What is "co-development"?

Co-development is a practice that relies on collective intelligence and consists of a group of individuals that will help you find new solutions to your problem.

It offers so many benefits:

• From helping you identify the actual challenge
• Improve your rationale while reducing the emotional dimension
• Develop yourself by learning from others' knowledge
• To find new ideas to solve your problem

Setup:

Gather with a few fellow sales reps, ideally from different teams, countries, and different experiences.

Invite 4 to 6 sales reps maximum.

Let's call them "Consultants."

And for the next 30 minutes or so, here's what you will be doing together.

1/5 Explain:

ntroduce what you believe is the problem in under 5 minutes.

This is a one-way conversation; consultants only have to listen and take notes actively.

2/5 Clarify:

Then, your consultants will ask questions to clarify your problem for 5 to 10 minutes maximum.

They aim to remain factual, ensure the problem is apparent, and understand what you have done so far.

It's about cause and effect; it's not a debate, and they should set aside any emotional or behavioral elements.

3/5 Reformulate:

Once the scope has been clearly defined and stated, you have one minute to reframe and reformulate your request.

What do you expect from your consultants?

What piece of advice are you looking for?

What's the desired outcome?

4/5 Collect:

Now is the time for a roundtable: your consultants will spend 10 to 15 minutes each providing recommendations.

Based on your problem and their unique approach, they will share their pieces of advice and your course of action.

Again, this is not a debate; you should not intervene and object to their opinions.

You simply listen and take notes to help you for the next and last process step.

5/5 Activate:

Finally, we are entering the last part of this joint exercise: your own action plan.

You have previously formulated your request and listened to their advice; you can now summarize the discussion and explain what you believe would be the right action plan.

Your consultants should have brought new rationale and ideas to light at this stage.

If done well, you should have unique perspectives about your problem and how to handle it moving forward.