The name is absent

Table 2. Workshop “Parti Démocrate Chrétien”.

2.3 Collège Spécialisé des Systèmes d’Information

The Collège Spécialisé des Systèmes d’Information (CSSI) of the State of Geneva is
constituted of 12 managers in charge of information systems of each of the State of Geneva
departments. During the year 2009, the members of the CSSI wrote their strategic plan for the
years 2009 to 2013 [19]. This document describes the main axes considered to give coherence
to the evolution of the different information systems of the State of Geneva. It also presents
the key success factors and the strategy adopted to achieve this.

The writing of this strategic plan by a working group of the CSSI allowed to quickly
finalise the output. A regular sharing of the reflections with all the members of the committee
ensured that everybody related to the content of the document. But the short deadline was not
necessarily favourable to an effective ownership of the final document, at least when
considering the values it was meant to convey. Yet this phase of ownership is essential if one
expects a coherent and effective communication and implementation of the strategy.

So although the document has been drafted in a rather open and co-creative way, the
question remained whether every member of the CSSI had really taken the ownership and
appropriated the real sense of the proposed strategy. To test this and/or to make the
appropriation process easier, we organized a workshop [20] bringing them together around the
Create the Service Box [21] creative method.

The workshop was conducted during two hours. The participants were divided into 3
groups. In a co-creation process, each group had 45 minutes to materialize on each of the 6
faces of the box the expected benefits of the service virtually dropped off in the box: namely
the strategic plan of the information systems of the State of Geneva. With managers used to
mainly talk about “costs” and “quality”, we emphasized the importance to also consider other
values that their strategic plan can convey, namely its “value of use” and “perception”.

The box allows the participants to easily pass from concepts to something more concrete,
which helps them to start up again, enriching it with new ideas made tangible through
pictures, drawings, carvings, mobiles or any other media supporting their imagination. The six
faces of the box also make up a constraint that forces participants to get to the main points and
prioritize their messages.

During the creative phase, each group tries to make the key aspects of the strategic plan
tangible on the cardboard box by enriching their creative contributions. Participants exchange
their standpoint and confront their visions, by using drawings, cut-out or glue.

Once the box is complete, it serves to support the narrative, the storytelling. The group tells
its story and “sells” the strategic plan to different possible stakeholders (deputies, business
managers, executives) with the help of the box and the symbolism it conveys. This co-

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