In an earlier post, we gave some insight into our process for building a top creative team. But before you start your search for talent, one of the most important things you can do is to produce an effective brief.  This will help you to identify the actual skills and expertise you need to look for.

There’s sometimes a temptation to think of what the solution could be before a problem has been properly defined. But the briefing stage enables you to consider your broader business needs and take a more strategic approach.  Its purpose is to define the problem well and provide context to enable the team to start the ideas generation process and/or ask more questions.

Brief Template

Although a brief is often written as a linear document, we’ve designed a template which takes a more visual approach:

How to use it:

• Start with the ‘now’ – your current situation (1) and the problem (2) – you can use tools  such as Five Whys to get to the real root cause.
• Describe your target audience (3). They are, of course, central to whatever you are doing.
• Jump ahead to the future. First describe the desired outcome (4) – it might be useful to view this as if success has been achieved, not by the solution but by what success means to you and the target audience. Then outline your objectives (5) – how you will measure that success.
• Consider other factors that may have an impact (positive or negative) on a successful outcome – review (6) your competitors and your own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT), and identify any known barriers or challenges (7)
• Finally, describe any other parameters – points of reference (8)  - any successful or unsuccessful examples that you’ve seen, and practical constraints (9) – deadline, budget, resources etc.

You’ll find that thinking through each of these sections enables you to consider who you’ll need to bring into your team.  Like our last post, this tool is a prototype, so if you use it, we’d love any feedback.

Download the Brief Template (pdf).

We launched our Bracket Bulletin this month. Have a read and sign-up!

Since collaboration starts with the individual, for our first post we’re trying out the personal audit – a tool to be used by team members to review their own position before the collaboration starts.  We aim for it to be useful for team members that are approaching a project from separate businesses (or different departments within an organisation) to help the team find common ground.

Why use it

The personal audit looks at everyone’s current situation, their intended contribution to the project and their potential gains, providing an insight into their reasons for being involved.  It provides an opportunity to build a project that considers everyone’s motivations, and helps to create a shared investment in its development.  This is particularly useful for keeping team members engaged during more exploratory/R&D projects that don’t yet have a client or a set deadline – these projects tend to be less of a priority than core business activities.

When and how to use it

Each team member spends time completing the personal audit individually, before the project kick-off, answering each section as fully and as honestly as possible.

Step one: Review

Explore each of the three areas – current situation, contribution, and potential gains

 Step two: Assess

Cross-reference the three areas to ensure they are balanced well against each other. For example:

Current situation + contribution:  Will my current situation be affected by the contribution that I need to make to the project (e.g. re-allocating resources)?

Contribution + gains: Do I make a clear contribution to achieving the potential gains? Is additional contribution from others needed to achieve the gains?

Current situation + gains: Do the potential gains help me to improve my current situation or overcome any challenges? Does it fit within my objectives and priorities, or does it create new opportunities?

Step three: Discuss

Once all team members have completed the audit, take the results to your next meeting.

The individual audits can be combined to ensure that there is a diverse and good spread of skills and resources, and that the desired gains of the members are compatible. If there are points of conflict, identifying and addressing them now is easier than later in the project. As stated before, this also provides an opportunity to build the project around everyone’s motivations.

This is a new tool and we’d love any feedback on it! Did it help your team’s initial discussions? Are there any other sections or questions you’d include?

Image: _sarchi cc

Last month, we were at the Business Design Summit in Berlin. The two-day event brought together 11 leading authors and business experts, plus practitioners, to share their latest tools for strategy and innovation. And it demonstrated that the best way, by far, to encourage people to work better together is to do things that help them work better together.

From the event website:

 “Whether building new businesses or re-inventing existing ones, all leaders need practical strategies to navigate today’s ruthless business environment. You need tools, not talk.”

