There are common challenges in the quest for delivering innovative strategies and developing a world class creative capability.
After experiencing the creative industry in many different types of organisations, roles and decision making levels, I have found common opportunities for the innovation teams.
One of these opportunities is the ability to enable Design specialists to thrive in organisations where the majority of colleagues have been exposed to Design Thinking methods.
Design Thinking confused with Design practice
Many senior leaders and decision makers are getting awareness of the values and benefits of taking a Design Thinking approach, to redefine the organisation value proposition and strategy.
Good leaders will promote a cultural change, in order to accelerate the adoption of the methods across the entire organisation. Other leaders might fall in the temptation to take control of the analysis of the design problem space.
In any of the above mentioned scenarios, there will be people in the organisation with Design Thinking awareness and skills. The most mature professionals will understand that the key for succeeding is collaboration, self awareness and acceptance that we don’t know all the answers – we are just getting better at framing the questions.
The opposite happens with less mature professionals with basic exposure to Design Thinking. During the early stages of Human Centered Design understanding, there is very little domain knowledge, and a high degree of confidence on how to put it into practice.
When there is little understanding of the craft from senior leaders and/or colleagues, Design specialists usualy get relegated to the mere execution of solutions that are already – sometimes poorly – defined.
How to ensure that specialists will be able to Design when everyone else is a “Design Thinker”?
1. Map out the maturity level of your organisation’s senior leadership, so you can distribute the Design capability accordingly.
By identifying how much your senior leadership understand Design Thinking, you will be able to frame the conversation depending on your stakeholder.
You still want to satisfy the internal Design demand of your organisation, but you might be able to demonstrate value of your team’s capability by allocating your best people to the initiatives promoted by the most mature leader.
2. Propose an experimental way of working, so you can showcase the value of engaging with Design specialists for strategic initiatives.
Get closer to the most mature senior leader in Design Thinking to articulate a way of working as an experiment. As a mature Design Thinker, they will recognise the value in collaboration to achieve a higher level goal, demonstrate success, and gain traction for further initiatives.
Use the experimental way of working as a case study to raise awareness of the potential value missed by cutting corners in the Design process.
Your strategy will play out differently, depending on the value proposition of your organisation and the way of working.
The key to understanding how to overcome these challenges lays in understanding the organisation’s way of working, and defining a specific way to operate as design practice.
It is in the best interest of the organisation to get the strategic initiatives right, and a way to increase the chances of success, is by allowing Design specialist to contribute.
Do you need help enabling your Designers?
Let’s brood together a solution that will help your Design Team to succeed in delivering great experiences and developing a world class capability.
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