How to create a team structure based on innovation and experimentation - Chapter 6 (Final Chapter)
This is a six chapter journey where I will share my process to get into an ideal structure.
Hi readers, my name is Michel Hauzeur, and I am a soccer lover and a father of my little warriors called Mila, Maya, and Baloo (rescued dog)
Currently Product Design & Innovation Leader at Nearsure with 14+ years of experience in product & tech. I’m also a Co-founder of La corte de los Búhos, a Digital Transformation consulting company in Latam, and a Gamification consultant.
Mentor in the Product League and Product Makers Mentors program for 2+ years.
And 2023 Product-Led Alliance Award as Product Leader of the Year winner.
Project to Product Summit - Oct 8th and 9th.
I invite you to join me at the Project to Product Summit event, where I will speak about Team Building based on Innovation and Experimentation.
Six chapters journey:
Chapter 6: Innovation and Experimentation through team building (This article)
Before starting, thank you for reaching the sixth and final chapter! It has been an amazing journey to share this experience with you.
Let´s continue…
Chapter 6: Innovation and Experimentation through Team Building
Chapter 5 recap:
We deployed the Center of Excellence's first structure in April of this year with six teams focused on specific topics, as the picture.
But 3 months later we needed to iterate a second structure focused on two main objectives (Strategy and Innovation) because we lost traction between team members. Some were so busy and others wanted to work on more specific problems.
After a couple of sessions with the representatives, team members, and the strategy team (Studio, Practice, and Product-Ops Leaders), we came up with a new structure focused on keeping working on the strategy as we defined at the beginning but with a small team and on the other hand, we open the door to other teams in the company to bring problems so we can solve it through our experience.
How are we working now?
Strategy: This team is focused on how to reach the 5M ARR. We still focused on the six topics (Research & Innovation, Communication, Training & Development, Strategic Alliances, Proposal Team, and Free Model & Experimentation). So far the results are amazing, we have been iterating this new team for around a quarter and even though that is a small team compared with the last version, now we are delivering more value internally to the studio and externally to the entire company and the clients.
Innovation: Actually, we have two teams focused on two business problems. These projects tend to be solved in a month or quarter, but the results are successful. We are applying the Opportunity Solution Tree as our main tool, and we are now iterating the opportunities to define which makes higher results.
Section 1. What does innovation mean?
Here starts the Chapter 6:
From my point of view, innovation is the process in which you identify a problem, convert a problem into an outcome, convert an outcome into possible scenarios, and then start iterating that scenario that looks better from a value vs effort perspective.
Once you reach the maximum outcome of the scenario, you can jump into the other and repeat the process. You will stop until you feel you reached the top of the value or you solve the problem.
There are always new problems, outcomes, or opportunities to bring new ideas to continue growing as a team, company, and cross-clients.
In my case, my focus from an innovation perspective is to keep iterating the team structure, the mentor program, and the CoE vision, to continue reaching the 5M on ARR.
I won´t stop innovating and thinking about how to iterate, improve, or find the growth I am looking for. But once I reach it this will be the bottom of the new mountain peak I want to get!
Section 2. What does experimentation mean?
Now, the only way to find innovation is through experimentation.
I have been working in many companies with many leaders or bosses who are so afraid of trying something new, even though there is data that proves that this new idea can bring benefits to the company. And it is understandable to be afraid, but don´t keep yourself out of experimenting, because you can be at risk of losing traction in the market and with your clients.
If you are in this type of business I suggest starting small! Think about your team and what kind of new things you can experiment with, and once you get successful results, show them. Repeat this process until you get your leader or C-level approval to think bigger.
For those who work for a company that loves to experiment, I suggest being wise about what you want to experiment with. Sometimes we want to experiment with everything and everything can take us into a dark place where it is hard to go out.
And for both cases, I will also suggest, that it is important to understand that an experiment is successful when it moves the business needle. Then you will need to calculate and evaluate how much you will be willing to invest, how much you expect to reach, and once you implement, analyze your daily, weekly, or monthly results.
If a couple of iterations in the same scenario are not giving relevant results, I suggest stopping there and moving to the other scenario.
From my side, I will keep experimenting with new ways of working on the career path of my team, on improving the impact of the mentor program, on the results of the CoE, on the studio, on the company, and the clients, until I reach the outcome. But again, once the experiment is successful or not, I will move to another scenario or to another problem to solve.
I was part of Colombia Tech Week a couple of weeks ago, a space where we as experts in the tech field share information about tech.
In my case, I talked about Gamification and its impact on the Business!
Bogotá, Colombia, South America
Section 3. Final Thoughts
First, I want to thank you for reaching this final chapter.
As a resume for this amazing journey we had together, here are some key points we talk about in each chapter:
Chapter 1: Understand the Why: We learn about how to map and deep dive into a problem.
Chapter 2: Research and hypothesis validation: We learn how to apply the Opportunity Solution Tree from Teresa Torres.
Chapter 3: Team Building Validation: We learn how to design a team based on practices, problems, and opportunities.
Chapter 4: Team building implementation: We learn that the first version of your ideal structure is not the last one, is just the first, and then will be the second, and so for.
Chapter 5: Center of Excellence definition: We learn that there are too many ways to find growth, through your team, innovation, and iteration.
Chapter 6: Innovation and Experimentation through team building (This article): We learn that the only way to be different is by starting dreaming and continuing experimenting.
Think of your life, career, team, and company, as a product life cycle.
You will always start by:
Understanding the why.
Defining your strategy.
Designing your path.
Developing your path.
Launching your strategy.
And iterate your strategy by learning, optimizing, adapting, and growing it.
See you in the next content.
Thanks for following me and keep reading!!
Next topics I will be writing about:
How does gamification impact business results?
What are the behavior core drives that gamification tries to work with?
The relation between gamification and personalization.
The relation between gamification and Product-Led Growth.
The four pillars a Market Place should be built on.
Wait for more…
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