Trust the Process
The first big project I landed as a consultant had me a little panicky. Having coffee with my father, a successful engineer, I said "Dad, I don't have the answer to their problems." Looking at my worried face, he said, "You have a process to get the answer, don't you?" I nodded. "Trust the process," he said.
I have had several occasions to think about this recently. Whether designing a co-creation workshop, facilitating a war games event, or planning a complex B2B study -- ultimately, you can only plan carefully, then trust the process to take you to your destination. Be prepared to make changes on the fly? Of course. Have contingency plans for foreseeable challenges? Definitely. But you also have to take a deep breath and just go, set your sails and let the wind take you, knowing you have planned well.
Just this week I returned from South Africa where I was teaching other researchers and facilitators how to use creative thinking and ideation tools. Together with my co-facilitator and business partner, Ilka Kuhagen, we spent hours fussing over the details, wanting the workshops to be over-the-top successful. (Yes, that's us looking sleepy, but hard at work in the Frankfurt airport!)
We had planned a couple of days of fun to allow me to recover from the 30 hour journey. Even driving through the amazing Kruger Park, hosted by Think Global Qualitative colleague Corette Haf, between sightings of magnificent large game, we were constantly asking each other if we should shift or tweak our plans. We were acutely aware that our workshop attendees operate in a vastly different cultural environment.
Despite all the cultural differences, we found considerable common ground. We used local client challenges as examples for ideation, and managed to generate dozens of new ideas for categories as varied as wine, dish liquid, and highway rest stops. Some of these challenges seemed rather daunting, initially, but yielded to proven processes, and we filled many flip-charts with sticky notes!
Organizations today face so many challenges -- fast moving technology, changing competitive landscape, hyper-competitive markets, demanding and distracted customers, globalization, and more. None of us can really know the answers, but we can find answers using the tools of customer insight and creative problem solving. We have the best tools in history -- we know more about the human brain and behavior than ever before, and we have fantastic communications technologies to aid our insight and ideation processes.
The key is to get started. Then trust the process.
November, 2015
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