Facilitating Creative Thinking
Facilitating Creative Thinking for the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Savannah
This course prepares students to lead teams in the envisioning of new ideas and solutions by developing skills in framing, imaging and group interaction as they apply the process of design conceptualization outside of the familiar domain of studio skills. In a series of simulations and group exercises, the students acquire experience in idea facilitation through working successfully with non-design people in a creative mode. In this case, the client was The Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Savannah.
The client is interested on clarifying roles of The Hispanic Chamber of Commerce team members and empowering them so they feel more involved, invested, passionate and connected. Another priority is building alignment through clearing out the organization’s goals.
The team evaluated the client's needs and designed a series of activities organized to help participants align their visions. Following are the main activities that were designed, their purpose and the result of each for the client.
Activity 1:
The Thread Between Us
The purpose of this activity is to create visual clear connections between team members in both personal and professional level, making evident the common ground between participants and breaking the ice to start the session.
Reflection
A thread between us served as an ice breaker between team members and settled a sharing environment during the facilitation session. In the first part of the activity team members discovered common personal interests and passions so they got to know each other better, opening opportunities to new dialogues within the team.
Activity 2:
The Foyer
This activity will help align all participants’ understandings of the HCC’s general purpose.
Reflection
The Foyer guided the participants into reaching a better and deeper understanding of the purpose of a chamber of commerce. At the end of the activity, the members of the Metropolitan Savannah Hispanic Chamber of Commerce came to the conclusion that they now have the knowledge of the purpose of a chamber of commerce; which is crucial to be taken it into account when developing new projects and in decision-making processes.
Activity 3:
Wishes
The intent of this activity is to align the wishes of Board Members for the HCC and lead them to think about their own solutions and ways to achieve them.
The activity allows participants to see what the rest of the members think is important and gathers ideas from all of them on how to achieve them through group or personal efforts.
Reflection
A business plan with assigned responsibilities, timely dissemination of information, getting the support of more members and better follow up on the current members were some of the most measurable suggestions. The discussion after the activity, however, lead to more team oriented bridges such as working together, learn from their mistakes, apologizing to each other and helping fellow members in their own responsibilities. The development of the activity allowed them to connect what they want with how to get it and, in the way, highlighted the importance of their relationships with each other as a major support.
Activity 4:
Blind Train
The intent of this activity is to refocus on the day’s activities by helping Board Members build a feeling of belonging to the HCC. This activity also showed HCC leadership that situational leadership can be assumed by other Board Members in the organization.
Reflection
The activity showed how different team members have to rely on their team captain to succeed on the task they were asked to accomplish. The first factor that came to the facilitator notice is the uncomfortability of the team when one of the senses was suppressed (vision). To overcome this, listening clearly to the instructions as well as trusting the leader was crucial for the team to achieve the goal. The reflection by the team concluded in alignment with the purpose of the activity. The clear communication and sense of trust will influence the synergy of the team, and this activities are meant to forge bonds between the team and show possible flaws.
Activity 5:
Draw Out
This activity is designed to bring to the surface similar values within the members of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and align them with the more important ones to later help them define their vision for the HCOC.
Reflection
This activity showed that the members needed to have a clear understanding of the values that were already set by the HCC. When they paired to talk about the values and rank them was a tough decision because not everyone thinks equally. When it was time to put the values in order there was language miscommunication because some words in spanish don’t have the same meaning in english, because of this a small issue emerged, but it was fixed quickly. At the end the team was happy having as their main values: trust, honesty and build great relationships.
Activity 6:
Vision to Vision
This activity is designed to create an understanding of the overall vision of the HCC by understanding the Board Members individual perspectives.
Reflection
The teams shared their vision with each each other, which was then compared to the vision of HCOC. Having them define a blurred vision and not being too specific with words, helped them to make direct and indirect connections to the original vision. The teams looked happy and content as they felt aligned and on track.
Activity 7:
Vision Map
The intent of the activity was to align and clarify the personal vision of the board members towards the vision of the chamber of commerce. This activity also searched for sub-visions that would support the overall vision of the chamber and bring focus towards the actions that must be taken.
