Our guest today is Dee Scarano, Head of Design Sprint Training at AJ&Smart. They're an agency based in Berlin that is 100% google-sprint-based. They have a *fire* youtube channel that you should check out if you want to run more sprints, well.
I met Dee at the Google Sprint Conference back in late 2017 and when I saw her run a large group workshop, I knew I had found a kindred spirit!
Dee is what I would call an Atomic Facilitator. Not because she's small and powerful (which she is) but because she has a tendency to break facilitation down into tiny, tiny components. I do the same thing, so it was fun (like, really fun: Bucket of puppies fun!) to sit down with her and dig into how she designs her group conversations and why.
Again - If you haven't checked out AJ+Smart's *aces* Youtube channel, you should - they have a boatload of helpful content, and they are launching an online course about Design Sprints which you'll hear about in the show and which I'll link to below.
Atomic Facilitators are different. Last week I was in Boston run ning a 3-Day Design Thinking Intensive at a giant consulting company and I was working with a facilitator who was a "big arc" facilitator. He gave the groups a task to do, a goal to get to, and didn't choose to manage the "micro process" of how they got there. Each team negotiated at their tables and chose a different path.
One isn't better than the other, but it's worth asking: Which of the tables had more fun? Which of the tables felt less tension? Which of the tables made a better decision? Atomic Facilitators like Dee have thought through and tested and tried many, many ways to get people to make better, smoother decisions together, and has chosen ONE that they love and feels great about. They hold that design choice in their minds and carefully guides a team through it, step by step.
Dee and I talk about Design Sprints, but we also talk about how to take that Atomic facilitation style that's baked into the standard 5-day design Sprint process and bring it into your work, every day. AJ+Smart uses the same tools from the sprints to facilitate their Friday retrospectives (they do a 4 day sprint each week, with a day for reflection).
The clarity and confidence that come from examining your approach means you feel comfortable teaching it, which is something Dee does a great deal of. As Head of Design Sprint training, she's responsible for helping teams get the knowledge *and* confidence to get started on their first sprint, which we talk about, too.
Some things to look out for:
My book! In pre-order! Just saying!
The Lightening Decision Jam in Detail (mentioned in the opening quote)
Why it's critical (and maybe obvious?) to map importance before (and separately) from difficulty)
How trusting a process can help you relax
How Reflection is key to AJ+Smart's process
How taking care of the people in the sprint is essential
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vrePSmQnJw
Cultural Change and how building a small coalition, underselling and over-delivering on your process can help you start a movement
Why 3 X 5 stickies *might* be better than 3 X 3 (the conversation interface matters, people!)
How Aj+Smart handles power dynamics in the sprint compared with
Google vs GV Ventures (Also, the GV collection on Medium rocks)
You can find her on twitter:
I hope you enjoy the show as much as I did making it!