Tag Archives: Design

Let’s Create a Culture of Collaboration

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“Create a Collaborative Mind-set”

– IDEO

As GHC17 problem solvers, you’ve been tasked in identifying insights and opportunities to bring about positive change for real people experiencing very real and complex issues. Key to the success of this will be teamwork.

Let’s look to IDEO co-founder David Kelly for some advice whilst working towards innovation as multidisciplinary teams:

  1. Every team member should be given the same amount of respect
  2. Take advantage of individual skill sets: throw egos out the window
  3. Embrace the opportunity afforded by bringing together people with different backgrounds and expertise – you’ll have more resources, insight, and experience to draw from

In other words, let’s create a culture of collaboration and recognise the strengths afforded to your teams brought by the various backgrounds and fields of your members. The next five weeks are yours to explore, discover and ideate and embracing the opportunity to do this together will really make your project sing.

Building on this thinking and echoing some of the advice shared by GHC16 winners Open Ears in our induction session, here are some final top tips from your GHC facilitators for successful teamwork:

  • COMMUNICATE: Establish and use somewhere central, like Facebook or the GHC webmail platform to communicate with your group. Share where you’re at and discuss progress in between meetings.
  • BE MINDFUL of the commitment you have made to the team. It is good professional practice to give this your full attention – if meetings are arranged, attend them. 
  • PROJECT PLAN & DELEGATE: Compile a task list – who does what and when?
  • PREPARE for your final presentation. Make sure every team member is clear on their role within the presentation and collect and compile visuals to communicate your project well.

Good to See You – Welcome to GHC!

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Hello!

Welcome everyone to Global Health Challenge!

It is a delight to welcome you. My name is Louise and I am one of a large team across the University who have joined together to design and make happen the Global Health Challenge. You’ll get to meet and work with the team as the afternoon and challenge progresses.

First, let me tell you a little bit about Global Health Challenge.

Global Health Challenge is a glimpse of the future; it’s a change agent with a concern about doing things differently. It is about challenging the norm. We’re here to raise the game, to raise your game, and ours. We’re doing that by pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone, to work in new ways and with people we’ve not worked with before. Everything about this initiative is voluntary, and that is what makes it such a compelling story. We’re here to do some good.

Let me share with you an interesting fact, the world population is forecast to increase by two-thirds in the 21st Century. Did you know that? For me it’s the call to action that has impacted most. Let me tell you why. In the 19th Century there were 1 billion people on the planet. In 2017 there are just over 7.6 billion, and by the end of the 21st century it is expected to be over 12 million. This is an exorbitantly high rate of growth with an extra 50 million people added to the Earth’s population, each year.

How does this connect to the Global Health Challenge? Every single person on the planet requires help with their health. This population scenario requires us – you and I – to very carefully, sensitively yet radically rethink ‘normal’.

What I’m saying is, Global Health Challenge has an entrepreneurial character – it’s not about teaching you to become an entrepreneur – but you could use it to help with that, if you wish.

Our commitment to you is to help you stand out from the crowd, to afford you opportunities to develop discovery, to think, be enterprising, to let you fail and get things wrong, and to work with you to understand how to fix it. It’s also to respectfully tell you to get over yourself if one of your ideas isn’t taken up by the team, because teamwork is what is needed. We’re committed to building your agility, resilience and your capacity to empathise with the world around you. Why? So that, should you chose to, you may lead, manage, innovate, and excel in your future professional worlds. These skills enhance the likelihood that you will identify and capture the right opportunity at the right time for the right reason.

Every single person in this space is formidable. You have something unique and very special to bring to the challenge we are about to embark upon.  We really want you to do something great! We will do everything we can to help facilitate your journey.

Enjoy!

 

With thanks to Professor Heidi Neck, Babson College USA, for inspiring this welcome.

Using Change Cards to Consider Your Challenge

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In a previous post we shared some advice and links to helpful resources on how to go out about framing the challenge your team is working on.  Once you’ve done this you might  find it useful to start to look at your challenge from different perspectives and one way you can do this is to use a set of change cards like the ones shared below developed by the Policy Lab.  These change cards are framed around six categories and you can use them to collectively explore your challenge further and to develop and deliver your project.  As you work through them they might inspire your team to frame some other questions and create your own change cards that can help shape and inform how you respond to the challenge you are addressing.  As you work through these cards you’ll find they get you thinking about how these challenges might be addressed in other locations, how different groups might approach the challenge and consider how you can be resourceful.

 

This second presentation from the Policy Lab gives an overview of the methods it adopts in its work with civil servants and others to help encourage more open and innovative strategies to developing policy and tackling different issues and challenges.    The Policy Lab makes effective use of user centred design-based approaches  to innovate and understand the problems individuals face and address these problems.  You’ll notice that the presentation talks about challenge setting, something we’re encouraging you to do by framing your challenge.  Another important concept presented here, which is relevant to all the challenges, is to consider and define different personas for the individuals affected by the problem you’re addressing.  This process helps you to build empathy with the people your project will be helping and to start you thinking about the journeys people take as they interact with different services and identify where things could be improved.