Challenge    I am collaborator of a production company in the midst of a significant restructuration.  To meet customers’ needs, the company began to evolve over the years by developing  know-hows outside the initial core business, the “print management”. Thus, the company  gradually structured itself into customer Business Unit by developing other activities: graphic  production, design, creative, photo studios, video, 3D, etc.     The company realized that the structure, although it was ideal for the client, had not allowed  the valuation and enrichment of the collaborators’ skills, each skill being dedicated to a  single client. Since this year, after identifying business opportunities, the company has  started a major restructuration.     I am in charge of participating in the creation of a creative agency within the group: indeed,  a dozen collaborators (artistic directors and graphic designers) have been working for years  to create graphic identities, advertising campaigns, posters, etc. but have never been  brought together under one entity because they were dedicated to a single client. This  “Creative” offer is therefore known only to our customers while it could be a real asset to  conquer new clients. We need to think about the organization, the identity and the structure  of the agency to present our recommendations to management.      Selection    I quickly considered that the challenge underlying the creation of this agency was not to  draw a flowchart with operating processes, an economic model and so on… but above all to  involve the future members of the agency in a process of co-creation and make them meet  to bring out a common culture that will lay the foundations of the identity of the future  creative agency.   Actually, they did not know each other (they are not all working at the same location) and  they never worked together until now, also they are worried and resistant to this new and  unknown organization…  To bring out this common culture, mind mapping immediately appeared to be the most  appropriate tool in the workshop that I wanted to implement. I thought it would allow to  show the insights of our future agency and accompany the change.  We will see in the following lines how this tool has been beyond my expectations.    Application    The participants never worked on methods of design thinking, co-creation, etc. It's also a  first for me: I had never designed a workshop myself before!  Here is how I articulated this first workshop whose objective for me was first to define how  was "lived" the creation on a day to day basis and what were the needs of each.    In order to collect as much data as possible, I first conducted a series of interviews with all  the members (artistic directors and graphic designers) of the future agency to tell me about  their job, what do they do, how they do it, who they do it with, the pain points, the

strengths, the successes, the failures, the expectations, the needs, their tools, their  inspirations, etc.  I also conducted interviews with the "sellers" (commercial people) and the "promoters"  (development people) of the creative offer, some questions specific to these collaborators  and others that would cross-check with the interviews of creatives people: how is perceived  the creative offer by the customers, how one sells or promotes the creation, how they work  with the creative, what are their needs, the pain points, the assets, etc.    I collected all these datas (an average of 2h30 by interview of 15 collaborators) and I created  thematic boards on which the verbatim were represented, diagrams which showed the  interactions (or lack of interactions) as they have been described by the interviewees, other  charts that synthesized customer journeys or processes, etc. and I printed them.    All these elements allowed me to create the "exhibition" which would constitute the first  part of my workshop. I invited all the interviewees, creative and commercial, to take note of  the restitution of the interviews. I asked them during the exhibition to write down on post-it  all the information in which they found themselves (or on the contrary of which they felt  foreign) or who gave them ideas to design our future agency.    At the end of the exhibition, we made a restitution in plenary session with all the  participants and created the clusters on several boards. It was a great moment of exchange  and lively discussions that generated other ideas etc., we exceeded the expected time but it  was really worth it!    Insight    The expo and the mind mapping acted as a real revealer.  During the exercise on the "what if", we realized that the creation of the agency was not a  problem of means or resources but of state of mind.    It was also revealer at the level of the teams: we all participated of the same ambition and  the same vision on the creation (what is the creative spirit?) whatever the experience,  location, courses and clients. The barriers and limiting thoughts gradually faded, giving way  to many lines of thoughts and action plans appeared naturally.  The foundations of a common culture and better communication between the collaborators  were formed, including between creative and commercial who had never had the  opportunity to exchange outside the operational points.      Approach    Thanks to the power of the tool (revelation of insights and support for change  management), the workshop was a great success and helped to structure our thinking and  create cohesion.  Due to operational constraints, I had to hold the workshop for half a day while thinking that  a day would be necessary. On the other hand, this time constraint has probably forced us to  be efficient and straight to the point.

Finally, for employees who had never participated in co-creation workshops, this first  contact with design thinking was also a very positive revelation.  Besides, I'm currently working at the 2nd workshop session to be held on Thursday ... wish  me luck ;)

