Co-creation activities and tools help cross-functional teams work better together to provide a seamless customer experience

THE CLIENT Technology firm

SERVICES Facilitation, Problem discovery and evaluation

TOOLS Secondary Research, Research Wall, Co-Created Service Blueprint, Kano Model

BACKGROUND After a re-organization that saw several teams absorbed into a larger team, the client wanted to find a way for the new larger organization to work together seamlessly on joint Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). This newly formed organization, called Business Operations Services, consisted of teams in Legal, Finance, Workplace Resources, Service Delivery, and Workplace Information. However, without a cohesive vision and strategy, the teams felt silo-ed and confused. After two weeks, there was a lack of direction and focus within the Business Operation program which decreased morale.

PROBLEM DISCOVERY AND EVALUATION I started by conducting secondary research from the team’s existing notes, speaking with individuals that the Business Operations Services program considered their customers. I also conducted interviews with leads from each team. I used the findings from both sets of research to co-create a Research Wall with various team leads and map their user journeys. By visualizing data this way, I was able to glean themes that were a reflection of how the new Business Operations program can support individual teams in their current known workflows and build the framework their customers want to work within to support the parent organization’s changing culture. Using this information, I created a statement detailing how each team’s “customers” could work – what would we enable for them that they can’t do today – and also tie the vision to the organization’s 3 year strategy, and an actionable roadmap for the Business Operations Program.

One of the biggest products that crossed teams concerned the contracts life-cycle. Teams worked on different parts of the contracts management system and overlapped at minimal, yet crucial points in the service journey. Working with the Legal and Fincance team leads, I created a Contracts Service Blueprint that provided a holistic view of their overall service by illustrating the relationships between the various systems, teams, pain points, and opportunities throughout the Contracts journey. From a planning and strategic perspective, this blueprint could also be used as a visual guide to show what work is in progress, what has been done, and what work to do next.

Since the Business Operations program had limited resources, prioritization of work became important to agree upon at the start of the year. I used the Kano model during one of our planning sessions as a starting point for the different teams to prioritize work as a single program as opposed to an individual team. This highlighted gaps in their resources and generated a better understanding of how the work they were doing fit into a larger picture for how their customers want to work.

FACILITATION Although all the teams are part of the same company, each team wanted to implement a more customer-service oriented mentality in how they deliver their services to their own customers. However, team leads still defaulted to designing their services from an execution-oriented mindset as opposed to a human-centered mindset.

To aid in helping teams view their services from their customers’ point of view, I led a series of sessions teaching team leads how to conduct research and distill their findings so they can create their services based on their customer’s needs and wants and create solutions that deliver the most impact.

My facilitation series consisted of a short lecture followed by breaking participants into pairs so they could practice in-depth interviewing that included research questions, the importance of listening, and checking for confirmation bias. The series concluded with a Research Wall where all participants jotted down their insights and grouped them by theme, which enabled key insights and led to more user-focused ideas.

IMPACT Within two weeks, the Business Operations Program had a unified Jira board with user stories and epics mapped to the client’s OKRs where each team had visibility into each other’s work, which increased transparency and collaboration. The Kano Model and the Contracts Services Blueprint also became models for other teams and programs to collaborate on creating user-centric solutions by beginning with a deep understanding of their customers.