Reflection
Vision Map divided the group into teams, this surfaced an uncomfortable constraint with one of the teams: the presence of the board president. This showed hassle over the concepts of vision, mission and objectives. The facilitators clarified that even if the vision that each team was formulating weren’t exactly the vision stated by the chamber, the purpose of the activity was to understand how different members perceive the chambers vision in their own words and perspectives.
When both teams shared their visions they were asked
to passionately express their own team vision. When the facilitators showed the vision of the chamber, a clear overlap of the vision concepts took place. This opened the opportunity for new ideals to come into consideration, which was a crucial milestone for the board: to collectively embody the vision, enhance the sense of belonging and feel passionate about being a part of this board.
Activity 8:
Organize Cards
Challenge Participants to work toward a goal using non- verbal and verbal Communication.
Reflection
At the beginning of this activity, the facilitators became aware that particular members were becoming overpowering voices of the team as a whole. In response the facilitator choose to make the first round a silent version. This was to encourage others to communicate with body language and encourage verbally quite participants to take the lead using a different form of communication.
The second round allowed conversation, however as observed by the facilitator both team used limited conversation. In conclusion the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce learned that communication, strategy, and leadership help create and reach common goals. They also learned that things can be accomplished using different ideas, techniques, and leader roles to complete the task at hand.
Activity 9: Five Bold Steps
The intent of this activity was to help participants identify key strategies or bold steps that are necessary and significant for them in order to achieve their vision. This activity centers the team from the abstract mindset into the analytical mindset of how to achieve it.
Reflection
The Five Bold Steps activity showed the different ways team members communicate in a whole group. Throughout discussing ideas, actions and activities, the group figured out the significant steps that the company can take to achieve the vision. Narrowing down the number of the significant steps helped team members to realize and pay more attention to the most important strategies.
By the end of the activity, team members expressed that because of the clarification of their next significant steps, they will have more passion for them. In addition, because they have a small numbers of the significant steps, they would like to work together and try their best to make sure they are supporting those five. What is more, they believed that they will have more strategies next year after they do well on their basic five steps.
Activity 10: Scribble
The purpose for this activity is to break the ice and promote participants to relax and focus the participants mental energy to think in the next process steps.
Reflection
From the feedback, we collected that this activity was successful, because the team members understood easily and engaged to the activity main goal which was give them the opportunity to think outside the box, and making room for creativity by creating new things from something that is unknown, in this case carelessly drawings. At the end group members experienced a relaxed and fun activity, and also had the opportunity to shared their masterpieces with each other, which lead them to talk and participate.
Activity 11: Once Upon a Dream
By defining Dreams and Fears participants will be able to move forward with the supports and challenges activity and create their future dreams for the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
Reflection
The activity worked really fluently because the team had already done the supports and challenges in the Five Bold Steps Map and the Wishes map. It was nice to see that it was a harder job to think about the fears than the dreams. Clearly they see themselves in the HCC future and look forward to be present in its growth.
Activity 12: Golden Connections
The purpose of the activity is to make evident new connections and agreements made between team members throughout the facilitation session, and to provide closure and reflection about their progress comparing the first mesh made in The thread between us with the new one.
Reflection
Golden connections made visible the new agreements and connections created throughout the facilitation session and made evident that the group built trust and alignment around a common goal during the session. It served to settle new ways to connect team members oriented to specific actions.
Team Reflection
The DMGT 732 Team was able to organize and design a successful session for the participants. The participant’s expectations weren’t completely clear, but it was clear from their feedback that they engaged in an experience that exceeded their expectations. They were able to make connections with each other, and that was the primary goal of the Team as they planned the day.
The activities were adequate for all the participants involved and no one seemed uncomfortable with any of them during the day. The relationship between the participants and the team members was friendly and trusting.
The DMGT 732 Team recognized that time was limited and planned the session to ensure some specific outcomes were met. The participants, as their feedback showed, would have appreciated more time to develop some of the activities and maybe planning for an additional half day could have allowed the Team to guide the participants through the Gameplan and Roadmap.
However, during the time allotted the primary outcomes of building trust and connection between the team members and aligning on the Chamber’s vision was achieved. This was clearly demonstrated by the participant's statements during the Wrap Up and through the friendlier environment that developed between them during the day.
