Co-creation seems to be the staple diet of the service design practitioner. ‘If it isn’t co-created, it doesn’t really exist’ seems to the prevailing opinion. But I’m getting my doubts. A ‘yes, but’ kind of feeling 😉
I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say I’ve been in over 500 co-creation sessions throughout my career and I’m starting to see a pattern:
What they’re really good for:
1. They are engaging, fun, accessible, and inclusive (when facilitated and structured appropriately). They provide a very welcome break from the dreary meetings that are still all too common in many organizations and make people actively involved in change.
2. They provide a shared repository of insights. These insights are at the root of human centered change and are powerful, but only when they are shared across organizations or ecosystems.
3. They can provide a shared sense of purpose, a joined, palpable sense of strategic direction. This is really crucial for focused innovation where random undirected ideation and wild brainstorms are completely ineffective.
4. They provide a shared structure through lived experience with tools and methodologies. By using a tool or framework together, a shared grammar can emerge that in turn can lead to a shared language. Journeys and blueprints are nothing but the grammar of the language called customer experience.
What they’re actually not so good for:
1. Ideation. I have trouble with large groups of people ideating during co-creation sessions, especially when those ideas are actually intended by the facilitators to be the outcome of the session. Why? Because most people are not very good at conceptual thinking, let alone at the mental agility that is required to strategically shape an idea from abstract to concrete and to iterate back when the idea turns out to really suck. Ideation by non-trained participants may hint at directions or issues or opportunities, and in time those may lead to good ideas. But only in the hands of professionals.
2. To provide a sense of bottom up decision making: I’ve found that when co-creation sessions start handing out too much decision taking mandate to the participants things get all confused. Usually what gets decided during a session needs a lot of extra research and second thoughts and the initial euphoria of the group will be smothered by ‘boring’ strategic decision making later. I’ve learned to be really honest about the session, its expected outcomes and the participants’ mandate.
3. To have purpose, vision, or strategic direction simply emerge from the co-creation activities. It may be my style of facilitation but I’ve learned that the more I hold back and let the group do the work, the weaker the final result is in terms of transformative power. The more I step in and provide guidance, direction, examples and yes, maybe give the answers the group is looking for, the stronger the resulting purpose, vision or strategy is.
4. To provide corporate entertainment. Sessions that are too funny, playful, cosy or childish maybe fun for a change, but they are not very effective, they run the risk of being condescending, and they often don’t have the effect that the whole show is intended for: to loosen up people’s creative muscle and give everyone a feeling of being welcome. Actually the opposite is often the case.
So a big yes to co-creation, but please: for the right purpose, in the right way, with honesty and leadership.