Post-Me-Up Innovation Hub
Communication strategy to cultivate innovation culture in risk management.
Strategic Design
2023
Our project challenge was to consider, examine and design a strategy and key activities for establishing an innovation culture within the risk division of Macquarie Group.
Observing the communication challenges between silos in the risk division, we designed an innovation culture through initiatives of a 'Post Me Up' activity and 'Out of the Box' innovation hub, aimed at improving collaboration and problem-solving opportunities.
Project Overview
Background and User research
Interviews
Prototyping
User testing
Slide deck presentation deliverable at Macquarie
Role & Contributions
Timeline: August 2023 - November 2023 (14 weeks)
Tools: Miro, Adobe Illustrator, Procreate
Subject: University coursework (as part of a group) for Major Project in Design Innovation/Strategic Design course
Collaborators: Primetta, Sindhu B, Charu, Serena
Process
Problem & Objective
'Divisional silos' have been associated with inefficiencies, missed opportunities, and hindered innovation.
Within the multifaceted Macquarie Group, spanning from banking, financial advisory, asset management, and other key sectors, such silos can inadvertently obstruct the free flow of information and ideas. We aim to provide cultural innovations in communication among Macquarie Group’s specialist functional risk divisions to improve a seamless flow of information to foster resilience, efficiency and cohesion.
Initial research stage.
Engaging in a Q&A session with Macquarie Group allowed us to gain a better understanding into the operations of the risk division and helped uncover the underlying root causes of existing communication gaps. Despite challenges in finding suitable interviewees, we conducted four interviews with subject matter experts to delve into industry trends and assess the advantages and disadvantages of silos. Because if silos hinder innovation, why do the they still persist?
What Macquarie Group has to say…
“There are significant variations in communication channels among different teams and divisions. Hence, a tendency to rely on informal networks between line one and two of defence.”
“Potential for information asymmetry and lack of accountability.”
“The customers of the risk division are the business units and not external facing customers.”
Using affinity mapping, to analyse and identify emerging themes from our semi-structured interviews.
4 key findings.
01 Transparency in communication and data between the risk’s division specialist functional divisions and business units in necessary to optimise efficiency of work.
02 Transparency in data must be done with consideration of possible privacy breach and the safeguarding of sensitive data.
03 Frequency of silos in other organisations is high, therefore it is necessary to evaluate if the existing siloed framework of risk management hinders the pursuit of innovative opportunities.
04 Cross-disciplinary communication includes 360 feedback.
Technological vs. Cultural Innovation.
Our literature review and research identified key challenges, including inefficient communication between risk management departments, shortcomings in documentation, and a lack of data transparency.
Feedback from Macquarie Group during our mid-session presentation indicated that implementing a unified communication tool at the risk management level was undesirable. Therefore, we concluded that investing in innovative communication cultural initiatives would be more effective in bridging specialist functional divisions than technological solutions like UCaaS and a centralised data platform.
As our opportunity space, we decided to implement cultural strategic initiatives with well-defined communication and collaboration networks, supported by technological infrastructure, to enhance cross-departmental communication.
How might Macquarie Group optimise communication between specialist functional risk divisions?
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Macquarie Group's risk division want to make informed decisions efficiently, but faces challenges due to the need to navigate through various teams and divisions that utilise different communication channels or informal networks. Without a robust communication strategy and structure, opportunities for collaboration are hindered, leading to reported shortcomings in documentation and data transparency.
Design Ideation and Prototyping.
In developing our cultural solution, we initiated the process with a brainstorming session, drawing inspiration from 3 proven methodologies identified during our case study research.
1 A temporary transfer of one employee to another department, ‘secondment’ was observed to offer beneficial outcomes such as exposure to new perspectives, collaborative experiences, and skills generated, leading to an increase in work productivity.
2 3M implemented a 15% Culture, whereby employees are encouraged to allocate a portion of their working time to innovate new ideas and engage in creative thinking by incentivising collaboration and promoting cross-departmental groups.
3 Jeff Gothelf’s Balancing the Team principal states that "balanced teams choose the best parts of Lean, Agile, and Design Thinking and apply them as needed in a tight collaboration".
During ideation, I jot down ideas to address the siloed framework that impedes efficient and streamlined communication across divisional silos, hinders effective problem solving, innovation, and informed decision making. How can we enhance communication and collaboration efforts among RMG divisional silos to promote innovation, thereby optimises work efficiencies and project turnover rate. To facilitate key decisions moving forward, we narrowed down our ideas through a decision matrix and SWOT analysis.
Next, key decisions prior to user testing.
User testing & addressing the feedback.
In order to validate and ensure the feasibility of our design concept, we conducted user testing with peers. Our approach involved utilizing storyboards and scenario-based enactments as prototypes. Through this process, we found 3 key insights.
“This is what they have to say.”
01 Lack of control
Compared to ‘Round We Go’, ‘Post Me Up’ and ‘Out of the Box’ received positive feedback facilitating an effective communication space to collaboratively build on employees’ ideas by offering workers more control since engagement is encouraged, but not mandatory.
02 Unclear data collection
The challenges we identified encompass considerations regarding the collection, storage, and exploration of data from the Post-it wall within the innovation hub, as well as determining the frequency of meetings.
03 Consideration of minimising workflow disruption
The "Post Me Up" and "Out of the Box" methods were found to be desirable for optimising communication among silos by fostering collaborative knowledge sharing, facilitating informed decision-making, and mitigating information asymmetry. As these approaches do not heavily disrupt workflow, implementing them within RMG is deemed feasible.
The solution - final design offering.
“Our design offering will focus on creating spaces for information sharing, cross-divisional collaborative work, optimising workflow, streamlining communication and promoting a cultural transformation.”
Post-Me-Up
Out-Of-The-Box Innovation Hub
The implementation of 'Post Me Up' and 'Out of the Box' includes the following features and flow. Post Me Up encourages casual discussion through a tangible Post-it wall activity. Following it, Out of the Box promotes cross-functional collaboration through an Innovation Hub.
Reflection & afterthoughts.
01 A lot of firsts and challenges in obtaining primary data
This design project was my first experience working in a larger team of five to provide a solution for an organisation, which required a comprehensive grasp of Macquarie's strategic objectives and needs through extensive high-level research. While defining the problem space, understanding the operational dynamics within Macquarie's risk division, its interplay with various business units, and team dynamics within RMG, alongside their existing communication modalities, posed significant challenges.
As a team we intially did a lot of research into case studies and opportunities on how technology has been implemented to bridge the communication gap. However, during our mid-session presentation to Macquarie to present our findings, we found how it was not desirable for the organisation. Therefore, to address the feedback we had to pivot from an initial technological solution to a cultural solution and redo more research on cultural innovation in the communication landscape. Consequently, this hindered our ideation process to be later than we anticipated. If we had more time, I would have definitely conducted more user testing with Macquarie's risk division to ensure the user flow of our cultural innovation is suitable with their current workflow.
02 Design is indeed not a linear process
