Design thinking a doorway to a much larger conversation
Walk through it.
I just want to share a quick story about a 20min conversation I had yesterday where Design Thinking came up at my local coffee haunt and where it ended up. I’m guessing that some of you have had similar experiences–I’m sharing this because I love talking to people outside my professional tribe and sharing moments of inspiration. I’m spirited not only by the conversation but the clear indication of how fortunate many of us are to be in professional roles to help our customers more than they might initially realize. Yes, I get excited about this stuff.
First some context.
Over the last 4 years of frequenting our local hipster “scratch-made” donut shop, that also has great coffee, I ended up becoming friends with the manager “PJ” over conversations about things quite unrelated to donuts or coffee. PJ is an import from Europe, has covered most of his body in tats, is a former punk drummer and one of the nicer guys you’ll ever meet. He now manages all of the locations in town and was asking me what I’m up to now that I’m showing my face again more frequently after a long hiatus.
Good question. What exactly do I do?
This is where it gets interesting (for me at least). I found myself in the curious position of quickly choosing the simplest words to describe what it is that I do and why it’s relevant to our customers. Personally, I like to get “Design Thinking” out of the way as quickly as possible so I can focus on the process, it’s intentions and value rather than the bombastic nature of the phrase itself.
I decided that the easiest route was to connect it to his role and start talking about how the company would go through the consideration process of opening up one or more locations in a different city across the country. We talked about the pragmatic ways of identifying core factors that would come into play while evaluating the viability of the idea. Through this simple conversation, he engaged from his context and was able to tell me about how he sees value in this process and how could directly help the thought process in the conversations he has in his role.
Opening the door, we went a layer deeper into how the level of trust and maturity necessary for an organization to successfully embrace this way of problem-solving and the factors that play into the act of actually working through the specifics. We talked about how trust and maturity are expressed in specific decision-making situations where the fact is that someone is responsible but that person is not always trusted to make an informed decision and learn from the outcome. I brought up my borderline obsessive passion for leveraging the RACI matrix for role and responsibility clarity in any situation where an outcome is required. Once I explained the model he started connecting how they engage across the organization in a similar way and that it seems to be obvious the path forward for business operations in general.
Before I knew it we’d segued into how, just in our time as working professionals, the world has significantly changed in terms of organizational power shifting to a more balanced employment dynamic where healthy organizations understand the benefits of a horizontal approach to information sharing, role and responsibility ownership and how you foster employee growth through this model. In turn, this creates a more sustainable model from a “people” perspective, which leads an organization to be more resilient to the internal and external forces that cause you to adjust. How you manage the impact of those forces is key, and at least one indication of organizational health.
I love this shit. Straight up.
In just 20 minutes the concept of design thinking led us to how the professional workforce landscape is transforming more every day, the complex future in front of us and how he could start leveraging the thought process in his organization.
Thanks for reading this.
I’m happy to chat about this if my little story has inspired you to walk through the door too. Just reach out!
