CHALLENGE
How might we better understand and influence sanity at Stanford?
INSIGHTS
Our in-depth interviews and prototyping helped us connect the experience of making social connections at Stanford with combat preparation. Disparate disciplines; aligned challenges.
Elements of preparation and rules present in combat preparation and training may help reduce barriers between connection and purpose that get in the way of crucial social support.
CHALLENGE
Customer feedback is king for technology companies. Different methods of instilling customer-centricity and listening channels can make or break a product’s success. How do companies learn to listen, and what are the implications for designing and deploying these processes?
INSIGHTS
Requests require “thick description”, rather than verbatim responses, in order to draw out core needs. This includes, but is not limited to, biographical data of the requester.
Observations in-person can provide “grand tour” information lacking from pure dialogic interaction.
“Company behavior” significantly impacts the ability to parse out product feedback.
CHALLENGE
How can we better understand the failure of certain teams to adopt new software?
INSIGHTS
We can better understand the differences in the adoption journey of different teams through careful analysis and selection of drivers.
Insights into earlier stages of adoption can allow us to target the right people, with the right message, at the right time.
We must acknowledge the generalizability of our surveys is limited to only those individuals who could have answered the survey.
CHALLENGE
Teleconferencing represents a disruption in the learning processes necessary for resilience and propagation of new installations.
INSIGHTS
Teleconferencing fundamentally disrupts learning processes within organization through lack of feedback. It is a formal experience that limits opportunities for informal learning and collaboration.
Research on intervention theory provides promising frameworks that leverage self-integrity and consistency to improve the VC experience.
Adjustments to the physical environment, including mandatory video feeds and message boards, have an immediate impact on behaviors in the local sense.
CHALLENGE
How might we apply best practices in curriculum construction to the experience of onboarding as a new instructor?
INSIGHTS
Theory and practice interpenetrate one another through curriculum design and implementation.
Reflective exercises emphasize and model best practices in teaching and learning.
Receiving formal feedback is a common happening in the modern workplace. Organizations rely on feedback to flow between employees and their managers to improve both the success of their mission and the individuals who support it. Despite the ubiquity of the feedback processes we engage in, the quality and effect of these interventions is uneven at best and detrimental at worse. While most programmatic efforts to improve this process focus on the manager, or giver, of feedback, we believe that the more meaningful opportunity lies in helping individuals learn to receive feedback in a masterful way. The ability to solicit, receive, and incorporate feedback can create higher job satisfaction, spur creativity and innovation, and, ideally, create more meaningful alignment between passion and purpose in the modern workforce.
While great solicitation of feedback is key to learning and growth, it’s a difficult skill to master. Tell Me More is a blended learning experience that supports employees in the art and science of soliciting feedback from their managers and peers. The tool uses a combination of a web-based platform and physical playing cards to help prepare and structure feedback conversations. Through the use of reflection and goal-setting frameworks, learners build knowledge, skills and mindset, helping feedback happen more naturally, more often, and with greater impact.