Exploration overview

Exploration overview


Exploration overview

The day after the Lift-off Workshop is day one of the 100-Day Challenge. When the team begins to make progress on their goal through rapid experimentation, intense collaboration and disciplined implementation. During the exploration, leaders gain insights into the systemic issues that need to be tackled to sustain and scale the impact that the team generates in the initial 100-Days.

What success looks like at the end of the Exploration Landmark

  1. The 100 days of exploration will give the team a new and powerful experience of collaboration, innovation and implementation. The team will view this as fun and enriching. They will be thinking: why don’t we always work this way?  
  2. The system will be performing at a higher level – which will translate into significant progress towards the goal the team set. Note that success is not contingent on achieving the goal, since the goal by design borders on the impossible. 
  3. New insights about the system will have emerged, which will be helpful in developing plans to sustain and build on the performance gains.

Please note that all three elements of success are critical. So for example, if the goal is achieved, but there are no system insights that emerged, it is likely that the goal was not ambitious enough and did not require any experimentation. If the team had a horrible experience during the 100 days, it is likely that progress towards the goal was made by ‘strong leaders’ demanding better results which will not be sustained beyond the project or at best the tenure of the leader.

Watch the video to see the essence of Exploration.

Key outputs

  • A few experiments, innovations, and practices that the team implemented, an assessment of their impact, and insights that emerged from these. This could be organised in a table that gets updated periodically. 
  • Tracking chart that shows progress against the goal, daily, weekly, or monthly.
  • Work Plan that has evolved from version 1.0 developed developed at the Lift-off workshop the working version the team is using towards the end of the 100 days of implementation  
  • Survey assessments of the experience of the team, taken at the start of the journey, before the middle, and towards the end.

Remember the enabling environment we talked about earlier? The Exploration phase is designed and facilitated with this enabling environment in mind.  

Lift-off Enabling Environment

                           

Inclusive decision-making – When decisions are made during team meetings, everyone is invited to throw in ideas, and all ideas are considered on merit. And the team often uses voting to make decisions.

                                 

Team members are encouraged to deal openly with conflict in meetings and to have tough conversations with each other and with leaders.  The mentors are coached to be open to these conversations and to be transparent when they are asked questions.

                           

Mentors practice playing an  Enabling Leadership role:  mentoring, empowering, and supporting the front-line team to take charge, from idea to implementation. 

                          

The urgency of achieving the ambitious goal in 100 days increases innovation and the willingness to experiment.  Team members tend to ignore ted-tape, try things quickly, work together in new ways and get more comfortable with experiments that sometimes fail.  Necessity is the mother of invention.

Thought starter reflection questions

Jot down thoughts on these questions – to the extent they are relevant to your experience at the session:
  • When did the mood in the event shift from “why are we here?” to “this could be interesting – I am excited to be part of this.” What triggered this shift? 
  • When did you have to go “off script” on the agenda or to change the agenda? What triggered this? What did you adjust? How did it go?
  • What was most surprising to you at the event?
  • What new insights did you gain about the issue at hand, and about the way leaders in the system interacted with each other?
  • Where did the conversation get stuck? What got it unstuck?
  • How would you characterise the level of trust among participants in the meeting? To what extent did this shift as the meeting progressed? To what do you attribute this shift, if indeed it happened?

Thought starter...

Reflection Questions 

Jot down thoughts on these questions – to the extent they are relevant to your experience at the session:

  • When did the mood in the event shift from “why are we here?” to “this could be interesting – I am excited to be part of this.” What triggered this shift? 
  • When did you have to go “off script” on the agenda or to change the agenda? What triggered this? What did you adjust? How did it go?
  • What was most surprising to you at the event?
  • What new insights did you gain about the issue at hand, and about the way leaders in the system interacted with each other?
  • Where did the conversation get stuck? What got it unstuck?
These are 100-Day Challenge Mentors. 

They did some work before you received the Challenge Note. This included:

  • Writing the Challenge Note, and making sure that the leaders of all the organisations represented on the team are comfortable with it – and committed to supporting the work of the team
  • Helping the leaders of these organisation recruit you and your colleagues to the team
  • Gathering some baseline data and other information that will help you and your teammates set your 100-Day goal and develop your plan.
  • Making sure all the preparations are made for a successful Lift-Off workshop, when you and your teammates will meet and get your 100-Day Challenge started. This includes venue, facilitation support, food, swags, comms, travel arrangements and whatever else is needed.

 

Mentors will participate in all or part of the Lift-Off Workshop, mostly at the start to provide context and answer questions, and at the end to give you and your teammates feedback about the goal and plan you develop.

During the 100 days following the Lift-Off Workshop, here’s what the Mentors will do:  

  • They will check in every two weeks with the team leaders to see how the team is doing and what support they and the team need.
  • They will keep other organisational leaders informed and engaged during the 100 days, and pull them in to help as needed.
  • They will participate in the last part of the Refuelling Workshop, halfway through the 100 days, to see what additional support the team needs, and to begin to plan with the team for sustainability and scale-up.
  • They will work with the team at the Sustainability Workshop to finalise recommendations on sustaining the results and building on the work of the team.