Visualization

1. Challenge & Selection

The tool I like the most, is visualization. I think it gives the people around the challenge a deep  understanding of the problem itself, and brings up other factors that could be useful to achieve a  solution. I am a college student, I don’t work yet, but that doesn’t mean this tool is only for big  enterprises or the government. Along this course, I was able to identify many situations in daily life  that can be worked based on visualization, or visual thinking. In this reflection, I would like to talk  about sports, in particular, football. I know you might say that sports are a subject completely  different in relation to what we saw in this course, but learning all the concepts and the way of  thinking in order to make solutions efficient, the idea that came to my mind, was the similarities of  being a leader and applying this method in the team. I have been playing football for 15 years, and  not only I love playing, but I have been raised by the lessons and values obtained on this beautiful  sport. The main problem I identify in this idea; is the way we can make that a large group of people  works in unison in order to become a great team. I am the QB, so my purpose is to make this type  of things not only possible, but the modus operandi every single day. The way we work till the 2018  season was good, but not good enough. We affront different types of problems, like gathering  people of distinct social and economics levels in one group, avoid selfishness above everything,  responsibility in every single action we make, discipline in order to grow as players and persons, and  take away the pride for achieving a larger goal.

2. Application

I started the process in the 2009 offseason by creating a space of reflection and visualization for all  the members of the team, including coaches, medical department, and even the general staff. More  specifically, an hour a week where the group can put its mind together to create new ideas or to  solve any setbacks to achieving the main goal, championship. My idea was to gather all the people  that surrounds the players in order to work in the same channel, not only on the field making big  plays, but in the entire organization. First, I divided this session in 5 groups along the week, the  team’s captains were distributed in each group, as well as the coaches. Second, the team was  divided randomly, taking apart the so common rivalries offense vs defense, also the different  economic and social standards.  The medical and general staff was part of the same procedure. The  5 groups that worked in week 1, never repeated, each week the people around the group was  assigned to a different one. Having this said, now the work starts. Each session, I asked every  member to draw a picture or tell a story, as they prefer, based on two questions ¿How you feel right  now? and ¿How you visualize at the end of the season? With these answers we can do a deep  analysis of the relation of the people´s work with the attitude and visualization about the future. I  think the visualization is fundamental when you gather a group that might not know each other as  well as your best friend, but have a goal in common. When everyone in the session has shared his  thoughts about the questions above, then we get to question ourselves ¿What would you change  in order to make the visualization possible? I didn’t ask to share these answer, I preferred to make  more an impact on reflection in each one of them. Then, finally I asked ¿Where do you see yourself  in the next week, what things you think you might have accomplished, do you see yourself closer to  the goal? The purpose of this final questions is to make things real. I know everyone has goals, and  we can say whatever we want, but what are the things that you really do in order to achieve goals,

are you willing to change your attitude to accomplish the purposes of each week, getting a step  closer each week to the main objective. These sessions not only helped to identify feelings and  attitudes surrounding the team, but also to help each other as the season takes part. The drawings  and stories told in each week were saved in a locker, and each week I gave them the visualization of  the last session to create an impact of reflection of the thoughts shared by them. The results came  along each and every single week, the team gathered together as one, not only being empathic and  sharing the same attitude, but creating a mindset that gave us excellent results. Unfortunately, we  were only one step away for achieving the goal, as we lost the final game in OT. But comparing  results with other years, we were a much better team. In 2014, we had a record of 2-6, in 2011 we  had a 3-5, in 2012 4-5. This year we won 8 games, lost 1 in regular season, stats proved we were the  number one offense and number two defense.  So, yeah, I think the visualization helped us grow as  a team.

3. Insight

What I have learned from conducting this new exercise in the organization is that the understanding  of problems is the first step to visualizing the solutions. The sessions helped to create a mindset  around the team, but to gather a group of people and make them understand that a problem of one  single member of the team, is the problem of each one of us, is priceless. Identifying problems is so  difficult for many people, that can mislead a whole team to a different attitude each day. Visualizing  and reflecting one hour a week can bring huge results, I can’t imagine doing this two or three times  a week, we could be unstoppable. Unfortunately, we do not live from playing sports, we play for  love. Anyway, in my opinion design thinking is not only for enterprises or governments, my case is  the true example that can be applied to almost anything in our lives if we give the right approach.

4. Approach

I discovered that the most valuable asset in the growing of a group of people, in my case, a football  team, is learning how you approach a problem and learning from it. As I said before, we only have  the tools and time to do the session once a week, but if I had the chance to make this progressive,  definitely two or three sessions would be ideal. Sometimes we do not realize that visualizing and  having a deep reflexion of what is in my hands to solve a problem and where do I see myself doing  in order to accomplish it, is the first and huge step to achieve goals in our daily lives.

