Design Thinking for Innovation

Final Project: Storytelling

I have worked with the City of Carlsbad Parks & Recreation department for almost 02 years now. I’ve  been a part of our day camps for kids for about 7 years, and each summer is different. Our challenge one  summer was staff motivation, which we noticed right away on our first day of training. The tools we  used this particular year were storytelling and mind mapping.

Starting out our training, we used our time in the morning (while everyone was waking up and drinking  their coffee) to go around the room and have our returners tell one or two stories about their favorite  times at camp. We knew this would be a good starting point because it was positive and was easy to talk  about for everyone, because it was their own experience.

After we went around the room, we broke into small groups to discuss our favorite stories in more detail  and determine what went right or wrong in those stories. This tool was applied successfully in that it  brought everyone out of their shell a little bit.

Some insights we got from the stories were bottlenecks in the camps programs, and times where we  could have stepped in to prevent bad things from happening.

Because of the success of this approach, we plan to continue doing this at every training, and also every  meeting we have to check progress. Giving people a platform to speak before getting talked to really  makes a difference.

