It takes 5 days to complete the sprint.
On Day One, as I challenge you (and your team from your practice, friends and family or other business advisers) to pick a focus and differentiation quality that’s yours and yours alone.Discussions will center on creating the path for the week, beginning with long term goals, mapping the challenges, talking with your experts in person or by phone in scheduled interviews, and choosing a manageable piece of the problem we can solve in one weeks’ time.
- We start bright and early at 8am. Soon we have introductions out of the way and I explain how the week will be organized and provide a checklist of activities and decisions that must be completed to move ahead.
- Within 15 minutes, we are setting a long term goal, and we begin listing risks and other questions that must be answered throughout the week. You’ll map out the options you have and the problem your new practice model will solve.
- We break for lunch around 1pm and you’ll have time to check messages, call the office, and reconvene by 2.
- In the afternoon, we’ll be calling on your experts with 15-30 minute calls, and we’ll take a 15 minute pause between interviews and calls to update the goals, questions and map after each call because otherwise, if you wait, the benefits you’ve gathered from each one could get lost at the end of the day.
- We’ll use a lot of sticky notes and a whiteboard to reframe problems as challenges and opportunities, and to innovate as you answer “How Might We” ideas you’ve gathered.
- Around 4pm, we’ll organize the notes and move similar ideas next to one another, identify themes, and vote on which ones will be actionable.
- Around 4:30, we’ll begin to identify your ideal customer(s) and start to create relevance with your How Might We ideas.
- We end the day around 5pm
On Day Two, you’ll sketch competing solutions on paper. Yesterday was all about problems. Today is the exciting part where we design solutions.
- I provide case studies of what others have done that has worked well, what didn’t and why, and what you might take inspiration from and do differently. We’ll examine 3-5 case examples, discuss each one for no more than 15 minutes, write down ideas on sticky notes and place them on the board.
- We go back to the mapping process, and this time we sketch the different parts of the process map.
- We break for lunch around 1pm and you’ll have time to check messages, call the office, and reconvene by 2.
- When we return from lunch we continue with a four step sketch – we’ll generate competing ideas, go from abstract to concrete, and use them to produce fuel for the rest of the sprint and to even create your sales pitch for membership or patient explanations. Using specific time limits, we proceed to critique each other’s sketches and pick the best ones. They in turn are the building blocks for your prototype business model and offer. These drawings will then be used to explain the ideas and test them on customers you’ve invited on Day Five. Your staff should be working behind the scenes to recruit customers for Friday’s testing session. These can be existing patients, general consumers you find on Craig’s list for market research jobs, or other folks whose input you’d like. I will supply a screener tool and survey to help you identify your target customers.
On Day Three, you’ll make difficult decisions and turn your ideas into a testable hypothesis. You aren’t going to be able to create a prototype for each idea, so some will be eliminated. All may be good but some may be better suited to achieve your long-term goal. In the afternoon, we’ll storyboard the prototype. We can group the ones that don’t get chosen for a Maybe Later pile so you don’t lose them.
On Day Four, you’ll hammer out a prototype. In the morning we work hard, and then after lunch, we make sure everything is ready for the reality testing. By 3pm, we begin doing a trial run of the presentation, Q&A, and other activities. I will also supply a template contract for membership or product purchase. By this point, the prototype will have a price that can be inserted into the mock agreement to make it real for test candidates.
And on Day Five, you’ll test it with real live humans! There will be a video feed of the interviews, and a room in a separate area for the actual interviews. For each interview, we follow a script I’ve prepared that includes a welcome, context questions, the introduction of the prototype, we’ll allow the customer to read the contract and ask questions, and then debrief and ask the customer to summarize answers to 3 questions. We target for 5 customer interviews, and we’ll begin to see patterns and trends. Your prototype might be an efficient failure or a flawed success. In every case, you’ll learn what you need for the next step. At the end of the day, you have a business model, prototype, model contract, an idea of prices to charge for your services, inclusions, exclusions and package design, hours to operate, access pathways (SMS, email, phone) and areas of focus that differentiate you from your competitors.
To learn more, or to enquire about pricing and my availability, please contact me as soon as you are ready to proceed.
