how Labs Work
Separating designers and stakeholders
Systems have many participants in owning, producing, and partaking roles.
At RE: DESIGN, we call these people “stakeholders.” Stakeholders may not be the most creative thinkers, they may have interests that differ from yours, or they may be downright opposed to any change. But we know we need their support.
That is why people often initiate change by forming a committee of stakeholders and asking them to pilot the change. University of Michigan professors, Gordon and Ronald Lippitt, extensively studied behavior of groups structured in this way. They found that the stakeholder committee usually degenerated to the lowest common denominator of things upon which the various stakeholders could agree. The changemaker who authorized the committee was usually very disappointed with the result.
On the other hand, the Lippitt brothers found that bold creative breakthroughs occurred from a dynamic interaction between two groups. The first is a group of creative thinkers who are singularly committed to the result being sought (the Lippitts called these the “good heads”). The second is a group of stakeholders who have various interests in the matter at hand and whose support will be required for successful implementation (the Lippitts called these “the right heads”). RE: DESIGN Labs are based on this principle. The 5-10 people an organization mightbring to their multi-day Lab would be “good heads.”
RE: DESIGN consultants will work out with organization ways to provide an iterative interaction with stakeholders.
Invite to your Lab people with these characteristics
- People who primary interest is producing the outcome you seek.
- People who are creative strategic thinkers
- People who are trusted to make decisions—Labs are action oriented
- People who will be willing to challenge long held assumptions
Bring some people from outside the organization; especially those who have the “customer's’” perspective. RE: DESIGN will supplement the Lab participants you bring, with both facilitators who will help you plan the Lab and help manage Lab activities as well as provocateurs who will help diversify the thinking in the Lab.
The Principle of Sequestration
One dimension that helps frame RE: DESIGN’s approach to Labs comes from the experience of so-called skunk works. You can read a short version of this fascinating story here. A key in the original Lockheed skunk works that produced the company’s first jets during WWII, was that the engineers working on the project were sequestered from the rest of the company. Secrecy was part of the motive, but isolation from the old bureaucratic culture that clung to the paradigm of propeller aircraft turned out to have a big impact on creativity and speed.
Many similar “skunk works” in organizations both public and private have embraced the notion of pulling the creative thinkers off their regular jobs, away from their regular work place, and under a different kind of culture. Sometimes, this is done for a day, or a month or for a year. Some brief notes on public sector skunk works can be found here.
The RE: DESIGN Labs“sequester” participants away from their regular jobs, in a physical space designed for the purpose of creative problem solving, and in a culture of exploration and innovation.
The Lab Experience
Getting all this done in a Lab involves a wide variety of tools, methodologies, and structured group processes.
Labs are engaging. People will be moving around. The work is usually fast paced.
Three quarters of the way through a Lab, participants often feel “we are getting nowhere,” “I’m totally confused,” “I can’t see where we are going.” And, those same people almost always are ultimately delighted with what they produced.
The reasons for this phenomenon are
- Labs deliberately break down the paradigms that imprison breakthrough possibilities. This creates necessary mental chaos.
- Labs use a wide variety of activities that are not normal to regular meetings.
- Labs jump from one thing to another. They are usually not linear. So, often “assembly of all the pieces” occurs toward the end of the Lab.