Following a merger, a new cross-functional team at the intersection of science and marketing was tasked with ensuring a healthy portfolio within their business area.
With members coming from different legacy organizations and one new hire, the team faced the challenge of defining their shared purpose, clarifying roles and responsibilities, and creating alignment around what they should – and should not -deliver.
To meet the clients needs, I designed two workshops that combined serious strategic work with playful methods to unlock new ways of seeing their role.
In the first workshop, the team explored their purpose and ways of working together. Through guided reflection and creative exercises, they drafted a unifying statement about why their team exists and what they want to be known for in the organization.
In the second workshop, the focus shifted to what their actual offerings to the organization are. Using a custom puzzle game, the team moved from mining through a massive Excel sheet into actually bundling their work in new ways. They began combining tasks into coherent offerings that could be communicated simply and strategically. At the same time, they could see which tasks were truly core to their mission, and which were better placed in other parts of the organization.
We’ve been to many workshops before, but this was one of the best. The puzzle exercise especially helped us look beyond our roles and see our tasks from a customer perspective. We were surprised at how far we got in just two sessions!