These past few months I’ve been doing some thinking about the way I work with my team.
Last year on of my managers went to Stanford for a very interesting training on Design Thinking, and he was eager to share on the spot some ideas he picked in Stanford in those few days.
First of all the workspaces at Stanford are planned to empower everyone to:
- – Share ideas – you can work standing up or seated in high stools – very dynamic
- – Transformable work spaces – there were lots of modular furniture pieces, and most rooms had multiple setup options.
- – Build fast prototypes – The DYI tasks are supported with a multitude of office suplys (mini-staples like). All of this in a DIY, sleeves up way of work!
Does it mean we can totally forget the way we traditionally work with our team? Working in the same spot we have been working for the past years in the office? in the same assigned cubicles? With all interactions with people scheduled on Outlook or Google calendar?
Well, we probably still need this calm and focused environment for some tasks, but I see my colleagues needing more and more interactions from each other in much less time! We are trying to rearrange our work space to allow us to fail soon. As a designing team, we need to fail faster, sooner and with less costs! Believe me, this is an idea cherished by our team J
So the paradigm of working alone in a project or client carrying only our bare knowledge, and having just one or two interactions, (normally by phone, email, skype) with our team colleagues is becoming more and more unproductive… The way to work in Design Thinking projects is to work Together most of the time!… Like bees we can became stronger together.