WISE WITHIN mentors and mentees on the Fox Sports studio stage
The WISE WITHIN mentorship program hosted their midpoint session for the group this month at Fox Studios. This is the second session out of three, and is typically focused on a personal and/or professional growth activity. This year’s session was centered around design thinking. Rachana Bhide, MA from Columbia University in New York and global change management expert, delivered a crash course on the topic. The session allowed those in attendance to become educated on the emerging business practice, heavily used by forward thinking industries, such as technology, consumer products and those companies in Silicon Valley.
Design thinking is a movement away from “process design” to “human-centered design”. This means studying what customers do, visiting their workplaces, and observing their behavior. Based on these insights, solutions and programs can be designed that improve customer/fan (or employee) satisfaction and efficiency. Much of the focus in sports is about the fan experience, so this shift to human-centered design is very relevant. The group was taken through the entire cycle of design thinking: empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test. They then built their own prototype and presented to each other. “This was a great session for the group because it really showed how relevant this methodology is for the sports and entertainment sectors,” noticed Rachana Bhide.
“Learning about and being able to try design thinking with the mentorship group was a fun, innovative and informative way for each of us to grow individually and as a group,” said Katie Lavin, a two-time mentor of the program. “We were able to dive deeper into our personal sport experiences and apply them to business opportunities. Learning about and applying design thinking is a development tool at all levels.”
Going forward, the mentors and mentees will have the opportunity to take some of what they learned back into the workplace and put design thinking into practice.
In addition to the design thinking workshop, the group was lead on a studio tour by Fox Sport’s, Heather Munson, where they visited the studio set stages and the “behind the scenes” of the editing rooms.
The next event for the mentorship program will be the wrap-up event taking place in the Fall and will conclude the six-month program. Those interested in getting involved as a mentor or mentee should look for the start of the application process at the beginning of the year. More information can be found on here.