Implementing scalable design thinking processes and cultivating a more creative culture
Empowering creative services teams (Skyword, Inc)
Instilling curiosity into start-up culture
CHALLENGE: Define, develop, and instill effective and scalable creative processes into a young content marketing start-up. Work across all client service teams within the organization to enable more effective collaboration and ideation; elevate creative outputs and enable formation of trusted advisor relationships with clients. Cultivate a more creative culture across the board.
PROCESS & APPROACH: Embedding deeply into the organization granted access to key stakeholder perspectives, from the interns to the C suite. Working directly with client services teams to elevate the quality of their content programs created empathy and shared understanding quickly, revealing opportunities for positive change beyond the original scope. The approach was two pronged: 1) design, test, and refine a suite of bespoke design-thinking processes for brainstorming and developing new content ideas; and 2) inspire and cultivate a culture shift that empowers employees at all levels to be change-makers within the company as well as the industry of content marketing. Outcome: Developed and instilled a custom framework of brainstorming processes throughout the organization. Founded Bridge Teams, a program enabling any employee to form and lead a special-ops team to solve a problem or improve the company.
RESULTS: After adopting new tools, Skyword’s culture developed a new sense of permission and creative confidence, emerging as a leader within the developing field of content marketing. Skyword received $30m of funding in 2018.