StoryCorps: Leveraging Employee Skillsets Across Departments

Category
Professional Trainings
About This Project

Guiding a storytelling nonprofit through a hands-on design thinking workshop. 

 

By collecting, archiving, and sharing peoples’ personal stories, Storycorps reminds us of our shared humanity, building connections between people and teaching the value of listening through its extensive digital archive of interviews. In the summer of 2016, the organization was looking for a way to leverage the diverse skills present in their offices nationwide.

 

OUR STRATEGY

 

StoryCorps recruited TYTHEdesign to assist in leveraging these assets, convening 100 staff members from offices across the US for a daylong retreat focused on team building, organizational alignment, and innovation. TYTHE collaborated with StoryCorps and Be Social Change to craft an interactive day-long workshop, providing participants hands-on experience with collaborative problem solving through a design thinking lens and encouraging shared learning. This two-part session provided moments for formal and informal learning, while offering creative problem solving tools to add to the organization’s arsenal and uncovering staff expertise The day concluded with a team reflection and consideration of opportunities to carry the experience back into their daily work.

 

THE OUTCOME

 

New interdepartmental bonds

The interactive workshop encouraged staff across departments and offices to collaborate, leveraging diverse expertise to form new interdepartmental bonds and foster new working relationships as opportunities for innovation.

 

Creative Problem Solving Tools
Participants left with a new set of design thinking skills gained from TYTHE’s hands-on exercise, ready to incorporate these new tools in their daily work.

 


 

Client: StoryCorps

 

CollaboratorsKristina Drury

 

Year: 2016