Let Your Business Transformation Skills Make a Difference in Your Community
Why design thinking and stakeholder analysis don’t have to stay locked in your office when the lights go out.
Can a group of teenagers change the world? adidas Basketball thinks so. That’s why we challenged ten high school basketball programs from the Los Angeles area to tackle some of the biggest issues confronting their communities. As a member of Progressive Soles, adidas’ African-American employee resource group, I had the honor of facilitating a workshop with kids from these programs. On the agenda? A search for solutions to poverty, homelessness, drugs, gang violence and more.
In my day job, I’m a member of the Business Transformation team, which encourages employees to use creative thinking to transform the way we do business. We inspire the stakeholders to break out of their silos and to collaborate with other teams so they arrive at holistic results.
Both adidas Basketball and Business Transformation believe that empowering people to solve their own problems results in the most impactful solutions, so I knew that, in order to understand the problems that LA communities face, the affected community members needed to be a part of the process.




So how could I transfer the skills from my day job to help sports teams and community groups?
Well, much like in Business Transformation, I did my best to ask the kids insightful and challenging questions about the problems they face, the effect it has on their lives, and what they thought could be done to solve it.




The results were carefully thought-out solutions that addressed each community’s unique challenge.
Ten schools will join the Los Angeles Basketball Legacy partnership and will count on continued support from adidas in transforming their communities. More importantly, over 300 of L.A.’s youth will be empowered to be change makers in their own communities.
thanks for sharing your experience with us. Very interesting approach. How did you make sure that self penalties don't harm your student's motivation along the way? I'd love to learn more about your motivation approach.
Best,
Nina