01: The Art of Gridding

“The Art of Gridding”.

“What is this all about?” we hear you ask.

Well, what we seek to do with this series is bring to life the different ways in which Method Grid is being used. When we originally conceived the platform we were super focused on our core audience of professional service companies. I have personally come through the career straits of a global management consulting firm before building my own specialist consulting business; nowadays, I spend a lot of time talking to entrepreneurs in this sector. Method Grid, as such, was born out of a repetitive conversation with many such leaders that pointed to how difficult it is to incrementally build up and share valuable methodologies and procedures in such businesses – despite universal acceptance of how powerful and valuable such intellectual property can become!

In this founding (and still central) context, grids are often business consulting orientated service methodologies (e.g. project management protocols, a strategic analysis method, the structured redesign of an operating model etc.). Method Grid is perfect (we think!) for such designed usage.

Even in the early stages of (private) beta testing, however, we were really struck by how readily the concept and application was picked up by organisational leaders in many other sectors. The school teacher who instantly saw how it could help her art department colleagues build, and share, a term’s teaching syllabus and lesson plans. The Business School University Professor who is developing a collaborative platform for sharing IP amongst academics globally. The HR coaches using it to mentor clients through career transition programmes. The construction programme manager using it to guide clients through a multi-stage estate planning process. The training company using it to show off their different practical leadership exercises to prospective purchasers. The growing clothing company just wanting internal HR processes to deal with their new staff induction and operating procedures. The multi-company bid manager just looking for that one simple tool that could bring many disparate teams and professionals together on the development of a complex JV solution. To be honest, we didn’t envisage any of this.

Over many conversations, we have had the privilege of early beta trialists sharing their Method Grid creations with us – and we have been blown away by the variety of both user organization and the resultant grids. “The Art of Gridding” series will be about sharing this eclectic application with the wider community in order to spark ideas, share innovations and, generally, broaden the senses as to what is possible on the platform.

Each forthcoming blog will focus on one organisation successfully harnessing Method Grid. It will adopt a Q&A approach flowing though such questions as:

(1) Can you please tell us a little about yourself, your role and your organisation?

(2) What do you use Method Grid for?

(3) What Grid gets the most use?

(4) How did Method Grid get adopted by your team?

(5) What would you say has been your most innovative application of Method Grid?

(6) What would you recommend to teams using Method Grid for the first with regards to developing initial grids, rolling out to wider use etc?

(7) What features would you like to see in future Method Grid releases?

We will not be committing to any post frequency in this series – rather just a post every now and then when something really captures our eye. We have a few already lined up – but remember you have to invite us into your account for us to see what you are doing … so, if you have a Method Grid story you would like to tell, an innovative application of the product off of the norm … drop me a line. We would love to take a look and help you share it!

Please just message in the comments below or via our contact form or Twitter.