When Design Thinking improved

Life-Changing Experiences in Mozambique

Challenge

I work as Team Leader in a non-profit organization dedicated to send and receive students  abroad to volunteering internships providing a cultural and leadership experience in  Mozambique. Mozambique is a country known for being very welcoming with a lot of  tourism points that attract thousands of visitors every year. Although this high interest in the  country, our numbers of students coming to participating in our social projects were  dropping drastically causing demotivation and team members giving up the organization.  Our challenge was to rebuild our operations team, motivate and train them so we could be  able to sell our product and achieve our goal in 4 months.

Selection

After the recruitment, we got 8 members on board to the team and start using the  Visualization Tool. Visualization Tool is the method of using symbols, images, and concrete  materials to stimulate the creativity and imagination of the team and to allow direct and  clear communication of goals, expectations, plans, and interests. We chose this tool in  particular because enables more clarity on the common goal, allow accountability to  everyone on the team and ease the communication mainly in a new team with different  backgrounds and experiences.

Application

So we incorporated figures and pictures that could represent the emotions, feelings, and  impact that we wanted to see in the end. We mapped the customer experience and set ways  to improve this experiences using draws and pictures of the places where we saw room for  improvement (e.g: pick-up in the airport, accommodation, and cultural experiences.). On our  weekly meetings, we included progress charts so each member could actually see how far  each one was from the goal. We kept a record, photos of the activities we developed and  shared with team monthly. These aspects brought dynamic and focus to the team making us  more assertive in our activities.

Insights

Using visualization tool was crucial to the team bound and for achieving the goal because  enabled a creative approach to the challenge and improved a lot the communication once  everyone had the same understanding of what we were working for. The goal was actually in  front of us every day and each member was clear about the contributions they had to give  to achieve them. This tool helped me as manager to keep the team motivated and  competitive but at the same time collaborative with one another once everyone could literally  see that only achieving the main goal was worth to our purpose. Also helped the members  delivering the activities even doing for the first time once they had a memory of a photo, map  or draw about what to do. All this made the team efficient and goal oriented. This changed  the way we faced the challenge, making it seems more realistic and close to us. Applying the

Design Thinking concepts thought us to systematize and organize our ideas, communicate  our opinions and visions clearly and work with the end goal in mind.

Approach

For a future challenge, I pretend to merge the Storytelling tool. I believe that can  complement the Visualization Tool bringing a more human approach and making the team  really have a sample of the impact that we are working for. The Visualization Tool will still be  very important to future challenges approach and I intended to continue applying it. In our  context, to maximize the effect and make sure that we have a common ground I would  include the customers and beneficiaries on the process so we all have the same commitment  and as organization, we will have a better understanding of our beneficiaries needs.

