Having worked in IT transformation programs in large businesses in Australia, the UK and the US, Melanie Kontze came to realise there was an opportunity to develop a different way to work with clients on transformational change. A way that would collaborate more effectively, that would engage stakeholders for the long haul, would accelerate change and deliver results more rapidly. Silverstone Edge was created, with collaboration at its centre, to co-create and co-design innovative transformation change programs that would enable sustainable change. Listen to Melanie discuss the benefits of collaboration in an interview with COLLABIT.

 

The Collaborative Approach

For many years, technology transformation programs have focused on the technology implementation, with the business benefits and business transformation forgotten in the pressure to deliver the technology.

With reduced budgets, pressure on staffing and increasing customer expectations, this is no longer acceptable. Our approach from the beginning, was to build the business narrative for the transformation.

Silverstone Edge began to collaborate with a visual design firm, who would work with us to translate the output from collaboration labs and program documentation into highly engaging visuals. We found that the visual approach not only built the narrative, it enriched it with nuance and texture that spoke to the needs and wants of people.

Silverstone’s engagements are usually medium-sized, so they are weeks and months long, rather than days long. We work with clients to clarify and visualise program outcomes and to create the business change program, often associated with digital transformation, technology implementations or a new strategic direction.

Collaboration is the way we do this. We like to use collaboration labs and design workshops to co-create and co-design. This approach engages stakeholders at both a head and a heart level. They come into the lab, not as the senior person on the organisation chart, but as the person who is expert in their role at their level. We work with participants up, down and across the organisation. We use service design thinking and agile approaches to arrive at an answer that everybody understands and that everybody buys in to.

Often we will use a graphic recording artist during the collaboration lab. People can see the visual evolving, it incorporates the actual words that are said, it crystallises the key themes or issues. We then work with the designers to create a visual story board, a narrative that can turn quite complex information into visuals to build a narrative of the change and the strategic implementation.

Collaboration is key for successful business outcomes. Silverstone Edge for many years worked with different types of people, organisations and businesses. Each new partnership brings different ideas, perspectives and backgrounds and Silverstone endeavours to keep collaborating to make an impact. 

See the full article as written by COLLABIT here