Recipe for Success: Idea Hack
In March 2022, we hosted our first Carbon Reduction Hack in New York City. The journey of getting to the day of the idea hack started with a question from one of our business development executives, Clare Archer, who asked: “How can we use innovation to prioritize what we can specifically do around reducing embodied and operational carbon?”
This question spurred The Gilbane Innovation Council to create a unique 1-day Idea Hack using Design Thinking principals and our LEAN business tools that supports our ESG framework. We brought together internal and external industry participants from a mix of roles and disciplines for the perfect mix of brainpower to explore break-out ideas yielding 146 concepts and a shortlist of 12 top ideas to pursue. The ideas ranged from incremental (but important) initiatives around benchmarking, organizational structure to support change – to transformational ideas that disrupt and leverage the industry supply chain materiality and procurement practices. This included identifying already-in-progress innovations we are employing with certain clients and how we can improve and scale across the enterprise.
The day started with some brain exercises to break free of our traditional roles and mitigate potential
siloed thinking. We discussed global and domestic progress, challenges, and opportunities to broaden our lens based on case studies and exciting breakthroughs. We evaluated and discussed industry stakeholder needs to include clients, trade partners, policymakers, and design partners and applied those thoughts to a force field analysis to identify how we leverage the opportunities and how we can mitigate roadblocks. This exercise kicked off the portion of the day dedicated to Divergent activities promoting creative concepts which were codified into themes. From there, we activated Convergent exercises utilizing the impact/ effort matrix for prioritization. Each working group presented their ideas for cross-collaboration feedback.
The hack was an incredibly energizing and engaging day in support of our larger ESG mission. To work alongside colleagues from across the company in the exchange of ideas around carbon reduction, was inspiring. Everyone left the hack ready to roll up our sleeves and get to work applying our solutions and refining our strategies.
– Lynn Rasic, Vice President, Global Communications
The Magic: Strategic Engagement
While we clearly generated some operational and strategic outcomes in the session, something that is harder to quantify is the magic we captured in that room. In a post covid world where organizations are starving for new techniques to engage, inspire employees as well as to retain existing and recruit future talent, this session sparked human-centered solutions, comradery – and yes – some FUN while delivering actionable and aspirational priorities. We think we have a recipe for success in these uniquely designed sessions.
Implementation of Ideas
Post-session, two ideas have already been adopted and assigned leadership accountability and other longer-term ideas have been adopted into our overall ESG strategy. We will publish the results of these efforts through our annual ESG report to our employees and the industry. Thank you to all of our participants including Gilbane employees and our external special guests for stepping up, being present and making the commitment to support a better world.
