Sometimes you need to find the haystack before you can find the needle.

Most leaders are great at problem-solving, or empowering teams around them to solve them. But how many times have you felt frustrated as a team plough their efforts into something that is clearly not solving the symptoms you thought came from that problem? Finding the right problem to solve is a skill, and we’ll share some of those key strategies that unearth the real challenge behind your current frustrations.

Find the connections that make or break innovation in your school. This is THE masterclass in how to create amazing problems for people to solve. NoTosh are the masters of hexagonal thinking, a great visual tool for enabling organisation and deep understanding of a topic. At NoTosh, we spot connections that pass many by. We’re going to share our strategies, and work with you to spot some great problems worth solving from inside your own school.

Synthesis is the phase in the NoTosh Design Thinking process where we begin to move from complex and conflicting information - where projects are messy! - to that need to instill order and logic, and arrive at working solutions. And while thinking works in a traditional framework, it’s less helpful when you want your wider school community to see, understand and reflect on the relationships between ideas. Thinking, making sense of information in a way that also conveys the often complex connections between ideas, concepts and facts.

From daft ideas come brilliant solutions. Ideation is a key element of the NoTosh Design Thinking process – quite simply, coming up with lots of great ideas in an environment where the only thing that’s limited is the time you can take. The second part of ideation is working out how to hone down from hundreds of ideas to the ingenious cores worth keeping.

Gives you the freedom to be exploratory, imaginative and creative with no negative judgment – ideas are developed and recorded but not, at the early stage, discussed. As a result, participants are working in a safe and open environment where their ideas are treated with respect and this, in turn, fosters more open and creative thinking. And that is where the magic will happen.

Is your strategy not quite happening in practice? Stop piloting. Start prototyping. Sometimes an idea that’s been built, tried and tested in pilot mode still fails in the real world. To avoid that happening, move from piloting ideas to prototyping. In this session you will build up an existing idea around an ‘actor map’, and create a systematic view of the context in which your idea will actually operate.

Actor mapping is best employed after a period of intense research has identified the problem or challenge to be tackled and an idea has emerged out of a wealth of possible solutions. It’s a really useful way to identify potential human challenges that may arise as the idea is implemented with different groups in your school, workplace or community. The process should reveal obstacles that would otherwise have gone unnoticed, allowing you to adapt and change ideas for the better.

Pitching ideas to make them happen The Prototyping phase of the NoTosh Design Thinking process is all about testing new ideas – but when you’re faced with a massive choice, how do you work out which ideas to try out?

The answer is NOT to lock yourself away in a darkened room, but to encourage your team to pitch their ideas to see which ones have the greatest traction. To get you started, we’re going to help you walk the talk, and pitch your latest innovation ten times better than you’re doing at the moment. We’ll help you present a sense of urgency that neither scares people away nor invites cynicism, and then work with you through the development of a solid case for change. It’s the first step towards whole staff, whole student community and parental enthusiasm for change.

The Seven Spaces of Learning Developing a new school building, or taking over the renovations and innovation in an existing space, are some of the most overwhelming tasks a leadership team can take on. The Seven Spaces framework is fascinating, enlightening and quite brilliant in its simplicity.

At NoTosh, we’ve developed a clear framework that helps harness existing understanding and expand the way we think about and use space as we learn and develop our skills. This hands-on masterclass helps leadership develop a plan that involves the whole community in space design without the process becoming “open mic night”. It’s a process that can help untap genuine innovation in space designed for schools.