Collaborate to Innovate
Responsibilities: Instructional Design, Graphic Design
Target Audience: Professionals and leaders within a large corporation
Tools Used: Vyond, Canva, PowerPoint, Miro, Mentimeter, SessionLab
Budget: Low
Overview
An international company is trying to get its people to work more collaboratively to solve problems.
They purchased a robust collaboration platform, but the only feature being used is the social feed.
The company is experiencing high turnover which has everyone on edge.
*This project is based on a case study provided by the School of Story Design.
Analysis
Problem
Needs analysis revealed that the team leads are not skilled at facilitating collaboration meetings. Employees are frustrated by the lack of process in these kinds of meetings, which has had a negative impact on recent attempts at collaboration. The meetings are usually dominated by two or three people while the others remain quiet.
Employees dread being assigned to a collaboration group. They also feel pressured to come up with something that will make a difference, but it's stressful because they aren't sure about how to quantify the success of their collaborative efforts.
Solution
We determined the most effective solution to achieve the above business outcome was collaborative Virtual Instructor-Led Training. The objectives of the training were to
provide a framework for collaborative meetings
act as a model for such meetings
Action list
There are 7 actions our learners (team leads) should take to facilitate collaborative problem-solving sessions:
Set expectations: Say, "Each person must contribute and listen actively to the ideas of others."
Tell the group what problem they are solving with sufficient details.
Ask each person to share what they think the cause of the problem is based on experience or data. Record mind map style.
Ask each person to choose the root cause they feel is causing the most damage.
Ask the group to describe the impact of the problem. Record answers.
Ask each person to prioritise the impacts from severe to mild and write their ranking next to each item.
Starting with the top-ranked impact, discuss what the business outcome would be if that piece of the problem was fixed. Write answers on whiteboard in mind map style.
Design
Knowing what actions our learners needed to take, we used Michael Allen's CCAF model to design a meaningful, memorable and motivational learning experience.
Context provides a meaningful situation.
Challenge is used to engage the learners’ emotions.
Activity refers to the gestures required of the learner.
Feedback is how the learner responds and adapts to learner actions.
Story Design
Context, challenge, activity and feedback were designed around a story using the Instructional Story Design model. In this model, the focus of the virtual training is on discovery and discussion.
Credits: Rance Greene
I used Vyond to create the animations.
Interactive learning activities
This Mentimeter activity gives the participants an opportunity to collectively define "effective collaboration".
We designed the following Miro board as part of the virtual training. The participants work in small groups to rewrite the story they've been introduced to earlier.
Facilitation guide
I used the virtual planning tool SessionLab to create the training agenda and facilitation guide.