The Business Design Summit was a new type of conference. Attendees were taken through a range of talks, exercises and workshops which enabled them to learn new and actionable techniques. And many of the tools, at their heart, were around facilitating collaboration and better conversations:

• We’ve discussed before how the Business Model Canvas encourages people to get out of their seats in meetings and participate.
• Lisa Kay Solomon’s upcoming book “Designing Strategic Conversations” looks at the importance of designing meeting experiences to help teams to solve open-ended problems.
• Dave Gray  – co-author of Gamestorming, a book which presents a range and workshop techniques to help teams innovate – presented the Culture Map to help teams and organisations to get a better understanding of their culture to reinforce, strengthen or change where needed.
• Stefano Mastrigiacomo’s soon-to-come tool, Coopilot, enables teams to keep projects on track.

These practical tools can be introduced to teams, taking them beyond just talking about why they need to work together more effectively, to actually doing it.  Until people experience what it feels like, it’s just theory to them.  The handbook which accompanied the Business Design Summit contains a quote from Buckminster Fuller: “If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don’t bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking”.

We’ve seen first-hand the effect of immersing individuals and teams in experiences to make the case for collaboration – subtly introducing new ways of running meetings with good facilitation, productive kick-off workshops and experimenting with event formats.  And so, our posts for the next couple of months will explore these methods. As much as possible, we’ll try to share tools we’ve developed, or create new ones that you can use in your work.

In their book “Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing”, Bronson & Merryman state that ninety-percent of a team’s success is determined before they even start work (h/t Eric Barker). At Bracket, we’ve been continuously improving the way that we get the right mix for our bespoke teams – mainly made up of creative freelancers that may not have previously met.  Of course, you can never tell how people will work together until they actually start, but perhaps there are a few things we can do to start off in the right direction.

As sites like Guru and oDesk become increasingly popular, more companies are choosing freelancers to work on short-term projects. We’d like to share some insight into our process, to help you make good choices in selecting a top creative team.

Start with the individual. When you’ve clarified your project brief, begin by scanning through your network to find potential team members. This is not just about technical ability, but also down to interests or a niche in a specific sector. The great thing about freelancers in particular, is that they keep up-to-date with latest developments in their field. Use this to your advantage to find people that have a real passion for the subject area. Sometimes the ideal candidate will come to you immediately, but often there will be a few that you could choose from.

Do the match-making. Once you have your potential candidates, it’s time to use your best match-making skills to form the team – like fitting the pieces of a jigsaw together. Again, although technical ability will come into this (you’ll want to ensure a spread of skills), it’s also largely about the team dynamic. Consider the principles presented by tools such as Belbin Team Roles and Myer-Briggs Type Indicator, which show that individuals have tendencies and preferences in the way that they work. Diversity across these is important to make a team successful – varying across thinkers, coordinators, visionaries, doers and other types. Although you won’t have personality profiles to hand, you can draw on your personal knowledge of your contacts to create the best fit.

Build the team personality/identity.  A Collaboration Catalyst is instrumental in identifying the personality of the team and putting the foundations in place to help people work to the best of their ability.  Think of this as the forming, storming and norming stages of Tuckman’s team development theory, before the work actually begins. This can sometimes be a relatively quick process, but it happens nonetheless. Our approach is to get all team members together at the start, regardless of when their main input will be, to build the project based on everyone’s expertise. It’s an opportunity for team members to understand everyone’s roles, see how everything fits together, and get a sense of the bigger picture. Because each team has a different ‘personality’, there is no one-size-fits-all process for collaboration. Therefore, develop a unique workflow for each team based on how members like to work, their preferences for communication and the dynamic.

Building teams for creative and innovation projects – where the content is often subjective – is not a straightforward process based on just technical skills. A great team dynamic can make the difference between good project and an excellent project. So it’s worth taking a strategic and considered approach to building the team, before the work actually starts.

This month, we held our first Bracket Salon of the year. Bracket Salons are monthly events where we hand-pick a team of freelancers from our network, bring them together and facilitate a fast-paced, 2-hour session to debate and generate ideas, and explore how the team can work together.

We brought together freelancers from disciplines across film, interaction design, multiplatform production and branding to explore the hot topics in their sector, and of particular relevance to consumer brands. In their discussion, the team covered the concepts of community, online interaction and identity, the tension between digital and analogue, and user experiences.

Have a look at what we covered below, and if you’d like to hire this team to work on a project or develop ideas for you, get in touch.

