A simple and powerful technique for thinking differently is metaphorically stepping into someone else’s shoes and living their experience. This someone else could be a customer, a supplier, a competitor or another team inside your organisation.
In this blog I’m going to outline a process for metaphorically stepping into someone else’s shoes. This process is similar to the Fresh-Eyes process where you get a perspective from an outsider who may or may not have a stake in the problem being examined.
To start you need to consider a number of questions?
- How well do I know the people impacted by this problem?
- What are their needs and fears?
- What would the best resolution of this problem look like for them?
- What would be the worst outcome for them?
It’s always important to check yourself to ensure that you are considering their perspective and not your own.
In this activity you will gather and review the information you have about the problem. Then you will participate in a role play being one of the parties affected by the problem. This is a powerful way of building empathy for each stakeholder.
When looking at your information consider
- What information do you have about the stakeholder?
- How objective or subjective is the information?
- What is factual? What is an assumption?
- What information is missing?
If you need to collect more, what’s the best way to do this? Through observation, interviews or surveys? Some organisations video a day in the life of a customer in order to understand how they use their product and service. It’s valuable to hear what customers say they do and then watch what they do.
Once you have data you can spend time developing detailed personas for each customer group or stakeholder.
Then imagine a short scenario where the stakeholder experiences the problem and plan a role play. It’s great to re-run the role play with different stakeholder perspectives and giving members of your team the opportunity to put on someone else’s shoes.
Do a debrief after each round to discuss how it felt and what new perspectives emerged. Do a wrap up at the end and then discuss how to use the new insights to solve the problem.
Resources needed
Information about the stakeholders impacted by the problem.
Place to prepare for and run role plays.
Video, flip chart and or pen and paper to take notes of lessons learned.
Creativity Cycling: Help your team solve complex problems with creative tools by Barbara Wilson and Tracy Stanley