Employees in large organizations in both the public and private sector have “Strategy du Jour” fatigue. Every year, they’re hit with new strategic directions that involve changes in the way they work without any clear impact on the things they care about, like the work they do and the customers they serve. This starts to breed a culture of cynicism. I distinctly remember starting a new job right out of college and was accused by my colleagues of being too idealistic. “Just wait, after a few years, you’ll be just as cynical as us,” they said.
Yet leaders are challenged to keep up with the dynamic pace of the 21st century. This requires a flexibility to change strategic direction and to adjust tactics as their ecosystem evolves. Instead of shying away from strategy adjustments, leaders and employees should expect and embrace their own evolution. Design Thinking provides a methodology for strategic decisions built on an iterative model that is driven by what matters most to a business: their customers. When leaders and employees embrace this practice, great things happen in an organization.
Wait, What? How do I get My Team to Expect and Embrace Change?
Change is hard … or is it? In fact, change is only hard if employees don’t get why the organization is changing. An inability to change can be directly linked to poor communication of strategic vision by leaders. Most employees would like to see things improve in their workplace, and would like to see their work provide more value to their customers. Employees who are seeing improvements are happier, and happier employees are more productive. Sure I could quote some of my cynical colleagues who would prefer staying stuck, but they are the minority, and I’d prefer to leverage the power of those that want to improve, wouldn’t you?
For example, how many times have you seen this in your organization:
- Management (note, I say management not leadership) tells the team we will be creating a new self-service option to help customers trouble shoot problems with our solution
- As a result, we will need less customer service representatives – yay, cost savings!
- Customer service representatives say, “Wait a second, the customers I talk to don’t want to do their own trouble shooting. They want us to solve the problems with our solution for them.”
- Management dismisses these protests as resistance to change and service rep’s fear of losing their jobs.
- Money is spent to “innovate” the new self-service option.
- The result is more calls to customer service, not less.
- Innovation is deemed a failure because the company is “resistant, too big to change”.
In the end, the idea wasn’t a bad one. But it was solving the wrong problem, because finding the right problem to solve is hard, it requires listening to your employees and your customers. It requires being open to new ideas that didn’t come from your executive team. And it requires creating and communicating a strong vision for the impact of the change on the organization, your customers and your business bottom line.
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There is a need for a new strategic framework that empowers employees to discover customer problems that need to be solved, building from the ground up, and delivers the business vision for solving those problems from the top down. This bottoms up / top down approach is the power of design thinking.
Design Thinking takes practitioners through cycles of divergent ideas and convergent choices.
Design Thinking is akin to Lean and Agile Methods, providing a path for continuous improvement that develops an expectation of change. In the same way Lean works towards a desired ideal state, Design Thinking directs business leaders to put a stake in the ground with their vision for success. This vision needs to be long term and aspirational, challenging the organization to achieve greatness yet knowing that they only have a 50/50 chance of getting there. And the vision should be customer focused, asserting the value the business can provide to customers in the future. Instead of an inside perspective of what the business hopes to achieve, the vision outlines the outsider view of the benefits customers and the market will receive through engagement with the business.
For many organizations, strategies for achieving vision and change come from the top down, from leaders who are afraid that involving employees will give up too much control. Instead leaders should be encouraging their employees, with the help of their customers, to explore different strategies to achieve the vision. This will yield a wealth of divergent ideas for innovation for leaders to choose from.
Try these 4 Design Thinking Tips
Here are four tips for how to use Design Thinking to quickly test strategic ideas that move you toward your vision:
- Explore customer and market pain points. What problems need to be solved? Ask your employees what they know. Encourage them to talk to customers about what they are experiencing as they try to achieve their tasks using your solutions.
- Create a five-year vision for your business. This might take the form of “How might we help our customers overcome their pain points by delivering our benefits?” Or my favorite way to capture a vision is in a mock press release, written to describe the value proposition of your business to your customers and market. What would you like to be able to announce to the world?
- Choose one or two strategies that start you on a path towards your vision. These might be new solutions, changes in how you operate, or new partners. Implement the smallest piece of strategy that is viable enough to stand on its own and deliver some value to your customers. Do this quickly, without a lot of fanfare, with a goal of testing and refining. You should strive towards testing and discarding as many strategies as you keep.
- Above all, communicate and solicit feedback. Get every brain in your business working towards your vision and listen to their ideas. This is where you can differentiate: no other business has the same mix of people that you have.
Where have you set an expectation for change in your business? What challenges or opportunities have emerged?