C1 - Internal use

Work disruption – Learning Launch

Challenge

In my organization a key issue has been the interruption of work due to several approaches being made  during the day to assist other co-workers or additional ‘urgent’ tasks being added to the existing  workload.

This has created a great deal of stress within the division and has led to the need for several key  deadlines having to be extended.

In order to tackle this issue, a committee was set-up including individuals from different functions in the  division to incorporate everyone’s input and set up a flow

Selection

This committee considered several options to design a solution to test the effectiveness of solution  suggested to be implemented. After careful consideration, we decided to use the ‘learning launch tool’  in Design Thinking. The learning launch is used to list steps to test a workflow for an idea or a product  design before its implementation or ‘go live’.

Application

In order to tackle the aforementioned challenge, we decided to implement a checklist adherence in line  with the managers and a daily status update to review the tasks at hand and to remove or add tasks as  needed based on the progress during the week. The second part of the solution was to have a ‘No  meeting day’ every Wednesday to reduce the time spent in meetings.

As a first step, we decided to introduce the strict use of checklists in one team to find the initial  learnings from such an implementation.

The key learnings gained from this implementation were that in most cases there was relatively low  adherence to the daily checklists and greater time allocated to unplanned activities.

To further enable our teams to manage themselves better, we arranged ‘Time Management’ sessions  for all staff across the division. A post training survey gave a positive response to this training and  highlighted improved management of the tasks at hand for the staff.

Insight

By testing the proposed changes before the actual launch across the division gave us the opportunity to  introduce the needed tweaks to the initial proposal. Instead of a daily review of the tasks at hand, we  proposed a weekly catch-up between the employee and manager to review the week’s checklist and to  provision a time for urgent tasks. The need for a Time Management training was also not in the initial  plans but served a great purpose based on the post training feedback. We also printed out the different

C1 - Internal use

techniques learnt from the training and printed visuals displayed throughout the division to remind  everyone the importance and effectiveness of these approaches.

Approach

The use of a design thinking technique was a first for our division but definitely not the last. The  Learning Launch technique has given us a greater motivation to try out the other techniques available &  to challenge the prevalent issues in the division and finding relevant solutions using Design Thinking.

