What is a DesignShop®
Event?
See
also
knOwhere's DesignShop description
"The only valid test of an idea, concept or theory
is what it allows you to do." This is one of
the DesignShop axioms that is read to the participants at the beginning
of a DesignShop event. For the last twenty years, MG Taylor has tested
the DesignShop concept hundreds of times with hundreds of organizations
and thousands of people. What the DesignShop event has allowed these organizations
to do has been to solve their most pressing problems. Groups have used
DesignShop events to complete mergers, develop marketing plans, instill
new cultures, redesign entire organizations, create shared visions of
what is and what can be, resolve seemingly deadlocked union struggles,
and design solutions that would have taken months or years of "business
as usual" to create, if indeed "business as usual" could
have designed a solution at all. An experience of a very different way
of working, the DesignShop event proves its value in the results that
it produces.
For a DesignShop event, all of the key stakeholders, decision
makers and interested parties are brought together so that the decisions
that need to be made can be made. During the event, participants rigorously
explore their current conditions and their visions of the future,
co-design multiple solutions, assess the merits
of their different solutions, and decide which solution shall be implemented
and how the implementation will proceed. Using the power of parallel processing--looking
at various issues from different vantage points and synthesizing the results
of that examination--participants can deal with the tremendous complexity
involved in planning for the future. A large group brings diversity of
opinion, knowledge, experience and vantage point, enabling the DesignShop
process to release their dynamic group genius. The design of the event
follows the Scan Focus Act
process:
During the SCAN phase, the participants confront and process a vast body
of information and knowledge. Participants build models of emerging social
and economic trends. They establish a common language for the group, identifying
terms of art, uncovering assumptions, and discovering the unexpected.
A context emerges for the area of focus. Judgment and argument are withheld
during this time so that ideas can flow freely. The scan phase is based
on the DesignShop axiom, "Creativity is the process of eliminating
options." Wise elimination assumes that rich, dynamic, timely options
have been explored. The variety of ideas created by thirty, sixty or ninety
people multi-tasking allows the participants to design from many different
vantage points simultaneously.
In the FOCUS phase, participants use parallel processing to systematically
examine the ideas generated during the scan. The market, financial, cultural,
organizational, and social dynamics of the potential paths are explored
by modeling and 'Spoze. Through
these exercises, participants set aside prejudices, work through "stretch"
models and scenarios as if they were true, then step back and to examine
the viability of the different options they have created. Scenarios using
convergence possibilities are examined. Participants have said that the
focus day is hundreds of percentage points more productive than a typical
meeting day. Each successive round of the iterative process provides more
discrimination and clarity to the designs and ideas that the group creates.
By the end of FOCUS, participants have a clear vision of the route they
will be taking.
During the ACT phase, the ideas and design from the first two phases
converge. Throughout the process, ideas have either gained strength and
developed or fallen away naturally. The strong components remain, and
design ideas turn into programs and projects which are laid out over time.
The group reaches a common vision and engineers a comprehensive plan of
implementation through group genius. From the rich body of knowledge developed
over the previous two days, the group chooses those elements most critical
to their organization's particular needs.
In addition, the experience of the past several days becomes the model
for a new way of working. As a stand-alone event, the DesignShop event
can be used to design solutions to tremendous problems. Its greatest value,
however, can be found in the pattern of work that the DesignShop process
represents. By taking the Ten Step
Knowledge Management process with them when they return to their organizations,
participants discover that productivity levels of a DesignShop event can
be replicated at home.
For more about the DesignShop process, see Leaping
the Abyss: Putting Group Genius to Work and
knOwhere's DesignShop description
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