Colonize new fields with the Exploration Days!

In my company (consulting firm), we’ve a lot of different customers and a lot of different skills. We are all innovating frequently, but when a new idea comes out, it stays at “idea” level, and we don’t find time to dig into it. It often results in the death of the idea!

I’m convinced that innovation is essential for modern company and it’s also a key pillar of the Agile Manifesto. So, how can we spread innovation by creating a learning environment?

The idea is to entitle every employee to a number of days per year that they are encouraged to use for self-education. Some famous example:

• Google has its 20 percent time (every employee is allowed to spend 20 percent of his time working on any idea that interests him).
• Cisco Labs in Norway allows its employees to spend any amount of time they want on their projects.
• Atlassian proposes ShipIT days: once every three months, they select a day on which everyone in the company works for the entire day with an idea of their own choosing. Facebook and Spotify organize similar internal events called hackathons or hack days.

The goal is to encourage your employees to try, play, imagine and learn.

In his Management 3.0 book “Managing for Happiness”, Jurgen Appelo introduces the Exploration Days. You can also explore it by visiting the Management 3.0 website: https://management30.com/practice/exploration-days/.

That’s why I choose to implement our first Exploration Days’ event in my company. As we’re a business consulting firm, the goal was to implement Exploration Days to foster new ideas around our environment.

How I set-up our first Exploration Days’ event

1. First of all, I discussed with the management. We agreed on 2 days event, on budget and we agreed that the results could be unsuccessful: it is a learning process. In three words: we ensure a “safe-to-fail” environment.
2. Secondly, I communicate the rules of these Exploration Days (context, theme, place, logistics…).
3. All the meals, breaks… were arranged for the participants.
4. All the creative material (white boards, markers, papers, some books…) was also arranged for the participants.

Note: It is important to explain the participants that it is volunteering-based and that it is the place to try and to learn something they wish to.

How the event unfolded

At the beginning, every participant was curious but shy too (even if they have understood the rules before coming). My role as a facilitator was to launch and to boost the group in a first place. By the way, be prepared for that: it is a key success factor for your first attempt!

Then, they spend part of their time to speak together and learn from each other. They use books, Internet, knowledge of each other… At this point some interesting new ideas start to pop out. Groups of people chose to develop 4 ideas during the day 2.

At the end of day 2, the 4 ideas were described and ready to launch!

Optional

To celebrate our first Exploration Days’ event, we proposed a team meal on the evening between the two days. This meal was paid by the company and contributed a lot to foster discussions between people.

During this meal, I felt the enthusiasm of the participants. It was enjoyable to listen to each of my team members telling us what they learned / achieved during the first day event.                                                                                                                     

Conclusion:

• The event was so fruitful and amazingly, the results were 4 new offers / expertise to be developed.
• Exploration Days were much appreciated, and we have decided to keep it as a regular event.
• Furthermore, our next Exploration Days will be done with another team based in another city thanks to our promotion: we used the results of our experiments to convince them.

I would like to conclude this article by quoting some experts (also quoted by Management 3.0):

“You get the best out of employees when you treat them as entrepreneurs.”