We need to embrace the networked knowledge
economy and learn how to leverage it for both
commercial growth and impact.
Media is the worlds
connective tissue
Thats why a core skill in the modern age
is the ability to find, create and distribute
digital media. Thats why we have
curated the masterclass How to make
anything online, fast.
 People want to do something to
make the world a better place.
They will help when they are
invited to. Access to cheap,
flexible tools removes many of the
barriers to trying new things.We
have always wanted to produce
as well as consume. Until now no
one has offered us the
opportunity.
The sharing is what
makes the making fun.
How can you use this
insight to build an
exponential business?
The Power of Free Time (Cognitive
Surplus)
A new resource that organisation can
leverage for competitive advantage and
impact is peoples free time. The world
offers us a trillion hours of free time each
year. Clay Shirky calls this the Cognitive
Surplus. To leverage this new resource
we need to understand peoples
motivations beyond money.
For example, if Facebook had to pay everybody 10p every
time they uploaded a picture (used their service) they would
have been out of business a long time ago.
 The bigger the social system the
more dramatic the difference
between the most active and
least active participants. Dont
treat all your users in the same
way. Offer different value for
different levels of engagement.
Different users have different
motivations for doing things, and
those motivations create different
logics of participation. Before
you design your product,
understand your users
motivations.
Network Theory
Most collaborative circles consist of a core group
who interact frequently and a peripheral extended
group who vary in their degree of involvement. The
core comprises those members who meet regularly,
discuss their work and through their interaction
develop the vision. The extended group spreads the
messages and ideas arising from the core. You
could call them strong and weak ties. The strength of
the network is created when you beginning to build
stronger connection between the extended group
and the core group. Read more about the Weak Ties
Theory.
 What sets a swarm apart from traditional
organizations is its blinding speed of
operation, its next-to-nothing operating
costs, and its large number of very
devoted volunteers.
Everybody is encouraged to pick work items from an open
list without asking anybodys permission, and just start
doing the work.

Swarm wise is a great The workflow becomes an iterative evolutionary process of

book on the design and trial and error, of constantly adapting and improving, without
architecture of the anybodys supervision to make it happen.
worldd fastest growing
political party - The http://falkvinge.net/2013/02/14/swarmwise-the-tactical-
Pirate Party. manual-to-changing-the-world-chapter-one/
Warning: Before launching
any digital platform have an
engagement strategy in
place. If you just tell people
to go to a forum they will
lose interest in a week if
nothing happens.Making
sure newcomers feel
welcome is vital. Think
about how you can really
create a WOW factor for
you first 1,000 users.
The single most powerful
key to long-term success
is cultivating repeat
business and word of
mouth growth. friend. If you tap into the power of word of mouth referral, you will get
Word of mouth is much more efficient than any
campaign can ever be, but that requires that
your vision / purpose meets four criteria:
tangible, credible, inclusive, and epic.
Tangible: You need to post an outline of the goals you intend to meet,
when, and how.
Credible: After having presented your daring goal, you need to
present it as totally doable. Bonus points if nobody has done it before.
Inclusive: There must be room for participation by every spectator
who finds it interesting, and they need to realize this on hearing about
the project.
Epic: Finally, you must set out to change the entire world for the better
or at least make a major improvement for a lot of people.
Your plan must energise people to get involved and recruit their
waves of volunteers and users without spending a penny on
marketing.
Workshopping
The workshop is one of
the most valuable and
effective tools that a
modern day leader has.
His / her ability to gather the
right people to solve specific
problems quickly and cheaply
will make all the difference.
We must all seek to develop
new leadership mindsets and
processes that will help us
navigate the constantly
evolving markets that we
operate in today.
Why Workshops Matter
As we have just seen from the previous section the world is
changing at an exponential pace. Here is an overview of some
of the shifts
command and control > engagement
> collaboration
instruction
open > closed
big teams > lean + network
owning assets > leveraging assets
expert led > co-creation
big budgets > crowdsourcing
To thrive and adapt in these complex times we must
embrace collaborative multi-stakeholder and multi-
disciplinary innovation. This means learning how to
facilitate and run great workshops!
 A workshop is a tool for
If you want to become a great
solving problems with leader, make The Workshop
groups of people.
your best friend
Today the best leaders
acknowledge the wisdom Listening, questioning, coaching and facilitation are
and power of the crowd, becoming essential leadership skills. Once upon a
and go into design meetings time, the CEO would walk into an important board
with questions rather than meeting with a predetermined answer. The goal was to
answers. In a complex present the big idea and tell the team what needed to
problem space it is be done. Now, the modern day CEO must accept the
important not to force a markets we all operate in are becoming too complex
predetermined answer, but for one person to have all the answers. We are
to let the best possible entering a new era of distributed, participatory and
solution emerge. emergent leadership. The role of the leader is to keep
everyone focussed on the long term vision and purpose
of the company, not to make all the day-to-day
decisions.
 PREPARATION
The 3 Stages of a Workshop
PURPOSE

When a diverse group of people come together to

PEOPLE AGENDA ARTIFACTS
work on a shared challenge or opportunity great
things happen. Assumptions are challenged. New FACILITATION
perspectives are unleashed. Better decisions are
made. However, without proper preparation, EXPERIMENT

workshops can also turn into toxic time-wasting OPEN N AV I GAT E CLOSE
meetings that generate political tension rather EXAMINE
than creative momentum and insight. To avoid this
it is important to think through your workshop in FOLLOW UP
three stages.
ACTION FEEDBACK

Preparation. Facilitation. Follow up.

