Project: Bromford Lab Service Stand-up
Client: Bromford
Sector: Social Housing
Role: DesignOps Lead | Subject Matter Expert (SME)
Design Brief: Established in 2014 at one of the largest Housing Associations in the UK, Bromford Lab was one of the first in-house innovation units to be set up within the UK social housing sector. During the years that followed, the Lab has built a solid reputation as a source of inspiration and ideas (both internally and externally) and also as the go-to team for coordinating innovation activity and oversing tests and pilots at Bromford.
However, in early 2019 we reflected that over the past couple of years Lab projects had become less speculative and less radical in nature and more focused on continuous improvement and transformation. It is not uncommon for in-house innovation units to experience such a shift in focus as their reputation grows within an organisation and demand for their service increases. However, the question we found ourselves asking was – if we are focusing more and more on continuous improvement and transformational activity, who’s left to envisage, explore and fulfil more radical innovation?
A piece of work was initiated to address this shift and bring us back in-line with the original objectives of the Lab. The work was based around the following design challenge: How might we balance a need to support and invigorate continuous improvement across the organisation, with the capacity and broadness of mind to meaningfully work on problems of the future?
What I did: I took a lead role in guiding the team through design activity which sought to both standardise the Bromford Lab service offer and introduce consistent approaches to our Innovation and Design work at Bromford.
I hosted regular ‘designing the lab’ sessions as a vehicle for taking both an introspective look at how we currently work and what we work on, and an out-ward facing look at the challenges faced by colleagues as well as understanding the unmet needs of the wider business. Over a period of 12 months, I led the team through a journey of reflection and codesign activity which resulted in a refreshed service offer based around three horizons of innovation and 4 key services elements which will frame the work of the Lab moving forward:
- Review – Review existing or proposed solutions and processes, to ensure consistency with our design principles and identify any potential opportunities for innovation;
- Vision – Establish a vision and framework for a service area or new service or product through ideation and collaborative problem solving;
- Guide – Promote and guide continuous improvement and step change activity with easy to follow project templates for high quality, self-directed outcomes;
- Drive – High opportunity/risk items needing full innovation and design support through problem definition, ideation, prototyping and testing and piloting (an iterative approach in a safe-to-fail sandbox).
At the heart of the new service offer is a belief that for innovation and design activity to be sustainable at Bromford, we must democratise it; supporting colleagues and teams with a light to medium touch in order to undertake their own continuous improvement and transformation activity, freeing up our limited resources to concentrate on higher risk, higher yield, radically different activity – balancing the need for short-term gains to support business as usual with the ultimate goal of achieving longer-term gains which inform future strategy.
Outcomes: Based on our current vision we now have a refreshed service offer and a solid plan of action to enable us to develop our 4 key service elements and ensure that we remain disruptive, confident, trusted, evidence-based, curious, and questioning.
By framing our work around four key service elements we are better able to demonstrate our impact and prevent scope creep by breaking design activity up into constituent parts; often leading with a ‘review’ of existing practice, moving to the provision of a ‘vision’ for change and only continuing on to ‘guide’ colleagues through further design activity such as discovery, ideation, prototypes, tests and pilots if there is an appetite from the business to do so.
There will always be a need to change, develop and flex our service offer in line with the changing needs of the business and we will continue to iterate our approach to innovation and design at Bromford over the coming years in accordance with the foundations laid down in this work.
Related Blog Posts:
Relaunching Bromford Lab – Jan 2020
Designing the Lab: An away-day roundup – May 2019
Above: Bromford Lab mission statement co-produced with team members.
Above: Diagram outlining the ‘Three Horizons of Innovation’ which underpin the Bromford Lab service offer.
Above: Screenshot of Bromford Lab’s x4 products. Taken from bromfordlab.com on 31 January 2020
Above: Screenshot of case studies relating to the Bromford Lab product, Guide. Taken from bromfordlab.com on 31 January 2020
Above: Screenshot of Tool Kit links. These will evolve over the coming months to include comprehensive how-to guides, activities and templates. Taken from bromfordlab.com on 31 January 2020
Simon Penny 