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Well! This is the dilemma faced by Design Thinkers in general across the globe. They are caught in a dilemma – Should I go for a very sharp tactical change every time OR should I try for the long overhaul involving a radical change to transform culture? Even in our experience with colleges/universities and established corporations from diverse sectors; we are consulted by Design Thinking champions and enthusiasts on this aspect. And you will be surprised with the answer we give to such questions. Can you guess what our standard Thumb-Rule answer is?
We answer with a quip – Why not both? Why can’t you focus on both simultaneously i.e. The Short Term Solutioning & the Long Term Culture Transformation?
But is it possible to aim for both? Will it be relevant for me? Let’s see both approaches in this blog.
Design Thinking Relevance – Short and Long-Term Application
Short-Term Design Application: Need not boil the entire ocean
Boiling the ocean is literally impossible. In metaphorical/figurative understanding of the idiom, it means to work on something which is impossible.
In our Design Thinking collaboration with our Design Adopters, we try to emphasize that bringing a long-term culture transformation at respective workplaces/organizations requires a good amount of investment in terms of capital, trust, infrastructure, etc along with necessary support from every stakeholder and aligning everyone’s priorities. This means, the organizations have to work on a multi-pronged strategy on-boarding everyone with a Change Management plan in place. Since this Design Driven Culture change will affect everyone, building trust/belief while demonstrating returns on transformation, becomes the key. This entire exercise to execute in a limited time-frame may look like ‘boiling an entire ocean’. Given ample time, this transformation is definitely possible with the help of a 4-Pronged Strategy which we shall explain subsequently. This strategy is crucial in terms of bringing Design Thinking culture to your workplace. Kindly hold on to that thread which you can connect later.
But before that, let’s go through some examples of tactical Design application. These examples demonstrate applying even simple Design Thinking concepts can create innovation and open new opportunities. There are a host of Design Thinking tools available which when tactfully applied can help to solve a problem/arrive at the root cause of the problem and garner user-centric insights which guide the problem-solving journey.
1. Observing Patterns : Keep the Change Campaign for Bank of America
Bank of America, in association with IDEO, offered a unique program called ‘Keep the Change’. This program was designed to help people, especially mothers, to have better control over their finances. Design Thinkers associated with the program studied how women ‘rounded off’ their cheque books – making calculation easier and helping in creating a small ‘buffer’. The bank rounded off purchases made with debit cards and the overcharged amount would be remitted into the savings account automatically – and the bank would match the amount. It was observed that this program helped remove the feeling of shame that came along with being unable to save money. It also increased the customer base of the bank substantially. The crucial part of the entire exercise was arriving at a simple pattern of “rounding off” and then the magic started for the bank.
2. Understanding the Persona to Solve ‘Self-Financing’ Problem
One of the Deans from a reputed Arts & Science college (with whom we are collaborating) took the workshop insights which helped her team to address the issue of self-financing for the students along with solving a typical academic canteen problem of breaking the monotony of the food menu. Their institution was brainstorming on different ways to enhance campus life of students. As part of one such dialogue, the student council team came up with a request. Students wanted to introduce more variety in the food/snacks available at the college canteens. On the other hand, more than 40% of the college students work part-time to supplement their college financing. The college understood that the variety needed to be increased, but at a more affordable cost. Persona method was used to better understand the students’ needs. An idea of implementing food carts inside the campus that will be run by students themselves emerged subsequently in further Design Dialogues. This idea allowed the college to identify students who prefer to be in business for themselves instead of working for someone else (while sourcing for self-finance). In fact, many students have now identified this to be an excellent way to a “real world” business education. Most importantly, they are able to pay their tuition costs from the profit they make out of these businesses.
We would request you to go through some additional examples where Design helped to act as a differentiator in Business through some tactical and insightful application.
Long Term Design Application: Leveraging 4-Pronged Approach for Transformation Roadmap
In our discussion with colleges/universities & MNCs on the aspect of fostering a Design Thinking culture transformation, we suggest to them the following 4-Pronged Approach of bringing an impactful change across the organization. The execution of this approach is long-drawn, requires on-boarding every stakeholder, and requires trust development and alignment amongst everyone. But in the end, the outcome is worth the effort!
- Design Mind – Mindset Transformation through our ‘Design The Thinking®’ framework is the first step before actual application of Design Thinking. By definition, Design Thinking is a human-centric approach and thus the very fact that it is an approach means Design Thinkers need to cultivate Design Thinking as a habit / life-skill. Our detailed blog on why mindset plays a crucial role will complement this point.
- Design Process – On the one hand, Mindset plays a key role to think innovatively, but it also needs guidance in the form of process to ensure and channelize innovative outcomes. The key highlight in the Design Process is to ensure ‘Compliance’ doesn’t overwhelm ‘Creativity’ and that is where our 5-Step Process of Design Thinking becomes inevitable.
- Design Framework – To impact a huge ecosystem like a college/corporation/established organization where there are a lot of stakeholders involved (inside and outside), Frameworks do play a critical role in aligning everyone in the journey. Here alignment in terms of ideas, thought-process, letting-go of egos, arriving at a higher purpose, etc becomes indispensable. The entire collaboration between all stakeholders should act like a music symphony where the 13 Musical Notes play their part.
- Design Space – Yes! It’s the real estate which we are talking about which fosters creativity but it is also unfortunately one of the least focused areas. Many of our Design Adopters have developed state-of-art Design Centers/ Incubation Labs/Centre-Of-Excellence Collaborative spaces that help better cross-pollination of ideas and exchange of insights to solve complex problems. One such example is our very own 8012 FinTech Design Center. Today 8012 is not only the World’s First & the only Design Center dedicated for FinTech but an inspiration and testimony for putting Design Thinking into Action.
In our experience, organizations/colleges who are our clientele have already started to work on the above 4-Pronged Approach to blend Design Thinking as a way of work at the respective institutions. As is the case in any journey, there are pitfalls/shortcomings; but they also contribute in learning too as our adopters go back to the drawing board to sharpen their thoughts.
To summarize, Design Thinking’s relevance and application is possible in both viz. Short Term tactful and surgical application as well as Long Term Approach to enable a Design Thinking organizational culture.