FEEDBACK ACTION

How to run a great workshop article

The Workshop Spectrum
There are two workshop styles. One is coaching led, where the
content emerges through open discussion. The other is content
led where there is an initial period of presentation and a clear
structure in place. Often a combination of the two is best. The
skilled facilitator is able to sense where content is useful and
where more of a coaching style will work best.

Coaching-led Content-led
Building Teams Creating Change Developing
(relationships / (ownership & ideas (creativity
Questions relaxed) assessment) and excitement) Presentation
Open Discussions Focused tasks
Engagement Practical Action

Workshopping Tips
Things to think about when
preparing and delivering a
workshop reflect on how things are going and where improvements can be made.
Often it is worthwhile for
workshops to be led by an
independent facilitator.
People may be more open in
interviews and workshops
about their organisations Dealing with trouble. Sometimes you may find yourself running a
shortcomings with someone
who is not a party to the
proposed project and
promises anonymity.
Have two people. One is the lead facilitator / talker. Their role is to
deliver the content, getting everyone involved, keep to time and keep
the energy of the room high with positive reinforcement. The other
person takes the role of the observer and recorder, who captures the
learning nuggets and provides playbacks throughout the day. Both
facilitators should meet beforehand and throughout the session to
Keeping the energy high. If you are running a half or full day
workshop, it is important to break up the session into 15-20min stages.
Get people out of their chairs regularly. Print out some large posters
and shift the presentation to another space in the room, where your
participants are standing, not sitting. It may even be good to go a
group stretch to get the blood flowing and the energy back after lunch.
workshop where someone begins to dominate the room. You can sense
the tension building. The best way to approach this situation is to starve
the trouble-makers of attention. Mention the importance that everyones
voice is heard. Switch to a short period of quiet individual thinking.
Then invite others to speak.
Workshopping Tips Get rid of the baggage. Often people bring a lot of baggage into a
workshop (stress or preconceived ideas / solutions). A great facilitator is
able to remove the tensions and get everyone to leave their current
Things to think about when reality behind and imagine something new. Icebreakers are useful to
shift everyone focus away from their last meeting or to do list, and onto
preparing and delivering a the session at hand. A nice way to warm up the room is for everyone to
workshop introduce themselves by answering a relevant question based on
purpose of the session. This is a great way to drawing out the different
perspectives and biases. At the end of the session you can go around
again and see how far you have all travelled in your thinking.

Closing the session. Get the group to reflect on the core question of
the workshop and to share their initial bias and reflections. Then you can
see how far you have all travelled, before and after. Sensing and feeling
the impact of the day is critical. Voice concerns and challenges.

Make sure topic is relevant so there is a clear purpose and common

purpose / intention. Getting alignment is the most important first step.
Workshopping Tips
Things to think about when
preparing and delivering a
workshop
Step 1: Define the Goals
Step 2: Decide Who Will Attend
Step 3: Choose the Right Location
Step 4: Create an Agenda
Step 5: Develop a Follow-up Plan
Getting everyone involved is key to a
successful workshop. If you stand up
and talk for three hours, you're just
giving a lecture not facilitating a
workshop. Everyone needs to
participate.
Tremendous amounts of design, insight, preparation and hard
work goes into making a workshop successful. Aim to put together
a well researched, focussed and easy to understand brief /
agenda and send it out at least a week in advance of the
workshop so participants have some time to reflect on the core
goals and questions of the workshop.
Making sure you have the right people in the room. One to one
pre-meetings and interviews with key stakeholders / decision
makers is also important, to make sure the workshop runs as
smoothly as possible. Diversity is key.
Plan you session in bitesize stages / modules / time slots to keep
the momentum going.On the day you may have to drop some of
the stages and adapt to the flow of the day.
Always leave more time than you think you will need, so you dont
feel rushed. Time buffers are essential so as not to avoid the
pressure of trying to fit everything into an unrealistic time slot.

Workshopping Tips
Things to think about when
preparing and delivering a
workshop Consider the flow, the timings and location.
Ensure all facilitators know
their roles before the day
of the workshop
Prepare your participants.
Set a short homework to
engage people in the
workshop before it starts.
What are you trying to achieve?
What problem are you trying to solve?
Who will you need to help you achieve that?
Who should be in the room and how can you best engage them?
Highlight the essential content areas for the workshop.
Write an agenda and introduction to the workshop.
Get wider input from co-facilitators and/or key participants.
Edit and iterate content accordingly.
Try to visualise the key components of the session.
Write down the content of the workshop in detail step by step
Keep the content modular, with distinct sections. This way you
can be flexible on the day.
Put appropriate timings to each section, build in overrun, and give
each section a name.
Develop helpful stimulus and artefacts. Videos, human size posters.
Post-it notes. Cards with challenges and exercises.
Send out agenda and pre-reading material at least a week before
your session. Get participants to voice any concerns before the
session. Ask them if they would like to change the agenda in any way.

