We tested, we failed, and we learned… And so will you!
But you can already learn from our failures.
Raising employees’ attention
From the long list of managers that were invited to share a breakfast at the Garage official opening, only a few showed up.
Internal mailing campaign for a general presentation of the Garage program: 5000 employees reached, about 40 employees attended.
Getting them to dare do something
We set up an ambitious 3D printing workshop, proposing hands-on activities on everything one had to know about 3D scanning, modelling and printing. Even though we managed to balance the list of declared attendees over 3 sessions, we were overwhelmed by over 200 people showing up undeclared in unmanageable big groups, thwarting our every planned activity and turning them into classic presentations.
We jumped on the occasion to entertain parents and kids at the company’s family day by capturing them in 3D using a 3D scanner. When we engaged them later to attend a workshop specifically designed to have them 3D print their models by themselves, we were glad to onboard many of them. Unfortunately, we hadn’t thoroughly tested the tools and process, and encountered blocking problems in the course of the workshops.
From the first days of the Garage, we were advised to measure everything we could, from the way resources were used to the way we engaged our audience. We quickly implemented metrics we could capture by hand, but couldn’t keep up with the waves of data to collect at every event, workshop, or open house. Not able to make much sense of the erratic data we collected, we lost many potential members by not engaging them at the right time with the right motivation.
When it comes to engaging employees in new activities, you often don’t get a second chance. The environment you’re presenting them for the first time needs to be convincing enough so that they can picture themselves coming back. In those moments, a functioning WIFI connection, a 3D printer ready to be used, or a set of loanable arduino boards can go a long way. We learned that it was preferable to close when the Garage was not ready, rather than to propose a degraded experience.
One day an employee came to the Garage with a project featuring the perfect mix of inventiveness, simplicity, efficiency, and business disruption. The implications of its potential impacts on our company’s business and on the telco industry were dizzying. Unfortunately, we were unprepared and not funded to help him push his idea further, his prototype requiring specific experts and expensive resources.
Ideating, prototyping and testing is almost always a fun experience for passionate employees. But sometimes technical roadblocks or conflicting tasks may take away some of the fun. In those moments, Will might not be sufficient to go the extra mile, that’s when support is needed. On several occasions, our lack of a dedicated fabmanager weighed on the ability and motivation of several of our employees to pursue their project and prevented them to bring it where they intended to.
