Challenge    I was brought in to facilitate an ideation session with colleagues on how to attract and retain  talent for a small technology company in a remote location.     Background info for the problem we were trying to solve: Sea to Sky Drones1 faces an  immediate challenge to scaling up the business: human capital. The company is looking to  increase its talent stock from 50 to 150 employees by 2020 to keep up with rising demand for  their service offerings. However, the engineering and technical skill sets required to program  the drones are not currently available in the local labour force.     Selection    I used a combination of Visualization and Storytelling techniques. First, I created a pamphlet  (see below) to sum up the company, the challenge that it is trying to overcome (scaling up the  company given labour pool constraints), and a bit about how overcoming that challenge will  help them scale up their company and meet their goals. I also provided a verbal overview of the  owners, their background story, and their vision for the company to my teammates so they felt  that they understood who the players were and what they were hoping to accomplish.

1 Name changed

The combination of the visual piece and the storytelling was success in two ways: firstly, it  helped to introduce my colleagues to our client, Sea to Sky Drones (who they did not have the  opportunity to meet) and gave them a feel for the people behind the company.  Secondly, it  also helped to succinctly frame the problem for which we were trying to solve and ensure  everyone was on the same page to begin to start solving for the problem of human capital in a  remote area.      I continued to use this combination of techniques for the problem-solving portion of the  exercise.    Application    I used a version of the technique 6-8-5 for the facilitated exercise. My teammates were split up  into six groups of two people per group. Each group was given a chart on which they could  write 1-3 ideas on how they might begin to start solving this problem. They could write a  sentence, draw how they felt, etc. After five minutes, the groups would rotate clockwise and  build on the idea(s) of the next groups. This process repeated itself until the six groups ended  back at their original idea.     The groups were then tasked with summarizing their ideas. The group with the original idea  was responsible for summarizing for the entire group how their original idea(s) had progressed  with the addition of new details added on by the other groups.    After the report out/summary session, the 12 team members were given two colours of stickers  and asked to vote with their stickers on the ideas that they were felt were good short-term  strategies (blue) and longer-term strategies (orange).     Insight & Approach     Some of the ideas that came out of this session were practical ideas, some were not – but that  did not matter. By the end, we ended up with nearly 20 different ideas on how to move  forward on this problem, as well as two-track plan for short-term and longer-term strategies. I  found design thinking to be effective in this circumstance and I would certainly employ these  tools again.     I liked how the different teams could build on one another’s ideas and take them to the next  level with this type of exercise. It brought the team closer and was a fun activity, but it was also  more than that – it turned out to be incredibly useful. I appreciate how design thinking can help  to combat group-think biases, and it think it’s useful to limit biases as much as possible to open  teams up for as much creative thinking as possible.      Going forward, I would be curious to bring these theories to fruition by doing a learning launch.  I believe that it is smart to test theories/conduct pilot projects to see what’s working and what  is not, and tweak/pivot as necessary, as it makes for a nimbler institution/company and more  robust ideas/policies/projects.

