Matt Kelly and Adam Kohlrus lead a design-thinking workshop for high-reliability organisations. Participants share that concrete canvas questions work well for technical audiences, and that soft-spoken facilitation creates space for reflection. Structured templates turn abstract concepts into actionable storytelling tools.
Chapters
As a never-done-before checkout in a separate file, I would like to invite you to share your one nugget. What was the most valuable thing for you today that you might also want to share with someone who had to miss the workshop? Someone starts and then passes on the talking stick to the next one.
I'll start. Keep going back to school, because when you do this, it's kind of obvious, but beforehand I wasn't thinking about, you know, separately an exercise to challenge our assumptions on a project that we're working on at the moment. So, you know, you're never too expert to keep learning. Oh, sorry, and I'll pass it on to Kate.
So my favorite part about this exercise was the very concrete questions that are part of the canvas that are very approachable and very practical for people who are in a very technical mindset. So yes, it's much more— it's much something that somebody can relate to more so than a sort of larger, more open question like, how might we? So this is very useful, especially in like an engineering context.
Thank you.
And Tegi.
Thank you. For me, the best part of today's concepts was, yeah, having a space to think for a person. So I really enjoyed my time with the template, just going through, thinking, reflecting, and then actually having those aha moments going, oh yes, How could I miss that? So that journey, I think, is very, very valuable and very powerful for people to go through. And I nominate Manna.
Thanks, Peggy. So design thinking is something that I'm recently getting into. So when I saw this in the calendar, I was like, okay, I'm so there, cancel all my day plans. And it certainly did live up to my expectations. And my mind is like working so hard, but I I am involved in a lot of conversations that are super complex that folks don't necessarily feel comfortable talking about. So when I saw the templates like right before this session posted in the Never Done Before community, I was like salivating and just saving it like onto a document. But I just simply love the whole concept of introducing structure to hold these complex conversations and just having like these better storytelling tools to tool concept design thinking, that's already super, like you said, pretty academic. So I'm definitely going to use these templates. So thank you. Thank you so much. And I pass it over to Myriam.
Thank you. For me, it was the way how you— I loved the session and I loved the self-thinking time and the way how you presented it. for me, the golden nugget was how you continued to share almost like a conversation between Adam and Matt while we were working on our templates. And I had the impression that it was as if it gave me permission to work on my stuff, but still getting kind of pieces of inspiration. And as you were sharing your ideas how to use it, I was like, oh, Oh yeah, I haven't thought of that. Oh yeah, let me go into this direction. So it was kind of in a very calming way helping me to focus and to fill in my template without distracting me. And I think that's something that I haven't used enough in my own facilitation practice, where I would rather put on some music while someone is reflecting. But it might actually help them. So thank you for that. And I pass it over to Yona.
Thanks, Miriam, for sharing that. My takeaway was actually the same. I love the soothing tones of Matt and Adam as we were all filling out our worksheets. It reminded me a lot of when I was back in primary school and the teacher is just sharing tips and advice as we are filling out our math homework. Like, oh, don't forget to use this use this formula or something. So that helped to spark a lot of insight. And I'll pass the time over to Janine.
Thank you.
I'm not really sure what to share. There's so much that I can take of the session. And I joined Matt's session in November, and I used the canvases that he shared there in a totally different way, but they were so useful and they're still so useful. So I'm quite sure I'm going to use this one as well, but I still have to let it sink in. But it was very, very inspiring and lots of questions, and I love questions. I think also I use a lot of why questions, but I think in some environments these very specific questions can really help people more than just the why, so, or the how might we, just as Kate mentioned. So thanks for that. Very great session. And I pass it on to Jenny.
Thank you. I liked having the canvas there giving me, you know, just that space to actually think and then to be able to then move on rather than just like a completely blank canvas. You sort of, you know, this one, yeah, it then allows you, it's got the different spaces to move on to the thinking time and now I'm going to do this and that really helped me and I think something like moving forward, I would keep revisiting it and like the current state, just going through with different colors, go right now, this is the headspace I'm in now, this is that. And so that the— so there would be a story on the current state.
So thank you very much.
I really enjoyed it. And yes, I like the— enjoyed the soothing voices through sort of just helping the thought process. So thank you. Lee.
I love it all. I mean, from the beginning, I love the self-therapy session, pouring it all out. I love the bucketing of my ideas. And then at the end, of course, you know, give us a tool to actually use all the ideas that came out. So yeah, from the beginning to the end. Rod went, right? Rod, did you go? Yeah, Rod went first. So we then—
Maybe Matt and Adam want to check out as well.
Oh, okay. Adam.
Thank you, Lee. I just love having so many thought leaders and experts from different fields. that are able to kind of see and hear this message that we're trying to curate for a very specific audience here. But that, you know, just— and Rod, your comments about some of the things we could do to these canvases, and I love hearing that others of you are taking these and applying them in very different ways. So to me, the world's always better the more diversity of thoughts and perspectives we can get on a topic and hear from each other. So I just took all of that away, and this is a very valuable 90 minutes. It'll be the best 90 minutes of my day. So, Thank all of you for that. Matt, I will pass it over to you.
You know, I'm very new to the space, HR space, and what I'm learning very quickly is it is a space that had— the thought leaders are very engineering process-minded. It's not a lot of like culture and collaboration, the stuff that I do. And I think there's a lot of room for it, but still need to keep building out the story of how we can add value to this space. And you guys have helped me do that a lot. So a couple of particular things, like the idea of values and resilience, you know, because we're talking about human beings here. Yeah, we're talking about processes and system thinking. Yeah, but like, come on, HRO people, like, that's what we're trying to disrupt, talking about people and the way people— so, so thank you for helping me continue that narrative and come up with more tools. Myriam gave a comment during the breakout That you know we can use even more visuals, and you know you thought some of those slides of ours were dense. You guys have seen healthcare, probably finance slides. There are like 500 word essays on each slide. But Miriam told us that you guys can go even further, like have an icon for each of the five things and make it even more visual. So I took away a lot. I think about as I'm new to the space, understanding more the value that that we can create to it, and that we can add to it rather, and and then specifically trying to build the Story of exactly how we're going to do that. So, so thank you all very, very much.
