Lisa Guan's Innovation World

When I was approached by my current companies global ECPMO team, they had established clear 2026 goals, but a critical gap existed between their vision and their team’s execution. I learned that their sub-teams in China struggled to connect these high-level ambitions to their daily work, and that previous planning exercises had failed to produce truly actionable change.

To address their problem, I designed and facilitated a bespoke, multi-day workshop. My approach involved strategically sequencing goal clarification with experiential learning and structured reflection. Through this process, I helped the team translate abstract objectives into concrete mindset shifts and tangible behavior changes, empowering them to truly own their role in achieving the 2026 vision.

The workshop used Mural board as the working place, because Mural is easy to capture the content.

The Core Challenge I Addressed

When I began working with the ECPMO team, I identified two primary challenges that were hindering their progress:

1. A Lack of Connection: I found that team members across the four sub-teams in China perceived the 2026 goals as disconnected from their day-to-day responsibilities. This abstraction made it difficult for them to feel a sense of ownership or see how their individual work contributed to the larger company vision.
2. A History of Inaction: The leadership team shared with me that past efforts to encourage mindset and behavior change had fallen flat. Their workshops would often conclude with high-level, vague plans that failed to translate into real, sustainable action, leaving everyone frustrated. My task was to break this cycle.

My Solution: A Workshop Designed for Impact

To solve this, I designed a workshop that was meticulously structured not just to discuss change, but to allow the participants to experience it. I created a logical progression to guide them from understanding to action.

Phase 1: Defining Success to Create Connection

My first step was to move beyond simply reviewing the goals. I dedicated the first session to a deep dive into the success criteria for each one. I knew this was a crucial first step to make the goals more specific and tangible. This immediately began to build a bridge between the 2026 vision and their own work, allowing them to see the connection clearly.

Phase 2: Engineering an “Aha!” Moment with the Marshmallow Tower

I strategically engineered the “Aha!” moment of the workshop. I introduced the Marshmallow Tower game after the goal clarification session. This timing was intentional, as it transformed the game from a simple icebreaker into a powerful, hands-on metaphor for the mindsets I wanted to cultivate. By facilitate a rapid cycles of building, testing, and learning, the participants organically discover critical lessons in a low-stakes environment:

• The power of fast-testing and learning from failure.
• The value of “getting hands dirty” over creating lengthy, perfect plans.
• The importance of collaboration and withholding judgment to foster innovation.

Phase 3: Translating Insight into Commitment with “Mind, Heart, Hands”

To ensure the powerful learnings from the game were not lost, I used the “Mind, Heart, Hands” framework as a bridge between the experience and their work. I designed this reflective exercise to guide participants in processing what they had just learned and applying it directly to their roles by asking them to define:

• Mind: How should our thinking shift to better support the goals?
• Heart: What emotional connection do we have to this new way of working?
• Hands: What specific behaviors and actions will we commit to in our day-to-day work?

This structure was the key to guiding the teams to produce meaningful, personal, and actionable commitments, directly addressing leadership’s desire for real change.

Outcomes and Lasting Impact

While the teams took the final step of crafting detailed plans offline, the workshop I designed achieved its primary objectives and delivered significant, lasting value.

• We Forged a Shared Vision: The workshop successfully closed the gap between high-level goals and individual action by facilitating a process that made success tangible and relatable for everyone in the room.
• We Catalyzed a Mindset Shift: The experience I designed moved the team from theoretical discussion to practical application. They didn’t just hear about agility; they lived it, creating a powerful and memorable learning moment.
• We Generated Actionable Commitments: My workshop design skillfully overcame the historical challenge of inaction. I provided a framework that translated the insights from our session into concrete, personal commitments for change.

Here is my logic behind the design:

The process intentionally guides the team through three distinct phases. We start with Clarification by defining success, then move to hands-on Experience with the game, and conclude with deep Commitment using the ‘Mind, Heart, Hands’ framework.

This is a repeatable model for turning any strategic vision into an empowered and actionable reality for a team.