Frequently Asked Questions

It all started on a call with a government entity reflecting on the outcomes of the first three years of their 5-year strategy. Following the obvious questions about the outcomes of the portfolio of projects, a project leader told us, “oh… we haven’t completed any of them.” Following some discussions on the scale and timeline of the projects, ranging from a few months to a year, and asking why none of the projects had been completed, the young leader continued, “Well, since we didn’t know which projects to prioritise, we didn’t start any of them!”.          

In that moment, TFDF was born, with the vision to never let a decision stand in the way of getting things done.

TFDF is designed for executives and teams in high urgency and high uncertainty situations facing challenges that need to be solved… fast.

Since our very first TFDF engagement – for a government entity looking to get back on track with their 5-year strategy – we’ve been bringing TFDF to multinationals, SMEs, and government agencies and departments, solving challenges we could never have imagined. 

We’ve used TFDF to solve challenges as diverse as building a national government innovation strategy, to ideating and launching an ultra-luxury brand in the healthtech space, and almost everything in between.

For us, every challenge is a blank sheet, waiting to be solved. At our core, the team behind TFDF was put on Earth to solve really hard problems and create really awesome solutions.

If your organisation knows what’s good for them, they should.

In all seriousness, most companies and government departments usually have Learning and Development budgets allocated for building capabilities for their employees and teams. We may be biased, but the “out of the box” TFDF process and tools may fall under the category of capabilities that are critical for organisations to move forward, especially in the current market.

Different to many other online courses, this is a live course, meaning you will be directly taught in real time by our coaches. It is not a self-paced, online tutorial course, but is a high intensity live course from leading coaches in the field and will be an individual experience for each participant taking part.

Yes it is possible. However we advise to let us know the tentative dates you would be interested in taking the workshop.

While we train, we are not trainers. Our team has real-world experience from running successful TFDF workshops for over a hundred global companies and brands. We also tap into a global pool of well-known subject matter experts. We are continually improving the process together, so you can be confident that with us you’re learning the most up-to-date (and tried & tested!) version of our TFDF Programs. Our complete focus with this course is to enable you to run your own internal workshop confidently, and equip you with everything you need to make that happen, quickly.

Natually, you will receive a Recognition of Completion for attending one of our programs. Our belief is that the proof is in the pudding, and what better way to prove your skills than to create value and impact in your organisation. 

Once you’ve completed a TFDF program, you’ll be proficient in applying the tools, tips and tricks to be able to identify organisational challenges, come up with your own solutions, and run similar programs within your teams. As a part of our TFDF alumni, you’ll have access to what you need to effectively scale success within your organisation.

We’d also encourage you to keep in touch and we love it when our clients share their successes with us.  Of course, if there’s something we can do to help you with your future endeavours, do let our team know!

Payments can be made via bank transfer or cheque. For any clarifications get in touch with us and our team will happily guide you through the process.

Think Fast Decide Faster is created by Black, a global design and innovation house with offices in Dubai, Copenhagen, and Washington DC. You can find out more about us at www.createdbyblack.com. 

The lead facilitators on our TFDF programs have advised and worked with hundreds of government entities, corporates and startups over the past 20 years. Through TFDF, you can tap into experience and expertise across our global team that has helped shape government public policy and innovation, worked to position global brands and create new products, and launched multi-million dollar startups.

Since TFDF is based in a UAE onshore jurisdiction, if you’d like to take a program from outside the UAE, our team will gladly issue an invoice with zero tax rate.

Participants from within the UAE will be subject to a 5% VAT, subject to changes.

A member of our team will reach out to arrange a short call to understand your requirements, and connect you with one of our partners. From there, we’ll make a joint assessment of whether your team is a suitable candidate for a TFDF program, and based on our collective experience, assess what a potential range of outcomes and proposed impact could look like.

From governments to multinational corporations, from startups to individual entrepreneurs, everyone can take their game to the next level through a TFDF program. 

TFDF, like a t-shirt, comes in three sizes; a Small, a Medium and a Large. We call these the 1-day workshop, the 4-day sprint, and the 20-day immersion.

The 1-day workshop introduces teams to the TFDF methodology and builds a large pool of ideas with a clear problem definition, a tangible, deliverable solution, along with an estimate of the organisational impact the idea will create.

The 4-day sprint takes a single idea or project to a working prototype with a prototype visual identity, the first functional version of a prototype application or product, or a new service offering. What does this achieve? Usually, the result of a sprint is enough to mobilise political will around investment by the leadership into the idea, either in the form of cash or allocation of resources.

The 20-day immersion is where you have full access to our creative and strategy teams that work with you using TFDF to deliver a portfolio of innovations. Together we co-design and deliver real, immediate impact in your organisation. The immersion is where we move bottom lines, develop capabilities, and create serious impact within organisations.

Based on our experience, real innovation doesn’t require a 5-year strategy (but imagine if a company adopted TFDF thinking over 5 years – that’s a scarily awesome thought!).

That’s a great question!

The reality is that our team have lots of hobbies, and we want to make sure we have the time to pursue them.

What that means for your team is that we want to get in, get you to where you need to get to, and get back to our hobbies. Knowledge transfer is top of mind for our team, which means we’ve engineered the TFDF process from the ground-up so that you can continue the great work we start together. For example, following our 1-day workshop, you will have all of the tools to run and facilitate 1-day workshops in your own organisations (Post-It Notes and Time Timers not included).

Our facilitators want you to become proficient in the TFDF process so that we can use it together to solve your organisational challenges and create value (so they can get back to their hobbies).

Because our facilitators have so much visibility in the market, they’re often called back to give industry insights and help with specific challenges.

Yes. It is. Most things that are worth doing, like innovating and building radical new ideas, or even breaking apart existing ideas, tend not to be easy. But they are really fun (if you like that kind of thing).

If you have a question that isn’t answered here, please do get in touch. For more information you can email tfdf@createdbyblack.com or call our office on +971 50 897 7111 for a chat. We also do a great cappuccino, you know, with a little extra foam, demerara sugar. It’s all in the details.

Some of the actual responses we have gotten from teams that have gone through the TFDF process are:

WOW! What just happened?
My brain hurts.
When can we do this again?
I didn’t think that was even possible?!
Holy S&#T! We can win big with this idea!
We should totally launch this new TV series.

It’s not us! It’s the TFDF process!  Well… it’s a little bit ‘us’, but it’s mostly the process.

And yes. It’s true. Every word. ESPECIALLY the part about the team with the 5-year strategy (we couldn’t make that stuff up if we tried).