Reinventing team & client relationships through design thinking

In the post-pandemic era, the world of service design has changed forever, whether you are a large, well-known company or a disruptive start-up. The way we collaborate, think, and participate, from within our teams up to the way we deliver knowledge and information to our clients and audience. Connectivity, integration, and collaboration deliver great results, but how can we achieve this in our daily workflow? What's the secret?

Is less about completely changing our company culture and more about taking actions to better engage with clients and teams.

It’s about creating a mindset where innovation, skills, and opportunities meet. It's falling in love with your significant other after years of being married and discovering how much fun you’ve been missing.

1. Evolving Team & Client Relationships.

In the midst of this relational transformation, the key is always the same: people. No matter where they are located -designer, legal team, or account manager-. And the only way to elevate our workplace culture, performance, and growth is through relationship building. We talk about this in meetings, we put it on the calendar and yet is always challenging to materialize. Relationships are fundamental, from creative to sales teams. Teams are far more than service providers, and clients are more than clients. This ecosystem is the key to future success and survival.

Inspiring a culture of innovation, attracting and retaining top talent, and adopting disruptive technologies, while also managing risk, stability, and maintaining compliance. So many expectations, from every side.

Balance everything requires a unique mindset and a fresh perspective of the same tools we already have. Taking inspiration from my design background, creative thinking tools have become a wonderful ally. And not just for team development, but also for client relationship evolution. Design thinking starts by understanding the needs -either of our team, client, or customer- then developing ideas and creating situations that meet those needs. Another key element is visual empathy. Empathy guides us to identify pain points and areas for improvement in our design and visual communication. It connects, engages, supports, and inspires change.

2. Finding Your Team Voice.

Diversity of experiences, skills, and backgrounds can lead to a wide range of innovative ideas. Brainstorming is often used for creativity and design but is great to create an atmosphere of collaboration, building upon each other’s ideas to unify different perspectives. In an interesting way, it can be useful to explore our team's ‘voice’.

When we find our voice, we think better. We understand our skills, and feel naturally motivated to perform better. When we understand the impact and influence our work has, we find our own value on a larger scale. This changes everything.

Creating a shared vision fosters empowerment, synergy, and innovation and helps to align teams, ensuring that everyone is working towards the same goal or solution. And also, creative energy is a life-changing jolt that can motivate us wildly, transforming apathy into curiosity and opportunities for problem-solving. Also, active listening sessions are critical. Listening to and valuing new perspectives can lead to fresh ideas and insights.

3. Visual storytelling: Making Data Memorable.

Telling the right story helps us to evolve communications beyond the slides, engaging audiences and clients, and also inspiring value & knowledge to make better decisions. Also, can generate anticipation, making data memorable. In the same way, audience visualization (similar to the process of creating 'Persona mapping' inspired by UX development) creates a detailed profile of the target audience, including their needs, preferences, and pain points, and can help businesses to identify areas for improvement, drive better decisions, address clients needs and forge stronger ties.

An effective narrative delivers trustworthy information and knowledge that connect and inspires audiences, helping businesses to identify areas for improvement, drive better decisions, and forge stronger ties with clients.

4. Presentation Mapping: A Visual Map of Influence.

This approach involves data visualization (and storytelling visualization) to showcase ideas, concepts, and relationships related to a particular problem or service. Mind mapping is great to identify hidden patterns and connections, leading to new ways to communicate and be influential. A creative blueprint of our design process to identify the different components involved and stakeholders' expectations.

Mapping our presentation helps to understand the entire communication journey, including touchpoints, interactions, and pain points. It can help identify areas for storytelling improvement and challenging communication spots that need revision.

"Reinventing team & client relationships through design thinking" Part 2 coming this Friday.