{"id":44,"date":"2022-03-17T14:09:19","date_gmt":"2022-03-17T18:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.ryerson.ca\/ecld\/chapter\/chapter-4-co-creating-the-future-and-refining-your-search\/"},"modified":"2024-09-06T16:15:14","modified_gmt":"2024-09-06T20:15:14","slug":"chapter-4-co-creating-the-future-and-refining-your-search","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/ecld\/chapter\/chapter-4-co-creating-the-future-and-refining-your-search\/","title":{"raw":"Chapter 4 \u2013 Co-Creating the Future and Refining Your Search","rendered":"Chapter 4 \u2013 Co-Creating the Future and Refining Your Search"},"content":{"raw":"
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Watch<\/em><\/strong>: Module 4 \u2013 Radical Collaboration (15:53)<\/em><\/p>\r\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=oQAaw_60XJM&list=PL-yI2WFWGVQTLoq6ettIXoYDu-iRJraL5&index=4&ab_channel=StevenGedeon\r\n

The third key entrepreneurial principle, Radical Collaboration, involves co-creating the future and being open to changing directions and leveraging the unique resources of others. Design thinking calls it Radical Collaboration and the theory of effectuation calls it the Crazy Quilt Principle (Crazy Quilt Image Courtesy of PublicDomainPictures.net). In both cases Radical Candor is important for getting the most out of working with others.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_226\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"300\"]\"Image \"Diversity quilt<\/a>\" by OregonDOT<\/a> is marked with CC BY 2.0<\/a>.[\/caption]\r\n

Design is a multi-disciplinary collaborative process where other people can help you brainstorm divergent alternatives and make connections. A co-creation mindset helps you learn from others, accept help and embrace diverse perspectives to create win-win relationships. Certain divergent thinking processes like brainstorming rely heavily on using a design team. [If you are by yourself Mind Mapping is often a better tool to use and I cover that in Tool #8.] Working with other people also helps you see new patterns, get unstuck and check your premises during the convergent thinking phases. We often have unconscious biases that others can help us spot.<\/span>\"""\"<\/p>\r\n

Being open to surprising new insights and suggestions enables us to increase our range of options and helps us spot new opportunities for personal growth and greater happiness. But asking others to spend the time to help us, ask uncomfortable questions and go out on a limb to suggest ideas, requires that all involved use Radical Candor. This benevolent approach is foundational to working with others. It takes practice to get it right \u2013 being a bit too honest with people can easily be perceived as obnoxious aggression. And, of course, when you are the one asking for this help, you must be able and willing to accept their candor. (Image from Kim Scott \u201cRadical Candor\u201d)<\/p>\r\n

Life (or the perfect job, marriage, etc.) is not a jigsaw puzzle to be figured out once and then remain static and perfect forever. This is why planning-based methods around \u201chappily ever after\u201d futures don\u2019t work for so many people. Building a career is more like a crazy quilt co-created with others. Everyone brings their own cloth sections, patterns, colors and resources. Everyone must be open to change of direction and the final quilt must be useful and beneficial to everyone with win-win outcomes.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Assignment #2: Refining Your Career-Related Search Using the Design Thinking Diamond and <\/strong>a Few <\/strong>Tools<\/strong><\/h2>\r\n

Ok, let\u2019s practise using the design thinking diamond and radical collaboration principles with our next Loop or Iteration. We\u2019ll start with 2-3 of your career-related DCQs in Assignment #1 and run through a single Diamond\/Loop and practise using a number of different Tools.<\/p>\r\n

We already did your first Loop in Assignment #1 which included a single principle (Entrepreneurial Principle #1: Bird-in-the-Hand) and two tools (ECLD Tool #1 \u2013 The Wheel of Life and ECLD Tool #9 \u2013 Goal-Setting). Now we\u2019re going to practise using multiple Tools and Principles within a single Loop.<\/p>\r\n

There are hundreds of excellent design thinking, workshop, sprint, and hackathon sets of tools available. Each textbook has their own, but so do many instructors, consultants, organizations, and books (I review the foundational ones in ECLD Module 5 \u2013 User Centricity). We also created our own course toolbox in ENT 56AB and 78AB for the four-semester-long experiential capstone stream in the entrepreneurship degree program. There are several dozen tools in this toolbox and these are shared with you on D2L. I\u2019ll introduce you to a few introductory tools here in this workbook and in the ECLD Tool #2, #3, and #4 videos available on YouTube and D2L.<\/p>\r\n

