Quite often, these challenges prompt a knee-jerk reaction. Companies may install a temporary task force, rein in the project scope, push back deadlines, increase budgets, or heap on the workload to power through the backlog.

But there is another, much more promising response—learning by reflection. American inventor and electrical engineer, Thomas Alva Edison summarised his strive to create an incandescent light bulb like this: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

Here at the Bechtle Competence Centre for Digital Solutions, we have designed a solution dubbed the Reflection Room, which, on the one hand, allows people to reflect on specific issues, and on the other, helps them be more mindful and better embed mindfulness in their workdays, too. The practice centres on the employees themselves and on their own experience and expertise.

Think. Pair. Share.

The Reflection Room is a three-step process that builds on the think-pair-share learning technique. The first step is for individual employees to consider the following three questions: What are we doing right? (love it), What can’t stay the way it is? (change it), and What can we just as well do without? (leave it).

Employees may take pointers from or brainstorm along suggested topics (e.g. strategic development, collaboration, impact of my work) or questions (e.g. Why are we successful? What are we particularly good at? Where do we want to be? What have we done wrong? And why?). The results in each of the three categories are written down on digital sticky notes on a virtual whiteboard.

Dot voting and problem statement.

In the second step, employees present, collect and consolidate their results in groups of two, before eventually introducing them to the whole team in step three. The team then vote with dots to identify the most urgent issues, with each employee attaching a limited number of virtual dot stickers to the ones most important to them. Narrowing down the issues to tackle like this, our most recent session was able to condense an original list of 40 issues down to nine.

We then summarised each of these challenges in a succinct, one-sentence problem statement that informed a breakout session to deduce actions to take. After weeding through these once again by voting with dots, we ultimately arrived at one action point for each one of the nine top-priority issues.

We reiterate the same three steps every quarter, complementing the subjective sticky notes with objective data collected through a preparative survey. What happens in between Reflection Rooms can be summed up in three items:

1. Understand, experiment, improve.

The practice of actively reflecting on what’s going on enables us to better understand our colleagues, our team, and even ourselves, and we are encouraged to leverage the insights that we gained to inform continual change. It allows us to reinforce and channel the strengths that we have, as well as see and work on our weaknesses.

It’s important to understand that the Reflection Room is where we face the problem, and that we have to leave the room again to see if a potential solution actually works, and to what extent. This also means that, once a solution has been introduced, it’s essential to monitor its effect. Ideally, you can do this along defined hypotheses with objective KPIs.

2. Everyday mindfulness at work.

A recurring and multi-step process, the Reflection Room reminds employees to pause regularly and take a breather. It’s an exercise that helps make reflection a part of your daily routine.

For instance, an ideal result would be that after a meeting employees actively think about why that meeting failed to accomplish a desired outcome, or, say, why participants became agitated. A regular pause to think allows organisations and employees to learn to become more mindful of a given situation.

3. Creating a shared understanding.

Every employee sees the world through their own distinct pair of glasses, meaning everyone has a different view and understanding of the goings-on. Reflecting on and exchanging thoughts and perceptions help us put on our colleague’s shoes, see things through their eyes and make us more empathetic.

In a nutshell, the Reflection Room…

  • …helps companies develop and grow their business model.
  • …helps people understand errors that happened in past or ongoing projects, and think about how to address them and perhaps even tweak best practices for a given situation.
  • …helps colleagues get to the bottom of why their collaboration isn’t as it should be so they can actually do something about it, rather than just grin and bear it.

For the Digital Solutions Competence Centre, the Reflection Room has proved a successful way to continuously develop in a good direction, while improving awareness and communication. Naturally, this process isn’t one-size-fits-all, but it is adaptable to the varied realities in varied organisations.

Quite often, these challenges prompt a knee-jerk reaction. Companies may install a temporary task force, rein in the project scope, push back deadlines, increase budgets, or heap on the workload to power through the backlog.

But there is another, much more promising response—learning by reflection. American inventor and electrical engineer, Thomas Alva Edison summarised his strive to create an incandescent light bulb like this: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

Here at the Bechtle Competence Centre for Digital Solutions, we have designed a solution dubbed the Reflection Room, which, on the one hand, allows people to reflect on specific issues, and on the other, helps them be more mindful and better embed mindfulness in their workdays, too. The practice centres on the employees themselves and on their own experience and expertise.

Think. Pair. Share.

The Reflection Room is a three-step process that builds on the think-pair-share learning technique. The first step is for individual employees to consider the following three questions: What are we doing right? (love it), What can’t stay the way it is? (change it), and What can we just as well do without? (leave it).

Employees may take pointers from or brainstorm along suggested topics (e.g. strategic development, collaboration, impact of my work) or questions (e.g. Why are we successful? What are we particularly good at? Where do we want to be? What have we done wrong? And why?). The results in each of the three categories are written down on digital sticky notes on a virtual whiteboard.

Dot voting and problem statement.

In the second step, employees present, collect and consolidate their results in groups of two, before eventually introducing them to the whole team in step three. The team then vote with dots to identify the most urgent issues, with each employee attaching a limited number of virtual dot stickers to the ones most important to them. Narrowing down the issues to tackle like this, our most recent session was able to condense an original list of 40 issues down to nine.

We then summarised each of these challenges in a succinct, one-sentence problem statement that informed a breakout session to deduce actions to take. After weeding through these once again by voting with dots, we ultimately arrived at one action point for each one of the nine top-priority issues.

We reiterate the same three steps every quarter, complementing the subjective sticky notes with objective data collected through a preparative survey. What happens in between Reflection Rooms can be summed up in three words—understand, experiment, improve.

The practice of actively reflecting on what’s going on enables us to better understand our colleagues, our team, and even ourselves, and we are encouraged to leverage the insights that we gained to inform continual change. It allows us to reinforce and channel the strengths that we have, as well as see and work on our weaknesses.

It’s important to understand that the Reflection Room is where we face the problem, and that we have to leave the room again to see if a potential solution actually works, and to what extent. This also means that, once a solution has been introduced, it’s essential to monitor its effect. Ideally, you can do this along defined hypotheses with objective KPIs.

Everyday mindfulness at work.

A recurring and multi-step process, the Reflection Room reminds employees to pause regularly and take a breather. It’s an exercise that helps make reflection a part of your daily routine.

For instance, an ideal result would be that after a meeting employees actively think about why that meeting failed to accomplish a desired outcome, or, say, why participants became agitated. A regular pause to think allows organisations and employees to learn to become more mindful of a given situation.

Creating a shared understanding.

Every employee sees the world through their own distinct pair of glasses, meaning everyone has a different view and understanding of the goings-on. Reflecting on and exchanging thoughts and perceptions help us put on our colleague’s shoes, see things through their eyes and make us more empathetic.

In a nutshell, the Reflection Room…

  • …helps companies develop and grow their business model.
  • …helps people understand errors that happened in past or ongoing projects, and think about how to address them and perhaps even tweak best practices for a given situation.
  • …helps colleagues get to the bottom of why their collaboration isn’t as it should be so they can actually do something about it, rather than just grin and bear it.

For the Digital Solutions Competence Centre, the Reflection Room has proved a successful way to continuously develop in a good direction, while improving awareness and communication. Naturally, this process isn’t one-size-fits-all, but it is adaptable to the varied realities in varied organisations.