Workshopping Tips
Things to think about when
preparing and delivering a
workshop Some participants might need particular attention.
Shine the light on the most
important things the emerge.
If you see blank faces,
change it up
If you could pass on one key
learning from today what
would it be?
What practical things can
you start applying
tomorrow?
Design your space. Lots of light and fresh air helps.
Turn up early on the day to prepare the room.
Mix up the media you use to deliver the content.
Paper, flip charts, whiteboards, scrolls of paper - not just PowerPoint.
Give people different materials to use: post-it notes, pens, paper,
stickers.
Consider potential characters and group dynamics in the room.
Stretching the group Ask challenge questions - Is that the best we
can do? If a comment is vague ask Can you give an example?
Record / Capture Everything & Follow Up.
Take feedback on the workshop outcomes from all participants.
Go back to the original objectives - Ask Did we meet these?
Identify and define 3-5 quick wins and follow through on how to
deliver them
Capture, summarise and send out key headlines from the workshop
within 24 hours.
Send over all materials of the session before and after.
Highlight the strategic conclusions, decisions made and actions
decided
Consider what you next big workshop might be: What could you
build on to deliver the most impact?

Workshopping Tips
Things to think about when
preparing and delivering a
workshop
The Harvard CASE method.
Workshops are becoming the dominant form of getting things
done in organisations. Workshops are an excellent technique for
achieving a balanced view of how an organisation operates. As
long as you prepare well, adapt to the flow of the session and flow
up quickly and effectively, you should do well. All that is left to
share with you are some inspirations for different exercises you
can try in your sessions
Combine SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and
Threats) and PESTEL (Political, Economic, Social, Technological,
Environmental and Legal) Analysis.
Set ideas target and time constraint.
Give participants an experience of what good looks like
before they start their brainstorm.
Map / prioritise ideas Short term / Long term / iterative /
disruptive / expensive / not expensive / many people / few people
 Checklist of Do you know the main objective(s) of the workshop?
Do you have the right people attending to help you achieve this objective?
Questions Have you identified the essential content areas for the workshop?
Have you thought about timings and location?
Is the content simple enough that you can remember the components in your head?
Have you shared your plan and got feedback from co-facilitators and participants?
Have you taken on board their feedback and adapted you plan accordingly?
https://medium.com/
Have you written a detailed workshop plan, outlining the content step by step?
@jbeltowska/the-10x-
Are the key sections in you plan flexible enough to be adapted?
workshop-1cd67cd3c56c
Is you plan modular? Could you change the running order on the day?
https://medium.com/@mpeers/
Are the instructions for the exercises clear and simple?
what-is-the-
Have you allocated enough time (allowing for overrun)?
workshop-72d22614e64e
Have you made simple templates to use in the breakouts?
https://medium.com/
Have you thought of some initial hypotheses and examples to use?
@imrannkhurshid/facilitating-
Have you briefed all participants and given them an pre-work to get them engaged?
the-workshop-let-your-cohorts-
Have you thought of how you can summarise and replay the purpose of the workshop
be-at-the-driving-
to those who arent prepared?
seat-8b654e2d2a32
How will you capture the headlines and key points from each section?
https://medium.com/@Nurun/
Remember to identify the main strategic insights from the session
learn-build-
Check these insights against your original objectives.
innovate-87d4e9c36039
Identify 3-5 quick wins and actions
Design Template for a Workshop

Date
Participants
One-liner purpose
Invitation email with agenda & prep content attached

Key Modules Timings Facilitator Prep Content Exercise Output

Stimulus &
Who leads and What would a good
Section Name How long? Contextual Pick you exercise
who captures answer look like?
Research
 How to build great teams

If its not a hell Yes, then its a No.

Hire A players. A players attract A players.

