A2B - Developing Creative Problem Solving Capability to Build Product Leaders

Aligning diverse teams and building a common understanding

A2B Product Leaders and UX Designers have varying levels of capability as they work in Agile teams that operate independently. The company wanted teams to have a shared view on a creative innovation process, at the same time upskill them in Creative Problem Solving and Lean Experimentation so that there was a baseline capability across all teams.

“The Strategy Group were amazing teachers, we had a lot of fun, it was very easy to understand all the tools that they provided to us and they pushed us to get out there to try the tools and come back with learnings to share with the group.” – Nina Huchthausen, Agile and Product Transformation Coach, A2B

Approach

Up-skill product owners and UX designers through a learning pathway.

We developed a learning pathway that included a 3 Day Product Leadership Offsite followed by immersive sessions to deep-dive into specific capability. This provided teams with ongoing support to encourage the full application of new skills and embed new ways of working back on-the-job.

We created a program that upskilled teams in Creative Problem Solving, while covering Design thinking and the Lean Startup methodology. We helped their Product Owners and UX Designers to clearly frame problems and execute experiments to drive tangible outcomes.

Key Features

1. 3-day Product Leadership Offsite: This helped them learn and apply Creative Problem Solving and leverage two critical methodologies – Design Thinking and Lean Start-up.
2. Immersions and Coaching: The product leaders continued their learning through immersions and coaching sessions to tackle real-life challenges.

Outcomes

An Aligned innovation approach.

1. Product leaders and UX Designers equipped with new capability, mindsets and ways working particularly around:
   • Harnessing customer insights and feedback
   • Framing problems
   • Pushing the boundaries for creative ideation
   • Test, prototype and Minimum Viable Products
   • Validating and refining solutions
2. Cohesive teams
3. Post-training support to foster ongoing education and practices
4. Ongoing guidance and support to POs and UXers on upcoming initiatives