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This figure illustrates how your first two assignments, diamonds and tools fit together. Going from left to right, in Assignment #1 we started our first diamond with our given means using ENT Principle #1: Bird-in-the-Hand and Tool #1: Wheel of Life where you created several draft design challenge questions (DCQs).<\/p>\r\n

In Assignment #2, we begin our diamond with 1 or 2 of your Career-Related DCQs and will refine your career related search and get a bit more practice using the diamond-based scientific method with additional principles and tools. You start the Diamond\/Loop by looking at your DCQs to see what kind of direction they point you in and start creating post-it notes to decide what additional related questions you have, which tools might be appropriate to try, and what you want to learn in order to make progress during this Diamond\/Loop\/Iteration.<\/p>\r\n

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There are many general categories of divergent techniques to choose from and many different sources of specific tools from within those categories. Brainstorming, for example, is a general method for teams or individuals to create a large number of diverse ideas. But there are many specific tools from different organizations that give details such as whether you use post-it notes or digital collaboration, whether the brainstorming session is facilitated, whether there are creativity-enhancing activities, how much time, whether or not there is music, whether participants write their contributions quietly on their own or piggyback on each other\u2019s contributions, rules of participant interactions and many other aspects of how to get the most out of the brainstorming session. Similarly, there are dozens of different ways to do research, observe and interview customers. In this workbook, I suggest you include, as a minimum<\/strong>, Tool #2 and Tool #3 (Please watch the ECLD YouTube videos I created for you) but you are not limited to only these tools and can be guided by your curiosity and proactivity.<\/p>\r\n

Tool #2 is a divergent Observation tool that uses journaling to help you observe yourself, your interests, your habits, your use of time, your reactions and your self-talk. In particular, Tool #2 helps you document which activities you really like (or hate) and want to include (or exclude) in your career-related design specifications and canvases in Assignment #2. Tool #3 is a divergent Research tool that includes using various free on-line websites that offer advice on personality, values and interests that might help you with your career choices.<\/p>\r\n

Once you\u2019ve used a variety of divergent methods and tools to generate ideas, post-it notes, information, data and options you\u2019ll enter the convergent phase where you want to move this information around and play with it using good visualization techniques. You can re-arrange your post-it notes in a number of ways to look for patterns and gain insights. Which of your strengths give you the greatest sustainable competitive advantage? Which of your weaknesses are the greatest threats to your career? Which of your interests or values are most suitable for pursuing in a job, side-hustle or start-up? Is travel more important than salary or autonomy more important than flexibility? Are there certain things that must be included in your career? I like to use a number of different 2 x 2 matrices to help me visualize things, but you may want to try other convergent visualization techniques. Tool #4 gives you a few different commonly used methods for condensing and conveying information to others such as SWOT diagram, T-shaped profile, Customer Profile Canvas and USP.<\/p>\r\n

These tools should help you refine your career-related search parameters and give you a clearer sense of direction, or at least highlight things you still need to discover like where you want to live, whether you prefer working indoors or out, at a big or small company, a fast-paced environment or more stable and long-range planning organization, etc.<\/p>\r\n

Trying to figure all this out on your own, inside your own head, is difficult. Working with a design team using the Crazy Quilt Principle in a spirit of collaboration and candor will help you brainstorm, ask deeper questions, recognize patterns and come up with alternatives. The team can help you determine if your revised DCQs are significantly better than the starting ones and identify whether your documentation of the process makes sense.<\/p>\r\n

\"Diagram<\/p>\r\n

Finally, in putting together your Assignment #2 Report, don\u2019t forget to answer the 5 key questions about whether you have used good visualization techniques, found insights, practised building your principles and attitudes, made progress and have crafted good DCQs to start the next Loop\/Iteration. Be sure to include Tool #11 \u2013 Self-Reflection, which is designed to help reinforce your learning and ensure that you are getting good practice at applying specific entrepreneurial principles, skills and attitudes during your experiential learning.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Tool #2: <\/strong>Observe Yourself by Journaling to Identify Career-Related Activities of Interest<\/strong><\/h2>\r\n

Watch and Start Using<\/em><\/strong> Tool <\/em>#<\/em>2 \u2013 Building Your Dashboard (16:08)<\/em><\/p>\r\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/M910aKaQSNE\r\n

This tool could take a couple weeks, so I urge you to get started on it right away.<\/p>\r\n

