A Start-Up Decides On a New Direction
A mission-driven startup, Hellowiz was initially launched to match retired experts (mentors) with mentees. That solutions's limited sustainable revenue potential led the Hellowiz team to work with us to explore alternatives. Branching Design facilitated a four-session workshop to help the team brainstorm on and evaluate alternatives to arrive at a shared decision on a new primary business solution.
Workshop goals
Brainstorm on and evaluate three potential business directions.
Decide which direction to pursue as the primary solution.
Minimize the "leader's opinions" effect and engage all team members to obtain their ideas and opinions.
Support both independent and collaborative work for virtual participants across multiple time zones.
Approach
The six participants lived in three time zones. They used Miro to work both independently and collaboratively in facilitated virtual sessions.
Brainstorming: After a level-setting initial session, each participant individually brainstormed positive, negative, and potential aspects for each of the three proposed business solutions.
Individual brainstorming: positive, negative, and potential ideas for each solution.
Refining and identifying themes: In a facilitated session, participants reviewed and refined their collective positive, negative, and potential sticky notes. They grouped related notes, el then described the groups with labels to identify emerging themes. They chose five themes as the most important lenses through which to continue evaluating the positives, negatives, and potentials for the three solutions.
Ideas for a solution, refined and grouped.
Comparing and prioritizing: Participants used a radar diagram to further evaluate the sticky notes for each of the three solutions in two dimensions: theme, and potential magnitude of positive or negative impact. They worked independently and then collaborated in a facilitated session to finalize the notes' positions on the radar diagram. Each note was positioned in the theme section it most aligned with, and in the center, middle, or outer ring of the diagram based on how positively or negatively impactful it was likely to be.
Ideas prioritized by theme and impact.
Deciding: Each participant had six votes, three for the most impactful positive/potential ideas, and three for most impactful negative ideas. After casting their votes, the team examined the relationship between the ideas that received the most votes, and which of the three business solutions each note was associated with.
Voting, discussing the ideas with the most votes, and deciding which business solution to make primary took about an hour.
Voting for the most impactful positive/ potential ideas.
Outcomes
In four sessions, the Hellowiz team were able to make a confident, shared decision on a new primary business solution.
The team generated several strong ideas for creating recurring revenue, and they identified critical next steps to move in the new direction.
“We are so glad to have connected with Heather in this journey. I highly recommend Heather’s facilitation services for any business which is deliberating on pivoting or making key cross-functional, team-based business decisions.”