Adam Lawrence: Facilitation Skills for Content Designers and Strategists – Episode 152

Content Strategy Insights

Adam Lawrence: Facilitation Skills for Content Designers and Strategists As strategists and designers, we often facilitate gatherings of stakeholders with a variety of priorities and approaches. There can be a temptation in such groups to leap into action and start building solutions and creating content right away. A good facilitator like Adam Lawrence can redirect this natural human enthusiasm to bring focus to our equally natural curiosity and humility, which almost always results in better products that address customers' actual problems. We talked about: his work with This is Service Design Doing and the Global Service Jam the "facilitator's challenge" - the tendency of people in workshops to leap to action rather than remaining curious as the actual problem at hand the need for humility and curiosity when evaluating ideas the importance of creating safe space in workshops the insight that "an early prototype is not a proposal, it's an experiment" how to manage the intention of a workshop and the preferences of participants the role of the "difficultator" - a facilitator who challenges the group the importance of testing ideas as quickly as possible with prototypes the similarities between facilitation and the scientific method the role of language in workshop facilitation the importance of being aware of both cultural and language issues in workshops that include participants from multiple cultures the challenges of facilitating workshops remotely Adam's bio Adam Lawrence (he/him) is a design educator and author, as well as a comedian, actor and singer with a background in psychology and the global automotive industry. For years he has used expertise gained in the world of theater, film, music and storytelling to help organisations become more creative, more realistic, more human – and thus to innovate better. Adam is co-initiator of the Global Service Jams, the world’s biggest co-creative design event, as well as co-author of the top-selling books This is Service Design Doing and This is Service Design Methods. Adam is adjunct professor of service design thinking at the world-class IE Business School in Madrid, was one of the first SDN Master trainers, and has been recognized with the Core77 prize for service design. Based in the European Union and working for organizations worldwide, he is a founding Partner at WorkPlayExperience. A specialist in facilitation, he loves to help people better collaborate and create more value. Adam enjoys nature, riding his classic Japanese motorcycle, and dressing up in medieval clothes to hit his friends with sticks. Connect with Adam online Twitter LinkedIn This is Service Design Doing Global Service Jams Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/phQvtcw03Co Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 152. When you gather stakeholders and colleagues to design new products or services, there's a temptation to leap into action and start creating and building right away. A good facilitator knows how to redirect this natural human enthusiasm into activities that reveal the actual problems that your customers have and help you create products that solve them. Adam Lawrence has honed these kinds of facilitation skills and taught them to thousands of designers. Interview transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 152 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I am really happy today to welcome to the show Adam Lawrence. Adam is like a really multi-talented guy. He facilitates design innovation stuff in a number of contexts, has decades of theater experience, a really skilled facilitator - I can attest to from first-hand experience. So welcome to the show, Adam. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to these days. Adam: Thanks, Larry. It's great to be here. Lots is going on right now.