The Researcher worked with the Business Analyst and the Repairs Process Owner/Sponsor to design the Repairs Process Intervention Workshop. The purpose of the event was clarified and a half day workshop outline scoped.
Once again an off-site venue was identified and a date set. Key stakeholders of the process were identified and invited to attend. A briefing document was created by the Sponsor and sent with the invitations to the key stakeholders. The Researcher and Business Analyst would facilitate the event. The agenda for the workshop was as follows:
9.30 – 10.45 Opening Debate
10.30 – 12.50 Focused Discussions o Round One – Groups 1 – 4 o Round One – Groups A – D
12.50 – 1.30 Lunch
1.30 – 3.45 Focused Discussions o Round Two – Groups 1 – 4
Photo Opportunity
Feedback
Close
The Process Sponsor would welcome the participants and provide an overview of the session aims and rationale for change. This helps to demonstrate sponsorship of the process as well as sharing the rationale for change with the participants.
The specific aims were:
To share perceptions of the repairs process
To think outside the box
To be creative
To identify actions
To enjoy the experience
An opening question to focus the event is presented as part of the Sponsors opening debate:
How can we enhance stakeholder satisfaction with repairs?
This statement was agreed by the Process Sponsor, the Business Analyst and the Researcher. It was intended to stimulate discussion and debate and engage the stakeholders to identify ways to improve the repairs process.
For Round One, participants break into groups to debate the opening question and are encouraged to share their views with the wider team. This initially is achieved by use of post it notes to allow individual participants within their teams to share their ideas in an open forum. It is anticipated that common themes emerge from the discussions which become the focus for later activity. A cross mix of stakeholder types made up each group to encourage perspectives to be shared
During Round Two the focus is on identifying actions to improve the situation which are taken forward by the improvement team following the intervention workshop. The use of the creativity tool Super Hero helps to enable participants to think outside the box in identifying solutions to any issues highlighted during Round One. Preparations for the workshop and resources required are sourced in preparation for the session. The Intervention Workshop for the Repairs Process within Situation C took place as planned in June 2004, with a total of 85 participants attending. The Company took advantage of a photo opportunity at the Intervention Event which would be used as the basis of a news article within the Company Newsletter. This activity was scheduled into the Intervention Agenda. This to date had been the largest Intervention Workshop planned by the Researcher. It was imperative to include so many stakeholders at the workshop as the Repairs Process affected a wide group of stakeholders from both within and outside the organisation. The
Outputs from Round One Activity
Participants were formed into four groups and moved to break out rooms for convenience.
Facilitators re-stated the Opening Question to each of the groups and asked participants to brainstorm ideas that stemmed from participants initial perspectives of the problem statement.
Participants were asked to write their ideas onto individual post it notes that would be shared with the group in the break out room. Facilitators gave sufficient time for ideas to be generated and encouraged participants to share ideas by placing their post it note ideas onto one of the walls of the break out room. Participants were invited to read each other’s ideas and write new ideas as they came to mind.
Each break out room generated a number of ideas (Table 20):
Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4 Total
89 103 67 125 394
Table 20: Number of Ideas Generated for Round One Brainstorm
Each team was then asked to group their ideas into emerging themes of similar ideas or issues.
These themes were presented back to the wider whole group by a representative from each break out team. The team did this by grouping common post in notes of similar topic and representing the theme that emerged. Each then prioritised their emerging themes in order of importance to the stakeholders. Themes emerged and were prioritised (Table 21).
Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4
It was apparent that the emerging themes were very consistent between the groups especially when explanations of themes from representatives were reported to the whole group. It was agreed by the whole group that four common themes would be taken forward for the remainder of the Workshop. These included:
Scheduling Quality
Costs Reporting Policy
Although Planned Maintenance had emerged as a topical theme it was decided that this topic would be dealt with by another process group as it needed to be handled in a totally different manner to that of emergency repair.
The second part of Round One activity was to discuss each of the identified themes in more depth.
New groups were assigned (still cross stakeholder mix) to discuss an assigned dedicated theme.
Each group were asked to brainstorm issues that they could identify for the theme and report these to the wider group. Themes were assigned to individual Groups (Table 22).
Group A Group B Group C Group D
Scheduling Quality Costs Reporting Policy
Table 22: Agreed and Assigned Themes
Groups, supported by facilitators, discussed and debated the associated issues from their assigned themes. They listed their issues on a flip chart and reported these back to the whole group.
Outputs from Round Two Activity
Groups 1 – 4 re-formed and set the challenge of identifying possible solutions to the perceived issues for the related theme that had been presented in Round One Activity.
To assist in allowing participants to generate creative ideas, the use of Super Hero metaphor was employed. Facilitators briefed the group of the process and gave each participant a Super Hero card. Each card represents a super hero type such as: Superman, Wonderwoman, Catwoman, Spiderman, etc. and their associated super powers. For example the traits of Superman are stated as follows:
Superman has X-ray vision, super hearing, can fly, and is the strongest man on earth. When not on duty, he is disguised as mild-mannered newspaper reporter, Clark Kent. He can be weakened only be Kryptonite, a leftover rock from his birth planet. Superman is faster than a speeding bullet and is able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.
Participants are asked to take on the role of their assigned super hero to tackle the issue presented for the theme. They can interpret their super hero powers in any way they want in an attempt to overcome barriers that inhibit change. The facilitators recorded the ideas generated from the activity onto a flip chart. Once all the ideas are generated the group looked for common ideas and debate the practicality of implementing their ideas in practice. Each group finally presented their ideas to the whole group. A full outline of the outputs generated from the event are not included in this study, however the output was written up and shared with all key internal stakeholders and used by the Repairs Process Improvement Team to support the development of improvements to the process.
The Workshop concluded and participant feedback was sourced by the Business Analyst and the Project Sponsor.
4.4.5 Participant Feedback
Feedback from the participants was sourced at the end of the Intervention Workshop. Each participant was asked to write short comments onto post it notes which were collected by the facilitators at the event. Feedback was extremely positive in that the participants had fully enjoyed the event and appreciated being involved in the initiative. Many reported that they had found the event to be fun and also found the day to be challenging but productive.
Further feedback was sourced by the Business Analyst post the Intervention Workshop. A number of delegates were invited to a focus group session. Again feedback was very positive. Internal staff reported that they did not appreciate how the external stakeholders had provided a useful insight into their perspectives of the situation. It was reported that some of the key challenges that the internal team thought were important were also perceived as important by the external stakeholders. Indeed the input from the external stakeholders had a significant impact to the redesign programme. As a direct result of the session the team who were put together to manage the Repairs Improvement Review recommended that external customers and suppliers had to be brought into the Review Team as an advisory role.