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Whether you're facilitating workshops, leading teams, or navigating complex decisions, here you'll find practical tools, frameworks, and lessons drawn from my real-world work with leadership teams and organizations.
I'm Jackie Colburn. Strategist, facilitator, human.
For nearly two decades, I've partnered with teams across industries to navigate complexity, unlock possibilities, and design a better way forward.
My secret for getting stakeholder buy-in during your Design Sprint
The outputs of a Design Sprint are most powerful when they’re supported by leaders in the organization. I designed a way to involve key decision makers in the process so that their presence feels constructive. Use my facilitator-approved approach to add manageable and productive stakeholder reviews to your sessions!
A survival guide for Product Managers working with challenging stakeholders
In a perfect world, we'd have perfect professional chemistry with all of our colleagues. But alas, it's not a perfect world—not even close. Fortunately, even if there are certain stakeholders you mesh with less than others, it's almost always possible to overcome personality clash and find a way forward. Here are the tips I've found to be most helpful for working with, not against, your most difficult teammates.
Don’t let stakeholders shut down your creativity
If you lead workshops and Design Sprints, you’ll need to involve key decision makers in the process so that it’s constructive rather than disruptive. Having a formula to handle these situation is especially important when working with big orgs. Check out my approach to the process so that your experience feels constructive and controlled.
Neutralize Design Sprint politics using these simple methods
The magic of the Design Sprint is its ability to neutralize politics. When I work with teams, I have frank conversations about politics and team dynamics going into the Sprint. The agenda I design takes into consideration the realities of those dynamics. I use methods to draw out ideas from everyone in the room and facilitate sharing and dialog so that politics aren’t what matters and great ideas can shine through.