B players attract C players.
 Distinguish between three
concepts:
Ownership: who legally owns a
companys equity
Possession: who actually runs the
company on a day to day basis
Control: who makes the find big
decisions
Most conflicts in a startup erupt
between ownership and control - that
is, between founders and investors
on the board. The potential for
conflict increases over time as
interests diverge: a board member
might want to take a company public
as soon as possible to score a win for
his venture firm, while the founders
would prefer to stay private and grow
the business.
Get your foundations right
As a founder your first job is to get the first things
right, because you cannot build a great company
on a flawed foundation.Bad decisions made early
on like choosing the wrong partners or hiring the
wrong people, are very hard to correct after they
are made.
Technicalabilities and complementary skillsets
matter, but the trust and bond between the
founding partners matters more. It is vital to think
deeply about the culture and the team you want to
build and to take your time. You wouldnt get
married after a few months of dating. Its the same
in business. When it comes to people stuff, take
your time. Build solid foundations.
 Ask yourself What would the ideal
company culture look like?Dont just
say Smart people. Open plan office.
Ping Pong Table. Snacks. Sushi Chefs.
Yoga Classes. This is all perks and no
substance. The core of a great culture is
a strong mission that is obsessively
shared by everyonein the organisation.
A great culture is a team of people on
a mission.
How can you create your
own Paypal Mafia?
Friendship First
PayPal was sold to eBay for $1.5billion in 2002. Since the, Elon
Musk has founded SpaceX and co-founded Tesla Motors; Reid
Hoffman co-founded Linkedin; Steven Chen, Chad Hurley and
Jawed Karim together founded YouTube; Jeremy Stoppelman
and Russel Simmons founded Yelp; David Sacks co-founded
Yammer; and Peter Thiel co-founded Palantir. All steve of these
companies are worth more than $1 billion each.
The PayPal team has done very well because it was built on the
foundation of friendship and shared values. The culture was
strong enough to transcend the original company. That is why
people should always come before business.Why would you
want to spend most of your life working with people who dont
like each other? Stronger relationships within the team makes
everyone happier but also more successful and productive. Go
out and hire people first and foremost that you will enjoy
working with. This is the most important factor. Then its about
skills and attitude. They need to be excited and passionate
about the vision and purpose of the venture.
 Individual ambition can threaten
team-building. Individual victories
have to register for the whole team or
they can be more disruptive than
helpful.
I would rather have somebody much
less brilliant and whos a team player,
whos straightforward, than somebody
who is very brilliant and toxic to the
organisation. - Arianna Huffington
If two people think the same, one of them
is always unnecessary. Embrace the
creative tension. Seek out partners who
compliment your skill set and challenge
your way of thinking. However, make sure
that it is constructive and not destructive.
Trust, respect and leadership is essential.
Multidisciplinary backgrounds of the core
team is essential for long term success.
What should you look for?
You dont need to hire someone to
leverage their talents and brain power.
A network of diverse friends and
advisors can be just as valuable as
having a large team of full time
employees.
A good rule of thumb is that if you are looking for skills to
get a job done, go with a short term project contract. If
you see long term potential and loyalty to your cause,
then invest in developing a partnership. Skills can be
taught relatively easily but changing someones way
of thinking and looking at the world is an entirely
different challenge.
 A simple
management
philosophy we use
at The Exponentials
Your goal as a leader / manager
is not to tell your team what to
do and how to do it. Your job is
to communicate clearly what
great work looks like and how it
serves the mission of your
organisation. You are there to
encourage, stretch, guide and
coach. Often it helps to be
authoritarian for the first month
to establish the right habits of
each team member. Then you
can be much less hand on.
ROWE - Results Orientated
Working Environment
One of the challenges of conventional employment
structures is that it rewards inputs rather than outcomes.
In a startup it is much healthier to adopt a ROWE culture.
There are no salaries or employees. Everyone is a
partner / collaborator. The founder(s) meet one to one
with every team member once a month to review the
value delivered and collectively decide what the
appropriate reward should beand how the partnership
should be adapted movingforward.This provides
greater flexibility and a focus and alignment on the
things that matter.
Create a culture where everyone feels responsible for
quality
It is vital to establish the right habits
and processes when a new hire
joins your team. You need to
understand their strengths,
weaknesses, work style, learning
style and most importantly their
personal and professional
motivations. Most of the toxic
problems within startups and
organisations arise when personal
and professional motivations are in
conflict. You goal is not to tell them
what to do. Your goal is to listen,
observe learn and guide them
towards greatness. The more you
understand them, the better able
you will be to design a partnership
that works for the long term.
Start hands on and move to hands
off
A lack of structure and contact time in the first month can
lead to disaster. At the same time too much control leads to
disengagement and apathy. The best solution we have found
is to start with micro-management, specific KPIs and almost
daily feedback sessions. In the feedback sessions ask
questions and encourage your team to evaluate their work
based on the core goals of the business. What did you do
and how did this bring value to the business? Get them to
think in terms of process and ritual. How can you do this
better and faster tomorrow? It can help if you also share
your answers and report on your own work. Leading by
example can really establish a powerful feedback culture.
your team will mirror how you do things so make sure you
follow through on what you say.
 What gets measured gets done.
The challenge is that a lot of metrics
that we have for performance are
short-term oriented, not long term.
With OKRs we can find more a
quantitative and quantitative way to
measure and learn from success /
failure.
How to delegate. Dont make
someone accountable for something
without first trusting their final
judgement. Accountability without
authority leads to disengagement and
frustration.
The OKR Management Framework
Great companies like Intel, Twitter, Google, Linkedin and
Facebook use the OKR (Objectives and Key Results)
Framework. This model was invented by Andy Grove (who at
the time was CEO at Intel) and was brought to Google by
venture capitalist John Doerr in 1999. OKR tracks individual,
team and company goals and outcomes in an open and
transparent way.It works like this
Objectives (qualitative)
1. Where do I want to go?
Key Results (quantitative)
2. How will I know Im getting there?
Everyones OKRs are visible to everyone else.They have an
open real time dashboard for the company that will enable
the entire organisation to manage hyper growth.
 Embrace the tension
If you create a diverse team, you will inevitably have tension. And
that is a good thing as long as you are willing to work out the tension.
Conflict can be fruitful if it is managed correctly and the differences
are brought out into the open. It may be easier to have a team that
agrees and lets you just get on with what you are doing but a team
that challenges your thinking will inevitably lead to better results in
the long term. Try to finish meetings with full agreement. A
majority is not enough. It is important to get everyone to respect and
understand the final decision so that when the team goes into battle
everyone is completely committed to the strategy. Get the ego out of
the room. Focus on alignment.

