“We need support that 'guarantees', as far as possible, that the solutions we have in mind will be put in place by the end of the year.”
Before Ideas stuck on paper.
Ideas days run on the energy of the room, and that energy rarely survives the return to the day job. The ideas stay on paper, far from the colleagues who would use them. At DIAC, the volunteers had signed up for the day itself. The teams sat on several sites, and no one had spare time to run the projects. Employees could give an hour and a half a week at most, sponsors an hour a month.
The Grain-of-Sand Hunt Put a first version in colleagues' hands.
The Grain-of-Sand Hunt: four workshops per team, one a month from September to December, each 90 minutes to two hours on Teams. Define the smallest version, test it on colleagues, fold their feedback in, pitch the evidence. Six teams merged into four, each with a coach and an executive sponsor whose job was to clear the path.
Each team picked its fix up where the workshop day had left it. The first workshop narrowed it to one group of colleagues and one clear problem, then planned a first version to put in their hands. Every action got an owner and a date. We coached two teams ourselves, and two coaches from the group's Innovation Lab ran the other two from the same facilitator guide.
Between workshops, the teams tested their prototypes on real colleagues with a one-page feedback sheet: show it, give a task, watch, don't explain. A follow-up call two weeks after each workshop kept the pace, and each sponsor got a 15-minute update. When one group of advisers found that the first version of the IT-problems fix brought nothing new to their day, the team repositioned it as one base of fixes for every department.
“When we presented it as one base of solutions shared by every department, we met more enthusiasm, because there is a real need there.”
The last workshop turned each project into a pitch built on evidence: the problem in colleagues' own words, a live demo, what testers liked and disliked, and who would own the fix next. Teams rehearsed with their coach. The closing session had no vote and no winner. Each team made its recommendation to the executive committee, and the format asked management to answer on the spot about feasibility and resources.
After Two fixes in daily use before year-end.
Before
Six fixes on paper.
None tried with users yet.
Volunteers signed up for one day.
After
Two fixes in daily use.
One tool live on two sites in six weeks.
Four prototypes pitched to the executive committee.
An idea had to meet its users before it met the executive committee. Teams put a rough first version in front of the colleagues who feel the friction, watched them use it and adjusted. Feedback came back on one page, in users' own words. Sponsors gave fifteen minutes after each workshop to clear what blocked the team.
The IT-problems team's tool, Infolution, gathers IT error messages and their fixes in one searchable base, with a one-click route to request a ticket. The service-continuity team started a daily Teams message in which each manager lists who is in and when managers are free: running in Paris, rolling out in Lyon, and welcomed by the advisers. The two other teams, on finding the right contact and on passing knowledge on, reached the executive committee with prototypes.
“Infolution has been live on our business space since yesterday, and it is used on the Paris site as well as in Lyon.”
Legacy. A month after the closing session, the quality team came back to scope its next edition, on customer complaints. This time it called Forward directly. Two coaches from the group's Innovation Lab had run the method end to end with their own teams, so the know-how stayed in the house.