Challenge  My company was in the process of constructing a new office building to hold ~2,400 employees.  I was part of the project team from the ICT department assigned to determine which new  technologies would be fitted into the building. These technologies had to be useful,  cost-effective and would be the future standard in other new buildings. We had several  proposals prepared, each with a napkin pitch and behind those, a small pack of information we  had collected while preparing the initial pitches.  In the current office buildings there was already an issue with meeting rooms being fully booked  and unavailable when people needed them. Through interviews and Q&A sessions we  discovered people were concerned that in the new open plan offices this situation would get  worse. People were particularly concerned that in the open plan environment, if they wanted to  take a discussion to a room to avoid disturbing others, they would have difficulty finding one to  use in that moment. For these reasons we decided to push forward with one of our pitches to fit  touch panels outside of meeting rooms. These panels had lights on, that were visible at a  distance to show if a room was available and if a group didn’t arrive to claim a room in a set  period of time it would free the room up for others to use. We presented this idea to local  management but they were not convinced. In particular the local head of finance did not think  we could prove the panels brought enough value to make them worthwhile.    Selection  We were still convinced we had a good proposal. We elected to do a learning launch,  essentially a fast experiment, to enable us to gather the data needed or prove or disprove our  assumptions quickly without much more investment. A learning launch follows a specific  process; define a hypothesis, identify key assumptions, prioritise those assumptions, design  tests for the key assumptions and then do those tests. If you prove the assumptions correct  scale up your experiment, if you prove your assumptions were wrong either tweak the idea and  try again or shelve the idea for a later date. (You can see this process in the module 4 video  from Ed Hesse around the 15 minute mark.)    Application  For our first learning launch we set out with the hypothesis that people weren’t able to  collaborate efficiently as they weren’t able to find an appropriate space to do so and tested the 3  top priority assumptions; that the rooms were booked most of the time, that they were often not  in use and that people didn’t have somewhere else to collaborate. We proved our assumptions  by interviewing people and manually monitoring 3 rooms near to the team. It was found that  these rooms were booked almost all of the time but only in use around half of the time.  As we proved our assumptions in the first learning launch we decided to do a longer and more  detailed study. With the hypothesis that the touch panels would improve the situation we worked  to disprove some “disconcerting facts”: That people would not use them, that they would not be  user friendly, that even if people checked in and out they wouldn’t encourage reuse and that  cancelling booked meetings when people didn’t show up on time would cause major issues. We  managed to secure several touch panels on a trial basis and used the contacts from our  multifunctional team to have them installed at 4 rooms at next to no cost. We ran the trial for 1

month. At the end we had data for the ~400 meetings that had been held. We disproved all of  our facts. Showing the touch panels freed up the rooms when not in use and we could show that  people then re-booked this freed up time. The panels were intuitive to use and were really  appreciated by the people using these rooms. We also proved the panels integrated well with  our other IT systems.  We presented our findings including testimonials and facts to the local management team and  got unanimous agreement to fit the panels in the companies new office building. This began our  final learning launch to prove our idea still worked at scale. ~75 touch panels were fitted in the  new building. We gathered data over 3 months and found ~15,000 hours of meetings were  booked each month, approximately 2/3 of this was then freed up by the panels when meetings  finished early or nobody arrived. ~40% of this freed up time was then rebooked and used.  Interviews and surveys showed the panels had a very positive reception from the people in the  building. After a final presentation to local and transnational management the touch panels are  now included in the standard equipment for new buildings.    Insight  Applying the learning launch tool gave my team a powerful and structured method of  experimenting. Having assumptions and disconcerting facts that we were aiming to prove or  disprove meant the experiments had a lot of drive and purpose and a clear definition of done  which I hope to apply in other work as well. We didn’t always identify every assumption we  needed to test at the start but we were adaptable enough to pick up extra data as we went and I  believe that is important. While we were expecting a positive outcome the results were even  better than expected. Although the initial challenge is now completed the team will continue with  the learning launch approach to ensure we are achieving value with further transnational  rollouts.    Approach  I firmly believe using the learning launch tool was the right choice in this scenario, although in  the future I would be sure to keep an open mind while selecting assumptions to try to avoid  missing any. Storytelling could have also been beneficial when trying to sell the idea to local  management. Everyone present would have had the experience of not being able to find a room  to book in the system or hunting down a room for an impromptu meeting. Storytelling could have  helped them relate to the issue, form that emotional connection and solidify in their minds the  issue we were trying to solve. It could also have really helped them imagine how the solution  would work and boosted the energy and passion in the room to drive everyone toward a  solution.