Diversity is at the Studying non-violent communication is a great source of inspiration

for leading diverse teams. Managing conflict productively without
heart of design alienating team members is essential to avoid destructive behaviour.
thinking. A great article on non-violent communication.
Startups have limited resources and
small teams. They must work
Design your website to be a talent
quickly and efficiently in order to magnet, not a sales page
survive, and thats easier to do when
everyone shares an understanding
Most people think that their websites are about sales. In some
of the world. Recruit on values.
cases they are. They focus on showcasing their products and

services rather than communicating their values. The suggestion
What makes Elon Musk great is his
we would like to make is to encourage you to think of your website
ability to attract incredible people
as a talent magnet. Promote your value. Promote your culture. Tell
and establish a culture of innovation
your story. Build your tribe. Attracting great talent is essential for
and growth. He says If you are
sustaining exponential growth.
working for Tesla, you are choosing
to step up your game.
Remember: Every prospective employee worth hiring will do his
Great founders draw out the best
own due-diligence; so make sure you present yourself wellonline.
work from everyone in the company.
Put yourself in the shoes of your ideal hire what would
Partly through leading by example.
incentivise them to say hello? Dont advertise jobs. Great people
Partly through feedback and
dont apply for jobs. Instead, encourage people to engage in a
coaching. And partly through
dialogue, or get involved on a voluntary / advisory / partnership
having access to a diversenetwork
basis first.
of smart friends and colleagues.
Remember talented people dont need to
work for you; they have plenty of options. Never delegate recruitment (or
Instead you should ask yourself why
would someone join your startup when
induction)
they could go work at Google for more
money and more prestige? Recruiting is a core competency for any founder.
Dont make general claims about working It should never be outsourced. You need to make
with great people and solving challenging sure you hire people who are not only skilled on
problems. Get specific. Explain the vision paper but who will work together cohesively after
and why your mission is compelling. theyre hired.This is mission critical and should
Demonstrate how you are doing
something important that no one else is
never be delegated.
going to get done.
Read about Holacracy & Zappos
It took Zappos just 8 years to hit $1 billion in
annual salesin 2007.This success is down
to their commitment to exceptional customer
service which is a product of their
recruitment policy / induction process. Each
new recruit spends four weeks shadowing
experienced employees and at the end is
offered $3,000 to leave the company
further weeding out misfits.

They have also abandoned job pages.

Study Instead they use an internal social network
Tony Hsieh, called Zappos Insiders (powered by
CEO of Zappos Ascendify). By continually monitoring the
& their approach activity of their community of engaged
to talent candidates and how they interface with
existing employees, Zappos recruiters
maintained an active pool of talent. This is
truly revolutionalising the HR function.
Encourage your team to be T-Shaped

T-shaped people have a deep expertise in some field

but are also broadly interested and therefore able to
connect with others across disciplines. It is worthwhile
to have every of your team members fill out their T-
profile. Let them be as creative with this task as they
can be. And print out the results and hang them in a
prominent spot in your workspace. This will give
people the chance to browse and possibly find new
ways to connect to their team members.

IDEO use their open

innovation platform
to spot and recruit
fresh talent!
Learn from IDEO
Setting the Table
Recruiting is a core competency for any founder.
It should never be outsourced. You need to make
sure you hire people who are not only skilled on
paper but who will work together cohesively after
theyre hired.This is mission critical and should
never be delegated.

A great book to read about developing a great

culture and recruitment process is Setting The
Table by Danny Meyer. He is a world famous
restauranteur in New York.
 View employees as volunteers.
People should choose to work for
your company because of what
you stand for. I believe that anyone
who is qualified for a job in our
company is also qualified for many
other jobs at the same pay scale.
Its up to you (the founder) to
provide solid reasons for your
employees to want to work for your,
over and beyond their financial
compensation.
Seek out extraordinary people to
work and learn with. Follow the
careers of the best leaders in your
industry. Try to establish an
informal dialogue with them.
Setting the Table
Business like life is all about how you make
people feel. Its that simple, and its that hard. In
the end whats most meaningful is creating
positive, uplifting outcomes for human
experiences and relationships.
Virtually nothing else is an important as how
one is madeto feel in any business
transaction. Hospitality exists when you believe
the other person is on your side. Genuine inquiry
and thought is invested into their experience and
context.
 Taking the time to redefine quality.
Becoming more precise in describing
what you want. What kind of people to
hire and what is expected of them.
What do you consider nonnegotiable
about how you do business? What
matters most.
How we approach our own
development. Our passion and
commitment towards learning, and
developing a culture of learning is the
most important thing.
What is the philosophy around which
you will evaluate decisions? Define
success as well as our failure in terms
of the degree to which your team
haschampioned this philosophy.
Learn to trust your own instinctsand
make them explicit to others. Write a
set of guidelines for your business.
Take the time to read new employees emotional
makeup. Be explicit about the qualities and
emotional skills youre seeking.
Create a built in support system for new hires.
Always get a second opinion on people. Be aware of
your own blind spotswhen hiring and managing.
Three hallmarks of effective leadership are to provide a
clear vision for you business so that your employees
know where youre taking them; to holdpeople
accountable for consistent standards of excellence; and
to communicate a well-defined set of cultural priorities
and nonnegotiable values.Then it is all about leading
by example. Holding yourself accountable for
conducting business in the same manner in which you
ask your team to perform.
 Imagine if every business were a
lightbulb and that for each lightbulb the
primary goal was to attract the most
moths possible. Now what if you
learned that 49 percept of the reason
both were attracted to a bulb was for
the quality of its light (brightness being
the task of the bulb) and that 51
percent of the attraction was to the
warmth projected by the bulb (heat
being connected with the feeling of the
bulb). Its remarkable to me how many
businesses shine brightly when it
comes to acing the tasks but emanate
all the warmth of a cool fluorescent
light. That explains how a flawless four-
star restaurant can actually attract far
fewer loyal fans than a two or three
starplace with soul. In business, I want
to be overcome with moths.
Dont just hire for skills. Hire for character.
Here are five qualities that Danny Meyer looks for
1) Optimistic warmth (genuine kindness,
thoughtfulness, and a sense that the glass is always
at least half full)
2) Intelligence (not just smarts but rather an
insatiable curiosity to learn for the sake of learning)
3) Work ethic (a natural tendency to do something as
well as it can possibly be done)
4) Empathy (an awareness of, care for, and
connection to how others feel and how your actions
make others feel)
5) Self-awareness and integrity (an understaning of
what makes you tick and a natural inclination to be
accountable for doing the right thing with honest and
superb judgement).

