Benjamin Miller    Design Thinking reflection: Visualization    Challenge    Due to a regulatory change the company I was working for was required to quickly implement a  distinct process to obtain senior level approval (3 levels down from CEO, Company size was  250,000 people) for any new client that we wished to do business with that was classified as a  high risk client.    This new process had to be rolled out to 400 sales people, across 13 different countries in less  than 2 weeks. This new process had to fit in with existing processes (there were already 4  existing processes to add a new client) with minimal overlap and be easy to understand and  communicate to sales people as well as to the regulator.     Additional challenges were that the regulatory definition of high risk client being unclear and was  changing.    Selection    The team made the decision to use visualization in order to design the solution to the problem.  Given the complexity of the problem with multiple existing processes we needed to explore the  problem as a group and identify patterns and sketch (ideation) solutions together. We were  looking to synthesize as a team to design the most effective solution to the problem, as  suggested by Angela Myer in week 1.      Application    We selected a group of people to attend the visualization working group, our criteria for  selecting them was that they needed to have detailed knowledge of the existing processes in  place and also have experience of working with the sales teams. We asked each attendee to  block off 2 hours to attend the meeting to ensure that we were uninterrupted. We selected a  room with 2 whiteboards (one at each end of the room).    We started the process by briefing them all on the problem, we then discussed and listed all the  major challenges that the project faced. We then discussed each existing process and mapped  them out on one of the boards and highlighted the areas on the process where we had  challenges. The next step was to map out a new process alongside the existing processes. This  was done by the group on the whiteboard as an iterative process as often we would get to a  point and then need to take several steps back to redesign the process. We also mapped out  several different scenarios if the definition of high risk client changed.

At the end of the session we had as a group agreed the new process, which was then  photographed to be turned into a powerpoint documentation that could be shared more widely  and form the basis of the next stage of the project. We had also identified as a group the  outstanding issues and assigned action owners to resolve them      Insight  I gained a valuable insight into the power of using visualization in a team environment to unpack  all of the various ideas from a group and understand how complex processes interact. By using  visualization we could be confident that everyone left the room with a clear understanding and  agreement of what the news process was and how it had been agreed.    Approach  I would focus more on visualization to sell our solution to the wider group, after all of this we  used a word heavy communication to explain it, we should have used the visualization to  explain our new processes to a wider group rather than just for our own internal problem  solving. I would also have used the mind mapping process to test our ideas and various options  on a wider group of sales people and tested the different approaches with them as opposed to  using the visualization within a smaller group and making decisions there and then.

