Sick building syndrome

A framework for empathic innovation

Sick building syndrome (SBS) is used to describe situations in which building occupants experience acute health and comfort effects that appear to be linked to time spent in a building, but no specific illness or cause can be identified. A 1984 World Health Organization report suggested up to 30% of new and remodeled buildings worldwide may be subject of complaints related to poor indoor air quality.

"I used to work a lot with your group. But gradually we lost contact. We got the impression that you always wanted to sell your solutions to us. You stopped listening to our problems."

Anonymous (rich) ex-customer of ours.

Think about a major deliverable you have been working on for the last month

• How well do you know the intended user of the deliverable, i.e. the one who will gain benefit from the deliverable?

– 5) I know the person, he is a good friend of mine. We have talked a lot about his problems that are addressed by this deliverable.

– 4) I know the person, we have exchanged some emails.– 3) I don't know any user in person, but we have done our research to

define personas, i.e. archetypical users.– 2) I don't know who the users are, but plan to find out.– 1) I don't know who the users are, and to be honest, I don't care (or, I

think I should care but practically I will not care).

Nurture a givers' culture

Learn to listen

Learn to acquire

Add value Always evaluate and

validate

FEI (Framework for Empathic Innovation)

Nurture a givers' culture

• All of us are one of three types:– Takers: Take without returning.– Givers: Give without asking.– Matchers: Give, but take equally.

• Which type are you?• What do our partners get for working with us?• What do we want to achieve by working with

partners?

Nurture a givers' culture

• Givers constitute the 5% at the bottom of the success ladder.

• Givers also constitute the 5% at the top of the success ladder.

• If you are not a giver, you cannot listen.

Learn to listen

• You cannot listen if you plan to take.

• Empathic listening: Listening to understand, not to give advise.

• If you are not a giver, you cannot listen empathically.

Learn to acquire

• Acquire defined: – to locate and track (a moving target) with a

detector, as radar. Military def. (Dictionary.com)• Listening is not enough, you need to go

deeper.• Good methods available (interviews,

observations, paper prototyping, etc.)

Add value

• We are all so good at it.• Say no more.

• (PS: This is by the way what we get paid for)

Evaluate and validate

• How good are we at this?• What methods do we use?• Internal validation: Post mortems (too late,

what about pre mortems or mid mortems?)• External validation: Do we ask the partners

what they think about us?• Do we validate all the steps? Do we evaluate

frequently enough?

Nurture a givers' culture

Learn to listen

Learn to acquire

Add value Always evaluate and

validateNo short cuts.

No jumps. Sorry.

Nurture a giver's culture

Learn to listen

Learn to acquire

Add value Always evaluate and

validateCan be outsourced to anyone with a much lower salary than us

Are we more or less empathic than Norwegian municipalities?

Takk!

Let's open some more windows!

From: We will be the most preferred research institute in Europe,

To: We will make our partners best in their business