Capturing and Recording Team Insights

As conceptual planning teams work together, the team’s knowledge base expands and their understanding of the problem deepens and evolves over time. Teams often experience turning points or insights that enable them to make a significant leap forward in their understanding of the problem space. A significant consideration for planning and problem solving teams throughout this process is how to document the knowledge, the evolving logic, and the insights that emerge over the course of the team’s work.

Key Issues and Challenges

In part, dealing with knowledge capture is a resource issue: How much time should the team spend thinking and talking, and how much time should the team spend documenting thoughts and discussion? In part, dealing with knowledge capture is an issue of team member roles and functions: Is there a designated note taker or do people take turns at note taking and documentation? Or is it up to individual team members to keep track of what seems important to them? How to capture insights, questions, issues and developing logic that emerges from discourse and other collaborative work sessions is a team issue. What information to capture, at what level of detail, in what form and format, and how to make the team’s work products accessible are all key questions for the team to consider.

Related to the issue of capturing the team’s learning is the question of when, how and in what ways to share the knowledge products being created (see Communicating with Stakeholders). The team’s work products can be thought of as spanning a continuum, from those that are internal to the team to those that are created to represent insights and solutions to people outside of the team. Over the course of working together, teams must shift their focus from communicating insights and learning within the team to communicating concepts, insights, and potential solutions to external stakeholders. At the point that teams begin creating products and representations for external stakeholders, it can be enormously helpful to have access to interim products, along with an audit trail of the team’s evolving concepts and rationale.

Tips and Things to Consider

Interviewees described a range of processes and techniques their teams have used to capture shared understanding and insights over the course of their efforts, including the following:

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Consider using a dedicated note-taker (Expand)

Consider using a dedicated note-taker whose job it is to record collaborative work sessions. If resources allow, bringing in someone from outside the team can be helpful, freeing all team members to fully participate in the sessions. For some teams, a reasonable alternative is to identify one or two people who are skilled at taking notes on a computer while maintaining attention and involvement with the group. If there are a couple of team members with those skills, those members can trade off the note-taker function.

Consider appointing a team “visualizer” (Expand)

Consider appointing a team “visualizer” who captures the concepts being discussed in a visual format. Identify someone on the team who has this talent, using techniques such as the following:
- Conduct an exercise in visual thinking to help reveal who the visual thinkers are.
- Pay attention to how the team members take notes. Who is taking notes strictly verbally? Who is taking notes using a combination of text and graphics?
- Consider using inventories that measure visual thinking ability.
Alternatives are to have team members take turns filling the visualizer role, or consider bringing in someone external to the team who is skilled at visualization.

Consider interim reviews of notes (Expand)

Have the note-taker pull content from each working session into a series of PowerPoint slides or Word documents. Consider reviewing (and possibly editing) content as a team at designated points in the team’s lifecycle.

Capture whiteboard sessions in a series of photos (Expand)

Information on the whiteboard(s) can be part of the audit trail and available to team members later on. Consider embedding photos into written documentation of discourse sessions to link them with other work products.

Use butcher block paper to capture notes and timelines (Expand)

If the team is using a dedicated space, leave the butcher block paper posted to the workspace walls. The notes and timelines can become a record the team uses over the course of the effort to examine where the team has been and how the team’s thinking has evolved.

Recognize the limitations of certain information-capture and information-sharing tools (Expand)

Recognize the limitations of certain information-capture and information-sharing tools and consider alternatives. For example, some experienced planning team leaders have argued that use of PowerPoint alone can stifle critical thinking, creativity, and ultimately understanding in teams and organizations. Other means for capturing and sharing information include narratives, storyboarding techniques, visual representations, or combinations of narratives and visual representations.

Consider video- (or audio-) taping sessions (Expand)

When working with external SMEs, request permission to audio or video tape the session so team members can revisit those meetings.

Consider using recording/writing tools (Expand)

Use writing tools that link audio recordings to handwritten notes (Example: Livescribe)

Consider using computer-based tools (Expand)

Consider using computer-based tools (e.g. mindmaps, concept maps). Use software to capture discussion in graphical form. Note however, that people have markedly different opinions about concept graphing. Some find it valuable, others much less so.

Tools and Resources

This section includes a set of tools and resources to supplement the topics covered in the “Engaging the problem as a team” module of this resource. This is not intended to be a comprehensive list of resources; but it provides a starting point for helping planning teams explore the problem space as a team and capture the team’s evolving understanding. The resources are organized according to the following topics: 1) visual thinking resources, 2) videos, 3) exercises, and 4) suggested reading.

Visual Thinking Resources

Periodic Table of Visualization Methods
Description: Examples of a variety of visualization methods organized like the Periodic Table of the Elements. Example visualizations can be accessed by clicking on each element.

Visual Complexity.com
Description: A resource for those interested in visualization of complex networks and visualization methods. Provides a series of examples of how others have visualized their findings and insights.

idiagram – The Art of Complex Problem Solving
Description: Visual approaches to help people think holistically about complex problems and communicate to those who must act on the problems. Examples of how others have represented complex problems can be accessed by clicking on links on left side of screen.

Maketools.com and Example toolkits [PDF]
Description: Source for ideas and visual toolkits for fostering collective creativity. See “Managing Complexity Collaboratively” to view visual toolkits in use.

Neuland.com
Description: Source for purchasing visual thinking and communication tools.

Visual Explorer Images [Product Listing]
Description: A set of images available for purchase to support teams in engaging in creative conversations and achieving new insights. See “Visual Explorer with David Horth” for more on Visual Explorer.

Videos

The Art of Data Visualization
Description: PBSoftBook digital series video that discusses the role of visual strategies to communicate information.

Exercises

Everyday Creativity Exercise [PDF]
Description: Helps team members recognize where and how their creativity is being expressed in everyday life, so they can then apply that way of thinking and being to their work.

Six Thinking Hats
Description: Exercise to encourage team members to look at a problem from different perspectives.

Art of Design, Student Text version 2.0 [PDF]
Description: School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) text on design that provides multiple practical exercises and tools in Appendix B – e.g., Six Thinking Hats, Challenging Assumptions, Mind Mapping, Challenging Boundaries. See pp. 286-319.

MAKING SENSE OF COMPLEX PROBLEMS