Miguel Herrera

Reflection – Learning Launch

Challenge    I work for the Loss Prevention Department at the largest oil company in the world located in Saudi  Arabia. I have worked as a safety and health professional for my entire 20-year career. As a senior expat  employee, I am recruited to take on special projects and mentor younger staff. Recently, I was charged  with creating the Loss Prevention Brand and enhancing my department’s image throughout the  Company, which is essentially throughout the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The challenge is to transition  from an approach of strict compliance to a customer service approach where our staff are looked to as  partners instead of police officers.    Selection    Several years ago, I took a short Lateral Thinking Course and decided to use the skills from that course to  conduct a lateral thinking workshop with a group of 20 employees who represented both genders,  different experience levels and different nationalities. The intent of the workshop was to generate ideas  we could put into action to improve our image. Before the workshop, I took a refresher Lateral Thinking  Course through Udemy.    Application    Since the workshop took place during the COVID-19 Pandemic, it has to be conducted through Skype.  Ideally, this workshop should be conducted live with flip charts all over the room; however, after a year  of everyone being forced to learn how to use Skype, the execution of the workshop went very well. I  provide a background on the lateral thinking concept to warm up the group and then I facilitated four  group exercises. One Skype meeting was established for all participants. In addition, four additional  Skype meetings were set up for the 20 employees who were divided into four groups. After each  exercise, everyone came back into the main Skype meeting to debrief. The four exercises were; 1) Check  Your Assumptions, 2) What If the Opposite were True, 3) Break the Rules and 4) Ask Questions.    Approximately 250 ideas were generated during the four-hour workshop. After the workshop, the ideas  were categorized and prioritized. Some ideas were quick and easy to implement while some ideas  required a project.     Insight    By using the learning launch tool, the lateral thinking workshop in this case, our team generated ideas  that could immediately be actioned. Everyone was pleasantly surprised on how successful the workshop  was. Instead of team members multitasking during the workshop, which often happens during Skype

meetings, everyone one was fully engaged. In addition, some employees who may be timid to engage in  a large conference room found it easier to participate in the workshop on Skype.    Approach    The lateral thinking workshop proved to be extremely successful and our team plans to conduct similar  workshops for other department projects. When we eventually return to normal and have face-to-face  meetings, we most likely will conducts these types of workshops live in conference rooms. However, we  proved that online workshops can be very effective.

