ENVISIONING WORKSHOPS WITH MICROSOFT & PARTNERS
Turning complex business challenges into transformation opportunities and strategic direction
Problem: Organizations across healthcare, financial services, education, commercial banking, and the nonprofit sector were investing in digital transformation but often struggled with where to begin. Business priorities, customer needs, technology opportunities, and stakeholder perspectives were not always aligned. Microsoft and its partners needed a consistent way to help clients identify where technology could create meaningful value and build alignment around what to pursue.
Role: Senior Creative Strategist at Indigo Slate’s Human Experience Innovation Studio. Partnered with the Microsoft Catalyst team to design and lead strategic envisioning engagements across industries. I also advised Microsoft partners on how to structure and lead these engagements with their own clients.
Outcome: Developed and applied a repeatable approach that helped Microsoft and its partners move clients from broad transformation ambitions to prioritized opportunities, future-state experiences, and strategic direction
Context
Digital transformation often begins with technology, but the harder question for organizations is deciding where that technology can create the most value. Microsoft Catalyst was designed to help organizations explore that question by bringing business, technology, customer, and operational perspectives together around a shared challenge. Across engagements, the specific problems were different, but the underlying questions were often similar:
Where should we start?
What problem is worth solving?
Where can technology create meaningful value?
What would a better future state look like?
What needs to change to make it possible?
Where should we invest next?
My role was to create the structure that allowed teams to work through those questions and turn broad transformation ambitions into something more concrete.
Impact
As a direct result of this mentorship and collaboration Microsoft Catalyst partners :
Accelerated opportunities, expanded solution offerings and increased deal size effectively
Helped “where to start” on partner transformation journey.
Validated where the real value opportunity is in each partner’s transformation.
Brought stakeholders from different areas of partner’s organization together to engage in discussion, highlighting where there is alignment, or misalignment in views, goals or strategies.
Encouraged stakeholders to break away from conventional thinking and the constraints of the current state.
Created the foundation for organizational change, by helping partner’s stakeholders to understand the challenge, envision what the future state looks like, and motivate them to promote the change within their organizations.
Approach
Worked with Microsoft teams and partners to understand the client’s business context, strategic priorities, technology environment, and customer needs
Designed engagements around the decisions clients needed to make rather than applying a standard workshop format
Used customer journeys, business priorities, technology capabilities, and industry context to identify and frame opportunities
Led cross-functional teams through future-state envisioning, concept development, prioritization, and decision-making
Synthesized complex discussions into clear opportunity areas, strategic narratives, and actionable next steps
Coached Microsoft partners on how to use the Catalyst approach with their own clients, extending the model beyond individual engagements
Industries
Healthcare • Financial Services • Commercial Banking • Education • Nonprofit
