Example reflection- Visualization

Challenge and selection     I am using the example of visualization which was key to helping to identify approaches to a  journey map that a disparate set of stakeholders needed to provide input on. The challenge of  doing something like this was especially challenging during the pandemic as everyone would be  remote instead of together in our large collaborations room looking at a series of whiteboards  with sticky notes in their hands. What was needed was a remote visualization tool that  wouldn’t be too bulky and be flexible enough to allow all participants to provide input  simultaneously if needed. We did not want any single person to have a single point of control in  order to streamline the exercises and prevent user frustration.    The solution we used is called Mural, it’s an online collaboration tool that appeared to fit our  needs perfectly for our rather large group of 11 stakeholders.  It should also be noted that  many of these stakeholders were new to the organization and actually hadn’t met each other in  person due to the restrictions of the pandemic, which made our task more challenging since  stronger minded personalities and/or veterans of the organization would tend to dominate  conversations and decisions.  Hence it would be important to have a session coordinator who  didn’t necessarily need to know the domain of which we were speaking about, but would be  effective at moving the conversation along and keeping everyone on scheduled and in full  participation    Application    We started the session with some brief introductions, along with a very quick intro to the Mural  software. A few quick exercises got everyone quickly used to the mechanics of the virtual  bulletin board. We scheduled about 4 hrs for the entire session so we had plenty of time.   Essentially everyone joined a Zoom call, which our coordinator sharing her screen with the  Mural application running. She would control the screen changes, and keep time against our  agenda.     Being cognizant of not starting with a blank screen, we conducted interviews of the 11  stakeholders in the week prior to the session. We wanted to understand their current view of  the world, their objectives and their pain points.   We kicked off the session with a brief agenda  and run down of the activities we would pursue, and the timing of each. We made sure this  lined up with what the stakeholders had envisioned, and whether more or less time should be  devoted to any particular set of activities. Of course, we wanted to remain as flexible as  possible while still achieving a productive outcome.     In our first activity of the session, each stakeholder could see artifacts from their individual  interview on the virtual bulletin board. It was easy to see what kind of alignment existed  between the group, as well as gaps.  Discussions began amongst the team members, and we  had put all of the objectives in total on virtual stickies, giving each stakeholder a chance to rank

order then in order of priority, or whether they were needed at all. After a few rounds of  debate and reordering/excluding we seemed to have a set of objectives and initiatives which  were vital to achieve the future state the organization desired.   Other sessions followed which helped to shore up where the organization would go, the  roadmap it would follow, and most importantly is that the right place for it to be. After the  session we created a deliverable which summarized the outputs and provided our  recommendations on how to achieve the target state.     Insight and Approach    I think this process was especially vital given the dynamics of the organization- the relatively  new team members who hadn’t met before were given a voice to shape the output.  The tool  we chose worked really well and I would definitely use it again. I don’t think it would substitute  a meeting in person with everyone involved but it’s the next best thing. Normally we do these  collaboration meetings with large touch screens (formerly whiteboards) which can manipulate  graphics on the screen. We also would split folks into separate teams to work on their own and  come back together. I do believe Mural can support separate working sessions to split groups  but we didn’t do it. In summary, in a normal non-remote world I would advocate in person  collaboration in a room designed for such as the best method.     Another aspect I believe was vital to our success was the pre-session interviews. Having some  idea of what the stakeholders were thinking helped the session to get a running start. I can  imagine a subtle chaos if everyone was staring at nothing on the screen… do we have any  volunteers to go first?  I don’t think that would have worked. Essentially during the one-on-one  interviews, everyone went first and their ideas were already on the bulletin board at the start. I  would highly recommend starting with something like this for anyone who wishes to try this for  themselves.

