Case Study | DWS – Kaishin Chu

Learning Experience & Organizational Culture

HOW DWS LEVERAGED CREATIFIC'S INNOVATIVE & HOLISTIC LEARNING EXPERIENCES TO FUEL CRITICAL-THINKING MINDSET

BACKGROUND

High tech manufacturer of woollen yarns
Factory located in Dalat, Vietnam
Challenged with need for more agile innovation while management staff needed to develop foundational skills to better innovate, troubleshoot and think critically
Request for workshop sessions to stretch out to every other week
16 participants – management staff from production, office, and the multinational executive team
English as second-language with varying levels

GOALS

Virtual remote training
Help management team learn and develop their ability to do Critical Thinking to improve innovation capacities

STRATEGY

Critical Thinking is a mindset (a complex combination of internal personal skills and behaviours) that can only be truly cultivated through the development of a higher level of self-awareness gained through knowledge and mentorship. Creatific worked to pinpoint the challenges the management staff faced when trying to approach and do critical thinking.

Once we identified the deficiencies, we strategically designed and developed live the workshop’s learning experience to embed cultivating awareness and understanding to exponentially increase the learner’s ability to think critically.

RESULTS

Participants applied learnings immediately. We embedded self-awareness mastery to aid with opening up limited perspectives; deepened understanding of the individual psychological biases that affect our ability to make the good and unbiased decisions required for better critical thinking. We showed learners how to apply and practice critical thinking in daily life to cultivate and embed the mindset.

Results from 14 Respondents

"Learning transfer has been more successful than other workshops. Previous workshops (competitors) didn't provide the time to practice, follow up sessions (group coaching)."

Lan Anh Thi Nguyễn

DWS Vietnam - Sudwolle Group

IMPACT

As a result of the training programme, the participants demonstrated personal and professional growth in a number of areas, skills development, enhanced connection (department and cross functional), boosted confidence to continue cultivating their skills more. As part of the learning process, participants were able to struggle with a challenge, and then experience how doing it different created impactful insights and learning. Impact was measured through survey questions, reflective questions (coaching self-awareness for generative impact), and coaching senior management to observe and help lead by example.

SOLUTIONS

6-session custom workshop
Bi-weekly sessions spread over 11 weeks
Learning pod activity for in-between weeks
Remote Zoom delivery
Use of Miro Board for live collaborative engagement and group learning, both in-session and out of session
Embed self awareness and related skills development through facilitated activities and group coaching
Design surveys to assess learning impact and growth

Premium Add-Ons provided included Learning Pods, Post Wrap up Mentoring Panel, email and virtual collaboration board communication support for learners.

Additional Add-ons available (not applied): Facilitated Learning Pods: coach-facilitator meeting with individual pods to further coach and mentor leadership skills within the group, showing how they can lead to help one another; Virtual Office Hours: for learners to drop in with questions.

PROCESS + TIMELINE

TOGETHER WE LEARNED

WHAT WORKED WELL

Learning pods (dedicated groups to practice and support the learnings both within and outside the workshops)
Check-in with senior management to challenge them with areas where they could lead by example
Reflective learning methods
Break-out room coaching
Bi-lingual content on slides worked for the majority of participants. A couple of participants would have benefited from live Vietnamese captioning due to English language levels
Beneficial to have senior management leaders participating as equals and not as superiors; this could have been enhanced with some leadership mentoring/coaching prior to create bigger impact.

WHAT CAN BE IMPROVED

Supporting language challenges with live AI translation captioning services to allow for more agile iterations of training delivery to meet user needs in the moment.
Translated handouts for participants made available prior to the session to assist with language hurdles
Training spread over shorter time-frame
Further support participants in their learning journey with virtual office hours for Q&A with mentors
More localised examples to deepened learning activities
Creative Mindset and Collaborative Leadership programmes to take place prior to this CT training, as they will help build capacities for better self-awareness before diving into more complex mindsets and methodologies in the problem-solving frameworks
Additional benefits can be gained with pre-workshop training to help senior executive team frame how they can best participate as an equal through a shift mindset and behaviour, equipped to mentor fellow participants outside of the ‘classroom’

SKILLS & TOOLS APPLIED

Design strategy & planning
Service design thinking and doing
Project management
Discovery sessions with various stakeholder groups to determine scope of work and facilitate user research
Define stakeholders groups, needs, challenges, opportunities for immediate and future reference
Create pre and post-training surveys to assess learners understanding, psychological needs/limits affecting ability to think critically
Design learning experience and curriculum via experience (service) blueprint, include onboarding and offboarding
Present findings and recommendations to executive sponsors to co-create ownership prior to delivery
Deliver training facilitation and coaching awareness and personal development
Facilitate Learning Pods and agile development of some reflective homework activities to embed learning
Mid way client check-in to determine what pivots or iterations might be needed
Group and team coaching and mentoring of both learners and executive team
Post workshop review to evaluate efficacy and how to better measure impact for future projects
Prepare and present recommendations with roadmap, along with comparative survey data on levels of growth and impact

SLACK for our remote team communications
ClickUp to manage project
Zoom for all meetings and workshop sessions
Miro for our team’s remote collaboration to collect insights, define needs and strategy, prototyping learning experience, map out content
Keynotes to create slide deck
Miro to engage learners with interactive learning activities, reflective homework and check-ins
Zoom main room and breakout room activities
Google Forms for surveys and assessments
Youtube to host session recordings for learners to rewatch with CC in English
WordPress page to host training materials and downloads