Recipes for Systemic Change - Helsinki Design Lab

Organizing a Week111About one hour before the final-review guests are set toarrive you will want to begin cleaning up the Studio space. Becareful not to erase all the traces of intense work throughoutthe week, but removing stray coffee cups and hanging upcoats and bags is a nice way to make the room more presentable.This activity also sends an important signal to the teamthat they need to wrap it up soon.Next is the final review, a particular kind of discussionbetween the Studio and your invited stakeholders. Becausedesigning this engagement is a task in and of itself, the FinalReview has its own How-To* which follows.*—See also: The Final Review> P117EveningsOne week disappears very quickly during such an intenseexperience, and if you have done a good job at recruiting, theteam will consist of conscientious people who dedicate thefull strength of their mental facilities to the Studio challenge.As a mental ‘steam valve’ we set the hours of the Studio as09:00 to 16:00. This gives everyone a chance to relax or napbefore a group dinner at about 19:00. If the team—or part ofit—decides to stay late that is OK too.We prefer to pre-book dinners for each night of the weekwith the agreement that Studio members can opt-out if theyneed to rest. However, in our experience the majority of dinnerswere with the full Studio teams and this proved to be avery important venue for fleshing out ideas and developingthe team’s social bond. With only four days to really developthe bulk of the work, the Monday-Thursday meals representa total of about eight hours of conversation—essentiallyanother full day’s work. If your Studio arrangement does notallow you to entice everyone to meet in the evenings, slightlylonger Studio hours are recommended.Because of the compressed schedule, dinners and lunchesbecome important opportunities to downshift into a morecasual mode that allows work to continue in a social context,layering on new opportunities for consideration as well asoffering the team the chance to get to know each other better.