We started our change programme, which we now refer to as ‘Spark’, in 2020. The firm was performing well and we were keen to ensure we stayed relevant and competitive. Spark was created as a framework for driving change, for the good of our clients and our people.
We knew these challenges, which ranged across cost pressures, turnaround times and managing complex legal processes, could not be tackled by select individuals working through them in a meeting room, so we took a different approach. The Spark programme focuses on creating a culture of employee-led change, in which our people and clients design solutions together. The Spark framework helps us set out our vision, uncover the real challenges, create ideas and deliver meaningful solutions that make an impact.
Here, we run through the steps in our Spark process and some of the lesson we’ve learned.
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Set a mission statement
When faced with a design decision, the engineering team at Williams Racing (the Formula One team) consistently ask themselves: “Will it make the car go faster?” If the answer is “no”, they won’t invest in that idea any further. This laser focus saves them from spending huge amounts of time developing ideas that won’t solve the fundamental issue. Embracing this idea at the beginning of a project, we come up with a mission statement to sum up what we want to achieve and make it clear to everyone from the outset. That will ideally be just one phrase in order to encapsulate our objective – for example: “How might we reduce the effort to deliver X service to our clients?” Our teams can then rally around that as a goal, much like Formula One teams.
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Gather insights
Spoiler alert! Innovation isn’t (only) about coming up with ideas. It’s about solving problems and, more importantly, solving the right problems by framing them in the correct context. That requires talking to clients about their experiences using your services.
In our experience, conducting five high-quality interviews with a diverse selection of clients will be sufficient to uncover 80% of all user journey issues. The important thing is to speak to clients that span a range of characteristics and learn about their experiences, not to seek reassurance you’re doing a good job already!
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Frame the problem
Insights from these interviews will highlight trends and patterns. The key to getting value from them is to frame high-value challenges as a ‘challenge statement’ that, if solved, would ‘move the needle’ against our mission statement. A challenge statement follows the format of: “How might we help the client understand the transaction process and what is expected from them throughout the transaction?” Identifying the challenge clearly is absolutely key.
Innovation and creativity profile tool Basadur, which helps identify people’s preferences in the innovation process, shows the legal sector is filled with professionals who are very good at picking solutions and implementing them – the risk is more around whether they are selecting the right solution to the wrong problem. The result is often a lot of failed ideas. If teams spend time up front understanding the problems better, they are more likely to solve them.
Innovation isn’t (only) about coming up with ideas. It’s about solving problems and, more importantly, solving the right problems by framing them in the correct context. That requires talking to clients about their experiences using your services
Rob Tyler, innovation manager, Cripps
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Generate ideas and prototype them with clients
Before putting pen to paper, it is valuable to see how other businesses solve similar challenges. We often look outside the sector for inspiration – for example, ideas to enhance our residential property service design took inspiration from tracking tools used by courier companies.
To spark (pardon the pun!) a diverse range of ideas, we then engage a mixed group of internal stakeholders and take them through an intense ideation activity where they are encouraged to look at the problem broadly and come up with potential solutions quickly. Team members will focus on a problem statement and then be prompted by a design constraint every minute, in order to craft a potential solution to the problem. For example: “What if we had to implement something tomorrow?”, or “what if we had a year to implement an idea?” As we work through the ideation process, the group will home in on and develop a couple of the proposed ideas and create a storyboard, which is shared with clients. The storyboard is a visual way of walking clients through how the ‘solution’ could work. This is a valuable step, because we can gather feedback from clients before investing any more time or money into them. While people are typically extremely nervous about presenting ideas in a rudimentary state, our experience is that clients are happy to be part of shaping solutions that will benefit them.
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Pitch for financial investment
Having presented potential solutions to our clients, we now understand which ones clients feel create value for them. It’s time to indicate the impact and effort needed to deliver the solution. Using a simple matrix that maps these two factors against one another will help identify opportunities that will generate immediate benefit (like granting access to Microsoft Word Online so lawyers can collaborate simultaneously on drafts) and those projects that need planning or expenditure (such as developing a new technology or role).
If you don’t already have budget for an initiative, this will be the time to pitch for it. Though extremely valuable, anecdotal evidence from clients is not always enough – nor is creating a theoretical ROI forecast. This is where creating a bias toward running experiments for all ideas is advisable. You can validate your assumptions and assertions quickly, signalling that you have a case to invest in the idea or sunset it before putting in any more time or money.
6. Identify the right technology/supplier
When it comes to delivering technology solutions, we’ve encountered challenges in developing a mechanism for matching tech to solution features and launching them quickly while generating business ownership.
We provide a copy of our storyboard and solution feature requirements to all prospective suppliers, allowing them to deliver a targeted demonstration of their product. Meanwhile, our team (who will be using the product) complete a feedback survey of objective and subjective responses. This generates a view of which product best delivers the solutions, as well as highlighting risks, user perceptions or other considerations.
Combined with an assessment of strategic, compliance, financial and technical fit, a recommendation is made to the business team, but the decision is theirs to make. We develop that ownership further by having them make any investment proposals to the board.
Indicate the impact and effort needed to deliver the solution. Using a simple matrix that maps these two factors against one another will help identify opportunities that will generate immediate benefit (like granting access to Microsoft Word Online so lawyers can collaborate simultaneously on drafts) and those projects that need planning or expenditure (such as developing a new technology or role)
Rob Tyler, innovation manager, Cripps
Delivery: be agile and embrace ‘Minimum Viable Product’ (MVP)
If delivering technology solutions has taught me one thing, it’s that the longer you develop solutions in a vacuum, the higher the likelihood of failure. That’s why you need to embrace a mind-set of doing rather than debating when aiming to ship a solution, as well as emphasising that progress is more important than perfection.
The longer you spend deciding what to do, creeping scope or endlessly trying to squash every bug, the higher the chance the opportunity to make an impact will pass you by. Be ruthless and reduce the scope of your solution to the essentials. Create solutions that do fewer things well, rather than lots of things poorly.
Once you have your minimal scope agreed, do not underestimate the assumptions made in it. We embrace agile methodologies to build or implement solutions directly with end users through delivery sprints. Not only does this method reduce the chances of misalignment due to assumptions, but it also makes your end user invest in the solution. They helped build it – they value having an input and they care about its success.
Life after launch
Your version one launch is a milestone, not a close date. Now that your solution is being used by people ‘in the wild’, you need to listen to the users and continually improve and evolve your solutions. Make sure you give your solutions time to bed in, and it’s down to you to decipher which feedback is a symptom of ‘change pain’ and which is valuable insight around something missing.
Embrace the concepts discussed earlier in this article: are enhancements and improvements masking a challenge? Do you need to validate a solution improvement request with an experiment before investing effort into delivering it?
Measurement framework
If done correctly, your solution will be solving a challenge and achieving the mission you set out at the beginning of the process. Try to understand how you will measure the impact of your changes and do not be afraid to set ambitious targets for your ideas.
Measuring the impact of solutions will provide you with an opportunity to celebrate the early wins, your people and progress. It will also indicate where you are off course and enable you to proactively change how your solution is scaling or evolving. Or, as Bruce Lee said it: “A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.”
Final thoughts
There are no certainties in business change or innovation (except that it’s difficult) – however using a rigorous, Spark-style process will help to identify the things worth investing your time in. Co-creating solutions with employees and clients hasn’t been easy, but it has allowed us to generate impactful and meaningful solutions – and any conversation with clients about the values, pains and opportunities of your service will never be wasted.