From Too Many Inputs to Clear Ways of Working

Client: NIRAS A/S

A global communications team had shaped their new strategic direction but still adjusting to new roles and ways of working. As specialization increased, collaboration became harder to navigate in practice. Tasks often involved many contributors, leading to repeated iterations and slower progress.

Discussions included many perspectives, but without a clear way to move forward. Work was revisited multiple times, as the team lacked shared criteria for when to involve others, when to move ahead, and how to balance working from home with the need for alignment across roles, locations, and responsibilities.

Solution:

The work started with a timeline laid out as a rope. Participants placed written cards representing past events, current realities, and expectations for the future. This made visible how much the team had already built and their role in shaping the upcoming strategy.

The team then worked physically with how they influenced each other. Using an elastic band, participants leaned back while holding shared tension, making it tangible how individual actions affected the group and when coordination was necessary. They also positioned themselves along a line based on preferences for working from home versus being together. The visible spread became a way to connect differences directly to specific tasks and when being physically together mattered.

From there, the team translated their hopes for how they wanted to work into a small set of concrete experiments tied to their daily work, changes they could test immediately rather than define upfront.

Outcome:

Meetings restructured with clearer purpose, fewer participants, and assigned responsibility
Making past progress visible helped the team focus on what to do next
Shared briefing and handover process introduced in ongoing work
Team initiated small, defined experiments in daily collaboration

Testimonial:

Being outside our usual setting gave us a new perspective. Seeing ourselves physically on the line and actually feeling the differences made a real impact. It quickly turned into: what can we do on Monday? And knowing we could test things without it being forever made it easy and actionable.

From Too Many Inputs to Clear Ways of Working

Solution:

Outcome:

Testimonial:

Being outside our usual setting gave us a new perspective. Seeing ourselves physically on the line and actually feeling the differences made a real impact. It quickly turned into: what can we do on Monday? And knowing we could test things without it being forever made it easy and actionable.

Workshop participant