Develop systems for capturing
learning. Ask yourself How do we
bottle up peoples
exceptionaljudgement, wisdom,
sensibilities and expertise? We are
working with organisations to develop
learning systems and platforms
Platform Genesis. This video gives a
good idea of what is possible
A world of scenarios
Organisational structures and cultures are
constantly evolving organisms. Nice sounding
values are great, but they need to be backed
up by real tangible examples that provide
context and guidance.
When you say X, go deeper. What do you mean
by X and what we don't mean by X? Can you
think of a practical example that demonstrates
your values in a powerful way? When a
complex problem arises what are the
questions you want your team to be asking
themselves every day?
 Values are the
things you do when
you are really
hurting.
Set high expectation of how
you want your new hires to
approach their work.
Respect does not mean having
everyone like you. Itcomes from
having high standards and
holding yourself and others
accountable to them.Becareful
not to send mixed messages.
Befriending staff members is
different to leading them.
Lead with your values
Know where your centre lies. Name it. Stick to it.
Believe in it. Make sure everyone who works with you
will know what matters to you. Your inner beliefs about
business will guide you through the tough times. Its
good to be open to fresh approaches to solving
problems, but never let go of your core values.
Let your people know what excellence looks like to
you. Be specific. If they do something well make sure
you celebrate it. Get into the habit of catching people
int he act of doing things right.
Feeling seen and acknowledged is a powerful human
need. You are helping to establish positive habits in
your team.
 When hiring someone ask
yourself Does this person
have the type of attitude I want
to spread around? Drill down
into why they made the career
decisions that they did. Why
this, why now? Ask them about
their long term view of
success. Does their philosophy
/ values match yours? Do they
think long term?
Above all do you trust them?
Trust and mis-trust become
self-fulfilling.
When you have a team, every decision is
political. Dont ignore the people stuff, its what
creates the biggest problems down the line.
People who arent alerted in advance about a
decision that will affect them may become angry
and hurt.Anticipate the ripple effectsof any
decision before you implement it, gauging whom
it will affect and to what degree. Poor
communication is generally not a matter of saying
the wrong things. More often, it involves taking
away peoples feeling of control. Change works
only when people believe it is happening for
them, not to them.
Create contingency plans. Use every mistake as a teaching tool.
Entrepreneurs are optimists by nature.
Think about what could do wrong.
The worst mistake is not to figure out some way of
Plan ahead. Recognise your sunk
learning from your mistake. When things go wrong, and
cost bias. Remember that the road to
they will from time to time, try to write a great last
success is paved with mistakes well
chapter, perhaps even with a touch of humour. All epic
handled.
mistakes should be followed by an equally great
redemptive step.Observe how other companies handle
Develop your soft skills.
their mistakes. Viewmistakes as opportunities to repair
Plug into how other people feel. The
and strengthen relationships, rather than letting them
higher up the ranks of leadership you
destroy relationships.
go, the more emotionally intelligent
their management skills must
Show me a defensive boss and I'll show you a team
become.
desperate for new leadership. Great bosses own up to
their mistakes, insist on learning from them, thank others
Ask yourself Why would someone
for pointing them out, and move on.
want to be led by me?How am I
serving my team, and helping them
grow and become better every single
day?
Googles research into recruitment Surround yourself with very
talented people, give them clear
Google has identified that the highest value hires to their direction, goals and feedback, and
business to date were not the Ivy League rockstars, but rather not try to be everywhere at once.
those graduates who had experienced a big loss in their lives Be anal for the first 3 months, so
and had been able to transform that experience into growth. that you establish the right habits
There are more humble and open to listening and learning. and patterns and then trust the
team to become self-sufficient.
Hire employees who ask smart questions. A good thing to
watch out for is not how someone sells themselves but the The Five As of a great feedback
questions that they ask when confronted with a complex culture:
problem. When they are on probation observe their rate of
learning. Are they willing to unlearn and adapt? - Awareness
- Acknowledgement
Think in terms of discovery and delivery skills. - Apology
Discovery Skills: The ability to generate ideas - to associate, - Action
question, observe, network and experiment. - Additional generosity
Delivery Skills: The ability to execute ideas- to analyse, plan,
implement, follow through and be detail-oriented.
 During the interview ask yourself

Do they ask smart questions?

