We’ve developed an amazing set of skills for empathising with our end-users, but rarely if ever do we turn these techniques in the other direction: on our clients. Just the opposite in fact: we’re much more likely to talk of our clients as idiots who don’t ‘get it’ than as understandably stressed human beings pushed outside of their comfort zone.
This lack of empathy seems strange given our trade, and the fact that they have by far the most influence over whether our not our projects will be successful.
If we can learn to handle our stakeholders more empathetically then we can make better products for our users, and help our projects to run smoothly and successfully.
And that’s what this event is all about.
The 7 habits of highly frustrating stakeholders – Kevin O’Neill
We’ll kick of the evening with a talk by Kevin, a digital strategist at London Agency Centigrade. Clients come in lots of different flavours, and understanding how to handle them differently will help us to bring about successful project outcomes for our users. In this session Kevin will talk us through his taxonomy of stakeholders, and teach us how we can avoid tearing our hair out when we encounter the worst.
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Top tips for running effective workshops – Alison Coward
Alison will go through tips for designing and facilitating effective workshops that are productive and focused, covering techniques for better brainstorming to generate better ideas and ways to keep participants engaged. We’ll also look at the all important follow-up and how to keep momentum going whilst keeping creativity high.
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Improvisation – the secret ingredient to successful collaboration – Matt Matheson
Matt is a creativity and collaboration consultant at NixonMcInnes, and he’s going to talk about how improv can teach us the key people skills of listening and collaboration, and, surprisingly, help organisations to innovate collaboratively.
@DJmattmatheson
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