Searching requires lots of divergent data. If you\u2019re trying to discover what interests you, then get out there, experience plenty of things, and observe your emotional responses to them. However, it\u2019s hard to keep track of more than 20 things without writing them down either in a journal or post-it notes or a dashboard of some sort.<\/p>\r\n

Buy a journal that you like and enjoy spending time with. I suggest something small enough to carry around easily on the bus and on plane trips (mine are around 7\u201d x 9\u201d x 1\u201d). You can use this journal for a wide range of observations including the things you spend your time on, your self-talk and your emotional reactions to things as well as to document your thoughts around design challenges, goals and insights discovered along the way.<\/p>\r\n

In this particular tool, we are using the journal to observe and track the things that impact your energy, engagement, flow and happiness level over time. You don\u2019t have to be formal with 1-10 ratings if that doesn\u2019t fit your style, but you should track the things that make you happy and train yourself to notice and pay attention to your happiness. Use all the various nuances of emotional states such as joy, thrill, contentment, satisfaction, excitement, pleasure, euphoria, flourishing, well-being and meaning rather than only a single term like \u2018happiness\u2019. You can and should also track what makes you unhappy, but don\u2019t let that be the focus of your writing. You want to focus on the positive motivations around values and happiness.<\/p>\r\n

What things, activities, objects and people make you engaged, energized and\/or happy? Why do they \u2018make you\u2019 that way? Use the \u20185 Whys\u2019 to dig deeper and try to develop insights into what makes you happy. Can you find a way to add more of these things\/activities\/people to your career and life?<\/p>\r\n

You are looking for things that affect your career-related design challenge. [Everything in this course should be USEFUL to you, or you are not doing it correctly.] If working in a team or talking with other people gives you engagement and happiness, then you know that you want a career that involves teamwork. If, on the other hand, you hate group meetings and get flow and engagement by working alone on a report, then you want a career with greater autonomy. All the data you collect in this tool should be useful toward helping you refine your design challenge and get closer to your goals.<\/p>\r\n

Be sure that you break your activities and time increments down into small enough chunks. For example, let\u2019s say that school work does not bring energy or engagement one day. So What? How does that impact your career-related DCQ? Do you want to avoid a job where you have to read? Or write? Or work with other people? Or do you just hate school so much that you dislike all aspects of everything associated with it but might love doing these things if they were associated with a job? If you break things down into small enough time increments (e.g. 1 hour) you may discover that some aspects of school work (e.g. reading and writing reports) bring you engagement and flow, but other aspects (e.g. working with certain individuals) make you unhappy.<\/p>\r\n

Not everything will impact your career-related design challenge.<\/p>\r\n

Let\u2019s say you love spending time with your dog. So what? Does that affect your career in some way? Do you want a career working with dogs? Or perhaps you want to work in an office environment where people bring their dogs? Or perhaps this has absolutely nothing to do with your career. Similarly, you may love spending time with your mom, but since she cannot join you at work, you may decide that this observation does not affect your career-related design challenge.<\/p>\r\n

You can think of this tool as accomplishing several purposes. First of all, you are training your mindset of curiosity and developing the positive habit of focusing on your happiness. Just thinking about your happiness, and remembering the things that make you happy, makes most people happier. Every evening, list 3 different things that made you happy that day or that you are grateful for.<\/p>\r\n

As I said before, you should also track what things, activities or people make you unhappy. But don\u2019t focus on the unhappiness itself. Focus on what you can do to remove these things or re-frame them in a way that does<\/em> make you happy. Use the \u20185 Whys\u2019 to get at what\u2019s really<\/em> causing the unhappiness and see if the root cause is not the actual thing\/activity\/person, but rather a core belief. Later in this program, we\u2019ll help you try to come up with positive self-talk statements to \"""\"re-frame these negative beliefs into a positive. For example, instead of saying \u201cavoid being in meetings with A\u201d, you can say \u201cI try to only go to meetings that involve people I trust and respect.\u201d You want your positive value-oriented motivation system to guide you toward a value and help you focus on good things, instead of your negative disvalue motivation system causing you to simply avoid or run away from things, like a snake.<\/p>\r\n

You can also use this journal for other purposes like helping you analyze your inner dialogue, thoughts, ideas, goals, and values. You can use it as a notebook to track things you want to remember later, like To Do lists or important things you want to remember (like where that awesome restaurant in Venice was). A journal is different from a diary. A diary focuses on documenting daily events by date. A journal is more like a laboratory notebook. You\u2019re running experiments, taking data and measuring feedback.<\/p>\r\n