Do they display a broad knowledge
about a lot of subjects?
Do you have depth of character and
self awareness?

Stock your team with people who

naturally crave learning and who want
to evolve curious people who also
take an active interest in what their
teammates do...
Do they show care over the small
details?
Employ people who you would
otherwise choose to spend time with
outside work. It pays to surround
yourself with compelling human
beings from whom you can learn,
and with whom you can be challenged
to grow.
Building Teams

Do all the psychometrics, understand your team and

complimentary skills.Think about how the skills
needed in your team will change and evolve as your
business grows. Share this roadmap with your team
so they know how they need to evolve. Startups are
always in flux and the skills that team members have
can become redundant. Managing those transitions
is vital.

Check out Myers & Briggs personality test. Have a

look at SDI and Strengths Finder. Look at Belbin
team roles. Identify the blind spots and strengths of
the team. Reflect on the health of your team using
the team triangle model on a regular basis.

Read this great article on the Xero blog.

Traits of Exponential Leaders
1. Visionary Customer Advocate. Stays involved in
decisions regarding the customer experience
2. Data-Driven Experimentalist. Rapid feedback.
3. Optimistic Realist.
4. Extreme Adaptability. Adapt skills as organisation
evolves
5. Radical Openness.
6. Hyper-confident. Demonstrating courage and
perseverance.
Emphasise the importance of research and
up-skilling at all levels of your organisation.
When it comes to building exponential teams,
imagination always trumps experience.
KEY QUESTION - Was I better today than yesterday?
Optimisers: Run large businesses at
scale and squeeze efficiency to
maximise profits.
Scalers: Take a proven model and grow
it.
Evangelists: Champion new ideas and
move projects from idea stage to initial
commercialisation.
Beware: The best performers in one
areaare rarely are good in other areas.
Tech Team Makeup:
Visionary / Dreamer
User Experience Designer
Programmer / Engineer
Finance / Business Development
Autonomy, Mastery,
Purpose & (Trust).
We have an innate need to direct our own lives, to learn
to create new things and to do better by ourselves and
our world. We must design systems and organisations
that embed this insight at the core of the design.
The central idea of DRIVE is that
Rewards by their very nature narrow our focus. there has been a mismatch
For more right-brain undertakings - those that demand between what science knows and
flexible problem-solving, inventiveness, or conceptual what business does. The gap is
understanding - contingent rewards can be dangerous. wide.We should be designing
Intrinsic motivation - the drive to do something because it organisations and systems
is interesting, challenging and absorbing is essential for around our deep seated desire to
high levels of creativity. direct our own lives, to extend and
expand our abilities, and to live a
It's not all rewards that have this effect. Monetary rewards life of purpose.
vs altruistic rewards. Try to design rewards with inherently
interesting, creative and noble tasks.
 People have three innate
psychological needs - competence,
autonomy and relatedness. Human
beings have an innate inner drive to
be autonomous, self-determined
and connected to one another. And
when that drive is liberated people
achieve more and live richer lives.
Try to connect the quest for
excellence to a larger purpose.
Some might dismiss notions like
these as gooey and idealistic, but
the science says otherwise. The
science confirms that this sort of
behaviour is essential to being
human - and that now, in a rapidly
changing economy, it is also critical
for professional, personal and
organisational success of any kind.
With routine work here is what
you can do
- Offer a rationale for why the task is necessary. A job
that's not inherently interesting can become more
meaningful, and therefore more engaging, if it's part of a
larger purpose.
- Acknowledge that the task is boring. This is an act of
empathy, of course. And the acknowledgement will help
people understand why this is the rare instance when 'if-
then' rewards are part of how your organisation operates.
Find ways to make it more interesting.
- Allow people to complete the task their own way.
Think autonomy, not control. State the outcome you need.
But instead of specifying precisely the way to reach it -
give them freedom over how they do the job.
 "As an entrepreneur, I'm blessed
with autonomy over task, time,
technique and team. Here's the
thing: If I maintain that autonomy, I
fail. I fail to ship. I fail to excel. I fail
to focus. I inevitably end up either
with no product or a product the
market rejects. The art of the art is
picking your limits. That is the
autonomy I most cherish. The
freedom to pick my boundaries."
- Seth Godin, Purple Cow
Carrots and sticks
the seven deadly flaws
1) They can extinguish intrinsic motivation
2) They can diminish performance
3) They can crush creativity
4) They can crowd out good behaviour
5) They can encourage cheating, shortcuts and unethical behaviour
6) They can become addictive
7) They can foster short-term thinking.
Encouraging autonomy doesn't mean discouraging accountability.
Whatever operating system is in place, people must be
accountable for their work and have the authority to carry it out in
the way they think best. Managers should design tasks in such a
way that employees have clear objectives and a way to get quick
feedback. Coaching is key.
Work with your team to define their learning goals. Questions:
Where are you falling short? What tools, information or support
might you need to do better?How can I be of service?
 Today the central ethic in
management remains control; with
its chief tools being extrinsic
motivators. That leaves it largely out
of sync with the non routine, right- At Facebook, development teams enjoy the
brained abilities on which many of
the world's economies now depend. full trust of the management. Any team can
release new code onto the live site without
As leaders we all have a choice. We
can cling to a view of human
oversight. With individual reputations at stake -
motivation that is grounded more in and no one else to catch shoddy coding -
old habits than in modern science.
Or we can listen to the research,
Facebook teams end up working that much
drag our business and person harder to ensure there are no errors. The result
practices into the twenty-first century, is that Facebook has been able to release
and craft a new operating system to
help ourselves, our companies and code of unimaginable complexity faster than
our world work a little better. any other company in Silicon Valley history.
Study MindValleys Culture

