❤️🤝 From Heart and Bonds to Ideas and Actions💡👣

Would you dare start a “serious” and rational business workshop with an immersive experience to build an emotional connection with the Doughnut? 🤔

This was our bet with Marie-Anne Bernasconi when we decided to use the 'Step into the Doughnut' sequence as the icebreaker of our latest 'Doughnut Design for Business' workshop, which took place end of November 2023 in Sophia Antipolis (South of France).

A bit of context:

We gathered 11 Founders, GMs or C-level execs from 5 different mid-size companies - 4 from the services sector (digital, innovation or human capital) and one from the construction sector with “physical” operations and offer.

🗓️ The good news was that we’ve booked them for a full day (8h = 6h30 session + 1h30 lunch) instead of the 4-5h (as per guidelines) to drive them through the ‘Doughnut Design for business – Core Tool’ journey.

 ⏱️ We’ve extended the time schedule to a full day because we had previously conducted this workshop in half a day (4h30) and both the participants and we as facilitators felt that we’ve missed time to share, reflect interact, explore, and engage in meaningful conversations … while keeping a tight schedule.

👉 So, did it work?

The combination of “Step into the Doughnut”  and “Doughnut Design for Business” was very well received by participants. 🌟

They particularly appreciated:

• the original format to grasp the Doughnut concepts rather going through PowerPoint slides,
• establishing an emotional connection with the Doughnut and experiencing the different spaces,
• getting to know each other and creating intimacy with peers from the start of the workshop.

With this enlightening and “break-the-corporate-codes” start, it felt easier for us (as facilitators) to:

• challenge the limits of their imaginations (during Part 2 of the workshop) so that they come up with regenerative and distributive ambitions,
• make them realize that their current business model needs to pivot (Part 3) 
• help them identify specific changes in the deep design of their company (Part 4)
• encourage them to act and implement changes to become pioneers and inspiring players to other companies in their sector. Why not becoming the Patagonia of construction, digital or human capital services? 💫

Finally, we closed the workshop with a round-the-table “head-heart-foot” debrief where each participant shared:
       🧠 an intellectual take-away
       ❤️ their strongest feeling(s)
       👣 their next concrete move

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In short, these are my 3 tips for your next “Doughnut Design for Business” workshop: 

1. 🗓️ Book a full day in the agenda, 
2. 🚶 Try “Step into the Doughnut” as an icebreaker to engage participants’ capacity to care for life, 
3. 💚 💭 Intentionally browse between emotions, rationality, and actions all through the workshop. 

The most powerful changes are those that come from the heart, don’t you think?