Discovery Operations Guide

Finding Opportunities

Opportunities

aka, diverging your insights

Finding Opportunities means identifing fields of potential improvement based on your insights. You derive opportunities by expanding or diverging your insights out through the lens of your department, team, or business line.

Each field of opportunity will probably contain multiple solutions or possible products. Resist the urge to jump from a single insight to a single solution; if you do that instead of identifying fields of opportunity, you’ll be cutting yourself off from looking at a variety of solutions, which means you might miss the best or most appropriate one(s).

Some Insights will not have Opportunities for your team. You will know that you have this type of insight on your heands if the insight you’re examining would require your team to have expertise, influence, or time that is not possible given your situation. Note, however, that your team might be able to create action based on some of these insights through notifying other teams or departments of your findings. You and your Leadership can work to make those collaborations happen in the future if you choose to.

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checklist

Use this checklist to guide you through finding opportunities

• Take no longer than a one hour break between the Insights the end of the Insights discovery phase and the start of the Opportunities discovery phase.

• Write all the Insights discovered in the first three phases of the Synthesis process on computer paper using Sharpie markers. Use a new sheet of paper for each Insight.

• Tape up the Insights across the wall or windows in a row.

• There is no time limit here, but the Project Lead needs to pay careful attention to the energy in the room. Everyone, including the Lead, will be tired. Push everyone to keep up the work until it is thoroughly done.