Leading Effectively e-Newsletter - July 2008 Issue

Think Like a Designer

Dan Buchner drives business results through design. But design, says Buchner, isn't just about good-looking, functional products or attractive graphics. It's about putting the designer's mindset to work throughout the organization.

An award-winning product designer by training, Buchner is currently vice president of innovation and design at Continuum, a design and innovation consultancy, and CCL's Innovator in Residence for 2008-2009. During a recent interview, he offered a glimpse into why design thinking is a crucial addition to traditional business thinking and how leaders can take steps to bring more innovation into their organizations.

When you talk about design thinking, what does that mean to those of us who aren't designers?

DB: I'm an industrial designer by training. As designers, we answer questions like how do we make it beautiful, how do we make it usable, how does it mechanically go together and how do we make it reflect the brand that we're trying to sell?

But the big idea of design thinking is the process that allows us to create something that is useful and desirable - whether it's a new car or new training program. I've even applied the designer's approach to economic development in Central America, water and sanitation projects in South Africa, and delivery of mental health services.

What sets design thinking apart from other ways of approaching a problem?

DB: Traditional business thinking is based on deep research or past experience or logical facts. It is geared to the idea that, ultimately, there is a right answer and a wrong answer. Traditional thinking is about removing ambiguity.

Design thinking doesn't rely on past experience or facts. It imagines a desired future state and figures out how to get there. It is about not having the right answer or the wrong answer but striving to get a better answer. The designer thinks about what could be. Ambiguity is a comfort zone, a place of possibility, for the design mind.

Take that notion a step further to the role of design thinking in effective leadership.

DB: Neither business thinking nor design thinking is better than the other; they are just different. What we're finding is that leaders need to use both ways of thinking. A new book that talks about this is The Opposable Mind by Roger Martin. He's interviewed a lot of people, including GE's Jack Welch and Isadore Sharp of Four Seasons. An earlier book, The Leader's Edge, by CCL's Chuck Palus and David Horth, goes into great detail about how to use creative competencies to deal with complex challenges.

Leaders don't work in isolation, so how does an organization utilize both design thinking and business thinking? A leader may have an opposable mind, but how does he or she translate that into a culture of innovation?

DB: There are lots of ways that leaders can embed innovation and design thinking in their organization. The specifics will have to do with the context of the business, but three things are fundamental.

The first thing that is needed is a really deep, empathetic understanding of the customer. A lot of organizations have a limited understanding of the consumer, even if they have a very sophisticated market research operation. The qualitative way that designers understand people in the context of their lives helps drive creation and decision making in terms of service and products.

Another thing that is essential is to have agents inside the organization that are adept at using the right side of the brain. Not just designers. Leaders need to populate some portion of the organization with people who are comfortable with ambiguity, willing to be experimental, curious and not overly constrained by existing systems.

Finally, if you want to create something fundamentally different, you need different processes. Resourcing and management should be done on a portfolio basis, not a project basis; setting up innovation incubators is great for this. And don't micro-manage. The payback is not going to be in the next quarter, but in 18 months or a couple of years.

Any final words of advice for how to get started?

DB: You can't introduce design thinking everywhere in the organization. You've got to pick a place where you want to start or where you can see it emerging on its own. Then support the hell out of it.

About Dan Buchner

Dan is vice president of innovation and design at Continuum (www.dcontinuum.com), a consulting firm comprising design strategy, brand experience and product innovation experts who create design solutions that lead to profitable business innovation. Dan directs interdisciplinary design teams to help business leaders recognize opportunities, identify breakthrough ideas and make those ideas real. He was recently named Innovator in Residence for the Center for Creative Leadership.