 The Team

It might be your role to bring the team together, or you see a need to run your project kick-offs more effectively. Either way, it’s pretty hard to find comprehensive and/or up-to-date guides for how to run them.  Much of the material is loaded with traditional project management terms (Collaboration Catalysts are often not formally trained as project managers), not tailored for a creative environment and do not place emphasis on how interactive they should be.

A particularly excellent guide is Kevin M. Hoffman’s “Kick Ass Kick-off meetings”, which is great for design-orientated projects and really conveys the thought, preparation, and collaborative approach to take.  We also wrote a brief guide to a creative team’s first meeting, with some of our main tips.

Image: jakeandlindsay cc

Our four principles for good kick-off meetings are: 1) preparation, 2) people, 3) purpose and 4) participation.

Preparation

Productive kick-off meetings require good preparation, and your aim is to find the best ways to generate ideas and gather opinions from your attendees. In fact, don’t see it as a meeting at all – see it as a workshop.  Design various exercises which guide your team members through the key questions and problems relating to the project. But keep your agenda flexible. Depending on the content that is generated, the discussions and the mood of the room, you might need to change things around on the day to keep the creativity going.

People

You might be inclined to only invite the key decision-makers to your kick-off meeting, but you’ll limit your project’s potential if you only hear the views from the top.  A true collaborative approach is to bring in everyone who will be involved – from strategy to delivery – to shape the project. They’ll contribute valuable insight from their position, as well as getting a clearer idea of the bigger picture for their own knowledge. The exercises you design will be to ensure that everyone has a chance to provide their views.

Purpose

One aim of the kick-off is to build the team’s energy and motivation around the project, and another is to make it practical. In her post “How to Increase Group IQ“, Annie Murphy Paul, wrote how the most effective teams discuss how they’re going to work together as well as what they’re going to do. Allocating some time to ask people to reflect on what works well (and not) in collaboration will help them to set up better working relationships.

Attendees will also need to come away with a clear idea of what’s happening next and their involvement in this. Ideally, rather than just distributing the meeting’s minutes, the raw notes will be analysed and developed into a document that the team can work from.

Participation

An effective kick-off meeting will be a highly collaborative experience and good facilitation makes the difference to this. Your role on the day is to encourage contributions from everyone and guide the meeting/workshop without getting involved in the ideas generation yourself. If you think this will be difficult because you are too close to the project, hire an external facilitator.  You’ll need to listen and reflect back key points, organise ideas and identify themes on the spot, find out attendees’ motivations for being involved and develop this into common goals.

Bearing these four principles in mind, a few small changes to your project kick-off can make a huge difference. We really recommend that you emphasise this to your team.

Our monthly newsletter is coming soon! Sign up here.

Bracket Salons show what can happen in a short space of time, when you bring talented freelancers together from different disciplines, in a well-facilitated collaborative environment.  For freelancers, it’s an opportunity to exercise the brain, learn from others and develop some innovative ideas to some hot topics.

And if you like what you see, the team will also be available for hire to work on projects.  We’re looking forward to making new connections and potentially starting further collaborations.

If you’d like to get involved in a future event, get in touch.

As a Collaboration Catalyst (our theme for April), you might see great opportunities to bring entrepreneurs to work together on specific projects. So what can you do to increase the chances of success?

Last year, Eva Petrakova, a Masters student (now graduated), approached us to contribute to her final dissertation on entrepreneurship and collaboration. Eva had found that there was not much literature on this specific area – only information on strategic alliances, networks and cooperation – and particularly not focusing on the more social factors that contribute to productive partnerships. She wanted to observe how this worked in practice.

dgray_xplane via Compfight cc

At the time, at Bracket, we were just starting a collaborative project with another business, which we suggested that Eva shadow. This partnership turned out to be very successful, and Eva developed the following framework based on her observations:

1. Build personal relationships: After initially meeting our partners through a shared interest, we tested our working relationship and compatibility by working on a small project together. When that was successful, we decided to progress to a larger and riskier venture. The relationship developed quickly, largely due to complimentary personalities (a mix of visionary and practical), good chemistry and an ability to keep our interactions informal, friendly and often humorous.

