User research teams, from big to small, experience many different pain points within an organization, whether that be from process, stakeholders, influence, shifting priorities, or an abundance of others. Because of this, teams can get really stuck and, often, focus on things outside of their control. For example, a stakeholder who always dodges meetings, constant shifting priorities/roadmaps, vague strategies, sucky recruitment.
While these things that are out of our control are super painful and annoying, they are usually things that aren’t (as) worth our time and effort. Instead, we should ideally be focusing on the pain points and struggles we can control.
This guide (and the accompanying Miro board) help you and your team:
Understand the pain points (both those you can and cannot control) of the team
Delineate the pain points you can control versus those you have less control over
Prioritize the pain points
Generate solutions to the main pain point(s)
Create a pilot (with owners) to move the solution forward
I’ve run this working session with countless teams and not only can it be such a great experience to unite the team, but it also helps with getting out of “stuck” cycles, motivation, and actually thinking through solutions rather than focusing on the problem. The outcomes are:
A clear understanding of the team’s pain points and the ones most important to work on
Many ideas to move forward with to solve the most major problems
A program that makes taking action on the solutions easy and manageable for the team
This workshop can be run so many different times. Once you’ve identified the pain points, I recommend running it for each prioritized pain point so that the team can move forward. A big part of this is experimentation and iteration. Treat the solutions like a product. Test them, iterate on them, and HAVE FUN.