They are great at building a high quality

employer brand. Also look at the top tech
companies present themselves on muse.com.

Tip: The best way to attract top talent as a

startup is not to promote a job ad. Instead
start by asking the best people who you know
for advice that is related to the role you want
to fill. Build a relationship. Get them excited
about the vision and impact of your business.
They might just want to jump on board or
could introduce you to great people who are
available. Offer insane flexibility. Offer the best
pay you can. One day of work from someone
who is world class can be worth more than a
month of someone who is just ok.
Whats your contribution?
Look at what society is concerned
about. What are the big debates in
the world today and the big
challenges we all face? Now look at
how your business fits into those
conversations and how it can make a
meaningful contribution.
Always ask how can we be valuable? What
is our unique / highest point of contribution to
the world?
 Within the next two decades an additional 3
billion people are forecast to be added to the
global middle class, ready to spend, acquire
more goods, and increase our need for
resources.
Video - Shift Happenshttps://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcZg51Il9no
Today the very structure of corporations has
changed: a modern company runs through a
series of complex networks, with multifaceted
connections to the outside world: systems of
supply and distribution, global workforces,
mobile employees commercial alliances, NGO
partnerships, empowered communities,
connected consumers- running a successful
big business today means managing a vast
system of relationships.
Embrace an open business
mindset. No business can exist
in a vacuum.
Our success depends on the
success of society around us.
You just cant impose command
and control mechanisms on a
large, highly professional
workforce. Instead challenge the
companys talents into solving
very specific challenges.
Setting the big crazy goal. Every new CEO should come
with his or her own'Man on the Moon Moment'.It may
seem impossible because the solution does not exist yet,
but you trust in the people and their ingenuity to rise to the
challenge and to break old cycles and patterns of thinking.
How can we be market transformers? Thats the
question we should all be asking.
In the Chaordic Age, it will be much more important to have a clear
sense of purpose and sound principles within which many specific,
short term objectives can be quickly achieved, than a long-range
plan with fixed objectives. Such plans often lead to futile attempts to
control events in order to make them fit the plan, rather than
understanding events so as to advance by all means in the desired
direction. Far too much ingenuity, effort and intelligence go into
circumventing the mindless sticky web of rules and regulations
by which people are needlessly bound.What are the questions
to which you will devote your life and career to?

There are four ways of looking at things

As they were
As they are
As they might become
And as they ought to be (theimpossible
imagined)
Management Lessons
What is the single most important responsibility of any mangers?
1) To manage oneself, ones own integrity, character, ethics,
knowledge, wisdom, temperament, works and acts.
Without management of self, no one is fit for authority.
2) Mange those who have authority over us
3) Then it is to manage ones peers.
Then one need only select decent people, introduce them to the
concept, induce them to practice it, and enjoy the process.
Then see that they are properly recognised and rewarded and
then stay out of their way.

In the deepest sense, distinction between leaders and followers

is meaningless. In every moment of life, we are simultaneously
leading following. We must examine leadership and following with
new eyes it is true leadership, leadership by everyone that this
world badly needs.. and dominator management it so sadly gets.
Getting everyone on board
Get on the phones person after
person, over and over, cajoling,
sympathising, explaining, appealing,
thanking, etc all the time making
careful record of the needs, desires,
and position of each.
Show everyone the big picture on a wall everyone
could see it emerge and evolve They could see how
the whole depended on their work, and how their work
was connected to every other part of the effort.
As you see old things with new eyes, new
patterns begin to reveal themselves
Agreement contains the essence of both difference and
commonality. If there is no difference, there is nothing about which
to agree.

When it becomes necessary to develop a new perception of things,

a new internal model of reality, the problem is never to get new
ideas in, the problem is to get the old ideas out. Every mind is filled
with old furniture. Its familiar. Its comfortable. We hate to throw it
out. But when we clear any room in your mind of old perspectives,
then new perceptions will rush in.

Money motivates neither the best people nor the best in people.
Payment as reward should be symbolic not a genuine driver for
action.The future belongs to companies who can create a
positive relationship with society - one that generates value for
everybody.
Dont forget to work on your business rather
than in it
Technician, Entrepreneur, Manager

The reason most small businesses don't work is that they are run by
a "Technician", someone who knows how to do the technical work
involved in a job, without much thought to two other, equally
important roles described in the book, the "Entrepreneur" and the
"Manager". These are not separate people, but distinct elements of
our personalities. In other words, while we might be biased towards
one, we all have all of them, and to successfully run a small
business, they must all play a role.

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