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.

You only have so much capacity. You can only do so much. If you do not consider your physical + mental capacity and get real about the maximum that you can accommodate, you run the risk of planning for more than you can handle. The results are worth avoiding.

When it comes to action, the biggest barrier to product teams is often the team charged with making change in the first place. This doesn’t have to be the case. Your team can overcome and bring greatness (or at least bring something!) into the world.

Upon rejection, a quick inventory will do. No need to spend more time than the time needed to assess and learn. Then, move on. Just show up and be better, stronger and more focused the next time.

These methods used are both a means to solve the challenges at hand and as practice so that educators walk away with tools they can use to continuously improve and refine on their own. First: we identify our “to solve” and refine by putting the human beings we aim to help at the center of our problem solving. Then: we come up with new ideas rapidly. Last: we define solutions that will be tested and tried after our work together.

If you are excited about something, jealous of someone or have a desire to say no so that you can say yes to something else, ask yourself: “How you are standing in your own way?” I’m out on my own running collaborative design sprints for clients to solve problems and come up with new ideas for products, services or experiences in the world.

If you don’t decide to try new things, you stay where you are today. This may be safe for a period of time but not forever. Change is necessary. To change, you must decide, commit and act on that.

To stay relevant in today’s rapidly changing marketplace you must change. ‘Adapt or die’ in evolutionary terms. If you stay the same or move too slow, you put your business at risk of not being here in the future.

Language is a tool people use every day but words can fail us. Drawing feels uncomfortable and intimidating to many of us. But even the worst (and I’d argue that there is no bad drawing — the only bad drawings are the ones that aren’t drawn.) Drawing communicates volumes compared to a sentence.

When I facilitate Design Sprints, physical movement is a part of the equation. We get up and move around the room. We stand and gather round for sharing ideas. We go out into the world to observe the environments that people live and work in. Motion creates a noticeable shift and more ideas come forth than they do when a group is sitting still around a table.

Every time we have an interaction with another person we are creating a unique exchange that lives outside of the space that those individuals inhabit. When we have a choice about who we create with (meaning, they aren’t our blood relatives) we choose the people who provide us something good; something that makes our life more pleasurable or easier than it would be without the exchange.

When you launch and observe how people interact with your product you can continuously make changes. The user responses will be influenced by what they want, need and expect. What they want, need and expect is influenced by the other things they interact with every day. With every beautifully designed experience that someone has, their expectations are elevated.