Design thinking for the future

You did not solve it within the deadline. It is not clear why. You have a hunch why, but you cannot prove it. All eyes are focused on you, because it was your task to meet the deadline. What would you do? How far do you want your team members to go to make them see things through your perspective?

Or is there a way that allows for a more open and transparent conversation. One that allows for more then one perspective to be of value. One that draws upon the collective intelligence in the room. Solving the problem in a more collaborative way without losing a sense of accountability?

A few weeks ago I joined a workshop discussing “The Future of Work”, where we were introduced to “the little black dress in corporates today”. Something which could help with the above scenario; the methodology of Design Thinking. A thinking process that draws ideas from the collective intelligence in the room to create the future. With the key being to have a diverse group of people in the room that allows for seeing things from multiple perspectives.

So how could Design Thinking help? The process itself can be broken into 4 simple steps as follows:

Test and adapt by making a plan to get you to the outcome based on continuous testing and adapting the outcome. Over time you will reach the desired outcome, if not you can start again knowing what you have already learnt.

We used this process to think about the task at hand; 'The Future of Work', using the multiple persepectives from the groups we were in. And I have to say the nice thing about stepping into the designer mind is getting to experience what’s it like to think freely about creating a desirable outcome. To encourage ‘spontaneous creativity’ instead of aiming for a ‘finished product’.

It was a great opportunity to learn about different perspectives, but in order to get the most out of this process, I thought I'd share some recommendations that I also feel would help:

• When it comes to using design thinking as the process, the main thing is learning to accept the discomfort and disruption it creates. Especially when we’re faced with multiple perspectives in the room. Fighting the discomfort of disruption means believing that problems will be treated with the same thinking that created them. Which means nothing will change and we end up recreating the same situation.

• We are often afraid to include words such as ‘design and creativity’ in the corporate context, and we leave stepping into the mind of a designer to the ‘professionals’. In this process we are actually being invited to think like a designer and to use it as an opportunity to see and create different perspectives. To use diversity from a range of team members is the first step into creating this innovative journey rather than have to know the end result. However we need to be comfortable in living with discomfort, ambiguity, uncertainty, and imperfection of an unfinished product in order to make it work.

In Conclusion...

You may not have hit the deadline, or solved the problem you set out to solve, but rather than repeat the process again another time, why not take another approach. Why not embrace another perspective to help you break through that barrier... Better still why not embrace several perspectives to help unleash the ideas that are already within?

What we need to ask ourselves is ‘do we actively want to take part in designing the change for the future, with all it’s messiness and probability to fail? Or do we want to be left behind with the status quo?’

For more information on learning how to think like a designer, and taking the first steps to thinking for the future, drop me a line. Let me encourage you to learn the technique and start using it with your team!

In the mean time have a read of 'The courage to embark on a path to change.'

- Irene

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