“Partnership is a two-way street, so reach out to your ExperiencePoint rep. They’re superheroes and they will help you fly.”

It was love at first workshop for Lyall Samaroden, a leader of innovation and change at Bench Solutions in Alberta, Canada. He participated in his first ExperiencePoint session in the late 1990s and was instantly won over. “I thought it was genius,” he says of the workshop’s digital simulations. “I knew right away that I wanted to be involved with ExperiencePoint.”

Fast forward twenty-five years and Lyall is an ExperiencePoint partner of over a decade, delivering enormous impact to his clients via both ExperienceChange and ExperienceInnovation workshops. He works with several energy sector clients, including large oil and gas companies, helping them adapt to the impending energy transition. He also works with a number of prominent educational institutions, and dabbles in other industries including government, insurance, media, law enforcement and even The Calgary Stampede. 

Lyall works on the “people” side of change, guiding teams as they explore the skills and mindsets that can unlock forward-thinking values. He believes that innovation and change go hand in hand; once teams are aligned around new methods and approaches—an effect of innovation—they’re able to confront change with greater speed and ease. 

What ExperiencePoint workshops and products are you using now?

ExperiencePoint Impact Sprint
“I’m seeing a real opportunity to lean heavily into the innovation products. Today’s business leader is busy and trained in historical approaches to problem solving, which means coming up with a solution based on parameters that often disregard customer needs. I believe that ExperiencePoint Impact reintroduces curiosity and customer focus. Fundamentally, those are the muscles that current leaders need to re-learn in order to be prepared to run the business of the future.”

ExperiencePoint Spark
“I’m using the Spark episodes as an introductory tool, a way for teams to wade into the waters of human-centered design. The episodes really set leaders up to recognize new opportunities for growth in their work. I like to think of Spark as a series of appetizers—It’s a real bright spot to their day, and lets them sit with an innovation concept for a little while before I layer on another.”

What is some of the most exciting impact that you’re seeing?

“A really exciting example is an ExperienceInnovation Impact Sprint at a large oil and gas firm. The Sprint was pivotal in focusing a team on their own internal experiences and unmet needs. The journey also created a common vocabulary across the team for how they can work in the future. The challenge was: How can we help our departmental peers embrace behaviours that drive a human-centered approach to our work challenges? Using insights from diverse teams and low-fi prototypes, they developed a non-monetary peer-to-peer recognition platform where staff commend and honor each other when daily decisions and behaviours align with their new work approach. The department has embraced the program fully. The really neat part is that another, larger department (also an internal customer community) saw what they were doing and decided to join in. The peer-to-peer recognition is really valued by staff and is making a big difference in shifting the company culture toward being more user-centered. In other words, the company is building user-centered capability within their teams and furthering employee engagement."