2. Develop regularity: Frequent, but short meetings (30 minutes, twice a week) enabled us to keep the project as a priority, particularly as it was not part of our core business. Our meetings were task-driven and energetic which kept the motivation high – they were something we looked forward to. This went a long way to strengthening the team identity, as well as providing frequent performance feedback and clarification of roles.

3. Emphasise commitment: Despite the quick and informal meetings, we took commitment very seriously. We all had multiple and competing projects in our own businesses, but we were determined to make the partnership work. At the start of the project we made a conscious choice – partly through the regular meetings – to allocate time and resources.  This created a clear and shared responsibility.

4. Work hard to establish trust and maintain reputation: Our existing reputations were important in establishing the initial trust for this new partnership, and our on-going informal interactions worked to increase it. We did not employ a formal contract – more a set of principles that were laid out at the start. The lack of contract could have been a risky strategy, but it enabled us to stay flexible and develop the project, and our relationship, organically. Communication was kept open and transparent through shared documents and our regular meetings.

5. Ensure mutual goals: Financial gain was not the primary motive for our partnership (although we did ensure that there would not be a financial loss) – creating social value was more important. We had a mutual excitement and passion for the project’s topic, and so our main goals were around increasing profile, brand development and making contacts. Although we did hit our financial targets, we were more driven by the ability to create something together that we could not do individually.

Collaboration Catalysts are responsible for creating the right environments for people to work together effectively.  In business, it’s easy to forget the softer aspects of collaboration – often focussing on the operational aspects such as deadlines and tangible outcomes. Eva’s observations demonstrated that the social foundations – personal relationships, communication, shared commitment, trust and reputation, and mutual goals – were instrumental in making this partnership successful.

Thanks to Eva for her insightful study.

Don’t forget to sign up for our monthly newsletter, which we’ll be launching soon.

Our theme throughout April is: The Collaboration Catalyst

We see a new role that’s instrumental in creativity and innovation, and we call it the “Collaboration Catalyst”.

As we’re seeing more of a need to drive creativity and handle chaos in order to innovate, it takes an individual with a certain set of skills to make this happen. Often, the focus is on those that come up with the ideas, but the Collaboration Catalyst is just as important – they focus on how to make those ideas happen, connecting the dots and bringing projects to a solution.

 spDuchamp via Compfight

Collaboration Catalysts have a natural desire to bring people together because they can see how this can provide benefits in enhancing resources, reducing duplication and increasing impact.  They work across different disciplines, or across departments if within an organisation, and their work depends on them being a drifter.

Amongst other things, a Collaboration Catalyst:

1. Takes the time to get to know people individually and their key skills
2. Recognises who should be talking and working together and have a desire to make that work
3. Spots gaps, identifies any crossovers and works to reduce duplication
4. Makes connections, sparks conversations and initiates the projects that come out of them
5. Is comfortable with creative chaos, and can spot the patterns that emerge. Although they might not be generating ideas, they help to make sense of them
6. Keeps teams motivated, and knows how to bring the best out in people. They also know when to step back and let the team perform
7. Is aware of when to protect fragile, early-stage ideas, and when they need to be critiqued so that the project can move to the next stage
8. Sees projects through to the final tangible result.

It’s a dynamic and stimulating role to play, but it can also be hard work! Like good facilitation when it’s done well, it can be somewhat invisible, as the focus is on enhancing the team’s effectiveness. This often means the impact of the Collaboration Catalyst’s efforts is only noticed when the project comes to fruition.  And they can feel pressure from all directions, as they work to manage the power dynamics between highly-skilled people. Part of their role is identifying conflict and helping teams through it.

We recognise the value and importance of this challenging but highly rewarding role, and the specific skills it requires. We’re keen to provide tools and tips for people who find themselves in this position. In our upcoming posts during April, we’ll explore the situational factors that keeps a collaborative project running smoothly, how to build a top creative team, and tips for project kick-offs.  

April Read: Collaboration Ain’t Easy: Stakeholders, Agendas and the Importance of Being Earnest on Mindjet.

We’ll be starting our monthly newsletter soon. Sign up here.