Tested methods for demand-driven, unvarnished and supportive assistance for colleagues on work in progress.
We have identified and described 10 Idea Assist methods, also called peer assist- in Idea Work so far. They are all grounded in some concrete set of experiences- a way of working that has been tested and found useful in one or more organisations.
These experiences are gleaned either from the Idea Work partners or from some externally documented research. The Idea Assist practices range from informal one-to-one discussions to deliberately staged workshops with 30-40 participants. The practices also vary with regards to stage in innovation- from giving birth to seedlings of the new, to doing after action reviews- post mortems:
A ritual to put forward challenges, embrace contradictions and use
these as vehicles to advance and move ideas further.
Highly generative and informal bouts of idea development involving two
or three persoof innovation.
Presentation of an idea prospect in front of (many) peers to maxi-
mize creative dialogue by use of sketching, underlining ambiguities
and showing concrete material.
MIDWIFERY
Recurrent (e.g. every fortnight) half-day session for giving birth to,
challenging, enriching and comparing new ideas.
A groupie is a person associated with a team – not a member of the team – who shadows and follows the team. In this context, the person is in search of challenging and cross-pollinating ideas and the creative process of the team.
POST-MORTEM
Post-mortems are about lessons learned from completed projects, major tasks, or initiatives. The purpose is to analyse the completed endeavour in detail in order to learn what to (1) improve and do better next time, but also (2) to derive a deeper understanding of the problem, challenge or pattern in focus; in short, to distil as much valuable information out of it as possible.
TEAM ASSIST
Deploying (parts of) highly successful project teams as full time support in early phases of a major project or task force.
PARALLEL PROTOTYPING
Half-day to a full day session for rapid prototyping in parallel heterogeneous groups.
BRAIN TRUST
On demand convening of expert groups for informal presentation of work in progress, followed by two-hour critique sessions.
UPLOAD 24
Getting instant support from key experts throughout the organization on the challenges being met in project/work in progress settings.