Leo Burnett
Design-thinking research at Leo Burnett with its chief innovation officer: interviews at every level, a company-wide workshop, a 30-page report.
At a glance
- Role
- Innovation consultant, Experience Institute apprentice
- When
- June to August 2014
- Where
- Chicago
- Team
- Mark Renshaw, chief innovation officer; Carey, SVP strategic partnerships
- Scope
- Research, interviews at every level, a company-wide workshop and a report
Results
- HundredsIdeas and prototypes from the company-wide workshop
- 30 pagesReport of findings and recommendations
- 22 pagesResearch notes synthesized into hypotheses
Summer 2014. After a permaculture farm and a typhoon zone, my third apprenticeship put me on the innovation team at Leo Burnett in Chicago, working with Mark Renshaw, the chief innovation officer, and Carey, the SVP of strategic partnerships, on one question: how might we foster creativity and collaboration in the workplace?
Get lost first
Leo Burnett was a 78-year-old agency with 1,900 people around the world, the house behind Tony the Tiger and Earth Hour. A culture that size is always catching up with the world outside it. My assignment for the first weeks was to get lost in the world of creativity, collaboration and innovation. I read everything I could find, especially the people who disagreed with each other, and boiled 22 pages of notes down to a set of hypotheses: the environment people work in, whether leaders visibly model collaboration, and the habits a culture rewards.
The one that hit me hardest was fear. People decide they aren’t creative, and then repeat that story until it’s true. I knew that one. I used to be scared to speak, and I’d taken it apart one step at a time.
Interns to the C-suite
I framed the project with design thinking and interviewed people at every level, from interns to the C-suite. It ended with an interactive workshop for every level and department that produced hundreds of ideas and prototypes, and a 30-page report of what I found and what to try. Leo Burnett kept working with the Experience Institute on its workplace culture after I left.
Farms in the boardroom
A year earlier I’d been shoveling compost. Here I got to bring what farms and forests had taught me into a boardroom, in a way that was useful to everyone in it: the healthiest systems are diverse, connected and a little messy, and they let new things grow at the edges. It was the last apprenticeship of the year. After it, I went back to Nicaragua to build.
What I did
- Framed the project with Mark Renshaw, the chief innovation officer, as one design question: how might we foster creativity and collaboration in the workplace?
- Read the research, especially the people who disagreed with each other, and boiled 22 pages of notes down to working hypotheses
- Ran empathy research across the agency, interviewing people from interns to the C-suite
- Turned what I heard into a short list of opportunity areas
- Designed and facilitated a workshop across every level and department that produced hundreds of ideas and prototypes
- Wrote a 30-page report of the process, the findings and a phased action plan
Deliverables
- A set of research hypotheses on workplace creativity and collaboration
- Interview findings and opportunity areas, from interns to the C-suite
- A company-wide ideas and prototyping workshop
- A 30-page report with a phased action plan
Skills
- Design thinking for organizational culture
- Interviewing across a hierarchy, intern to C-suite
- Turning research into opportunity areas
- Workshop design and facilitation
- Writing findings into a phased action plan
What I learned
Most people who say they aren’t creative are scared, not short of ideas. Take the fear apart one step at a time and the ideas come.
Related work
Experience Institute
Founding student
A self-designed graduate year at the Experience Institute, 2013 to 2014: three apprenticeships in Australia, the Philippines and Chicago, and one question.
Chicago, Australia, the Philippines, 2013 to 2014
The Windship
Procurement, building, storytelling
After Typhoon Haiyan, three months in Leyte helping build the Windship, a typhoon shelter of tires, earth and bottles, with a village and Earthship.
Batug, Leyte, the Philippines, 2014
Clear Springs Sanctuary
Apprentice, then planner
A Permaculture Design Certificate at Geoff Lawton’s Zaytuna Farm, then the business plan and financial model for a retreat center in New South Wales.
New South Wales, Australia, 2013