Back to school: Why I love it

I've had the good fortune to be blessed with an important and fantastically fun task last week. In fact this will be my third go around with it. I've actually convinced the faculty at the Institute of Design to let me create and run a workshop on effective teaming and collaboration for designers. In fact, even new faculty members have to take it.

Part Glengarry Glen Ross and part lap around the best insights around cross-disciplinary teaming the workshop gives us the ability to have a serious discussion around what many assume all professional designers are good at--namely, effective and productive cross-disciplinary collaboration. Below is my title slide picture for the class (courtesy of www.istockphoto.com)

In our workshop we blow up misconceptions around effective collaboration and erase the myths about how harmony and reduction of conflict are good things. We draw inspiration and insight from The Wisdom of Teams, NextD and their work with Min Basedur (In fact, go take this profile right now!) and dabble a bit into the black art of Myers Briggs and the wisdom of Keith Ymashita of Stone Yamashita and Sandra Spataro and their book Unstuck.

My favorite part of this effort is I get to meet and get to know 30 of what could someday be some of the most accomplished designers in the world someday. My interaction is but one of many but I hope I'm setting folks up for success. With permission I may see if I can post a few profiles of students up on this blog.

If you're interested in learning more about this workshop drop me an email. I don't teach it outside of ID but I can share the resources that I use for the course and will be happy to share lecture notes.