Having a journal will help you track what you spend your time doing. Track the time you spend doing different activities during the day and categorize them by your Wheel of Life. For example, how much of your time is spent doing social media, watching shows, hanging out, doing school-related or family-related activities etc.? Which values are you pursuing during these activities? Do you see any contradictions between what you say your values are and the actual things you spend time on? Do you like the status quo or would you like to change the balance?<\/p>\r\n

When deciding what to document in your journal, it helps to know if you are merely tweaking your life or looking for a major change. You need to figure out what might be important to your design challenges and track those things that matter.<\/p>\r\n

If you care about cash in your business, for example, you need to closely track it with some kind of accounting\/finance system. If you care about your retirement savings or ability to buy a home, then you need to track your finances and make career and life decisions based on that information. If you care about your weight, you should monitor your exercise, eating habits, weight and overall health. If you don\u2019t care about your savings (or weight) because the status quo is good, then you don\u2019t need to track those things very closely. In most cases you need to closely track and potentially hire a professional to assist you in these critical components of your security, prosperity and happiness.<\/p>\r\n

If you care about doing work you love, you should track those activities, things or considerations that you want embedded in your career. Most people agree that these would include engagement, energy, flow and happiness. You can, and should, consider adding or changing categories to something more appropriate to your design challenge. Here\u2019s a sample dashboard for you to consider for collecting data. You can also download a free template to use at designingyour.life:<\/p>\r\n

\"Various<\/p>\r\n

<\/span>[NOTE: Be sure to break your activities down into relatively small time increments with only a single activity<\/span>! <\/span>For example \u2018doing schoolwork\u2019 is not very helpful in identifying things you want in your career, whereas \u2018reading and understanding complicated things\u2019 or \u2018writing reports\u2019 or \u2018meeting with group members on zoom\u2019 are all potentially career-related activities that you may want to include or avoid in your life.]<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Tool #3: Research Your Personality, Values & Interests<\/strong><\/h2>\r\n

Watch & Use<\/em><\/strong> Tool <\/em>#<\/em>3 \u2013 Research your Personality, Values & Interests (13:47)<\/em><\/p>\r\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/cEslcmxjKoY\r\n

This divergent thinking set of research guides helps you develop a broader perspective about yourself and helps you identify information\/data to include to your career-related design challenge assignments. There are hundreds of potential tests, assessments, questionnaires, frameworks, inventories, scales and instruments for helping you better understand who you are, what makes you tick and what a good career might entail. Why not benefit from a few?<\/p>\r\n

Your most stable characteristics are called your traits or personality. Your beliefs, values, interests and attitudes are more open to change through conscious practice. Researchers normally try to measure these things by asking you to self-rate your preferences or whether you strongly agree or strongly disagree with various statements in a questionnaire or survey. Most surveys suggest that you fill them out rather quickly to get at your subconscious beliefs and most honest assessment of where you currently are instead of where you think you\u2019d like to be. Each research tools uses different assessment frameworks to give you a different viewpoint on your interests, career matches, personality, values, beliefs, etc.<\/p>\r\n

I suggest that you pick 1 or 2 tests from each of the 3 categories (perhaps 5 tests in total) and see if you learn anything new about yourself and your career direction.<\/p>\r\n

Even if you already have a fairly detailed knowledge of your primary job search direction (e.g. lawyer, family business, real estate agent) you should see if these tools help you refine this search (e.g. what size of company? What kind of working vibe do you want? Where do you want to live?). If not, then perhaps you can apply these tools to your side-hustle or volunteer-related career challenges to help you grow your human and social capital (e.g. finding a social cause you want to get involved in, an advocacy website to start-up, or a professional association to join).<\/p>\r\n

If you are starting with a vague DCQ, you don\u2019t have well-defined career interests, or are struggling with too few or too many interesting directions for your career-related design challenge, then you will probably benefit from trying several additional research tools from the list. I suggest you keep taking tests as long as you are still discovering new things about yourself. Stop when they seem to repeat the results they are giving you. Like everything in life, you get out what you put in. If you need direction, then here is an opportunity to put in the effort to try to find the help you need.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Career Interest Assessments<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n

Ratings and Lists of Career-Aptitude Tests<\/p>\r\n\r\n