The client(s)
A large, global coffee retailer and distributor
Results that matter
Approached by one of our favorite clients, we were tasked with creating a customized training for team managers, Product Managers, Project Managers, and Program Managers to learn how to identify and build an actionable measurement system in order to optimize business performance.
The first half-day, participants will learn the case for measurement and how to link to strategy to execution using example work. The second, full-day of class, participants begin to apply these lessons to their own work, build a measurement system for their project/product/team, and learn how to select the best data visualizations to communicate value and progress.
The one-and-a-half-day training course is paired with two hours of personalized coaching for each graduate so that they are able to effectively apply what they learn in their day-to-day work.
How we did (and currently do) it
We had been thinking about building a measurement curriculum and training experience for a while, since it’s such an important part of the design process, and thankfully our client nudged us bring it to life. Defining the measures of success is key to getting to success with a new project, product, or initiative. We wanted to create a class that helps managers translate strategy into measurable outcomes so that as teams launch into designing new features, products, enhancements, or processes they have a concrete north star to check their designs and decisions against.
We know that choosing the right measures is rarely obvious and choosing a single, simple measure can be attractive but may also drive the wrong behavior and have unintended consequences. Having a defined set of measures empowers partners to be able to make high-quality, independent, consistent decisions across the team and organization. We also knew that we wanted to tie in data visualization because numbers in rows and columns doesn’t always communicate the full impact of the measures we’re looking at. By visualizing data we’re able to surface the meaningful narrative behind the numbers, and this empowers teams to be able to communicate the impact of those numbers more broadly across different groups and disciplines.
With all of the above in mind, after interviewing our stakeholders we locked ourselves in the office with sticky notes and the big white-board and got to work on building a curriculum. When it got too hard, we quit for a little while, did something else, and picked it back up with fresh brains. We repeated that process until we created something that we all thought was excellent.