Design Thinking for the Greater Good

by Jeanne Liedtka

  Remember that small is beautiful. In a world where we are constantly exhorted to think big and strategically, to try to be “disruptive” in our approach, don’t be afraid to head the other direction. The journey to best can start with better.

  Make it visual, visceral, or tangible. Build rough prototypes so that others can see, identify with, and build on your ideas. Put a spark in their brains so that they can co-create better solutions with you.

  Actively seek bad news. We rarely overcome obstacles we haven’t noticed. Once we enter testing, the sooner we acknowledge problems with new ideas, the sooner we can iterate to solve them, or the more quickly we can reduce risk in innovation by shelving weak concepts. Hearing that your baby is ugly—or even calling it ugly yourself—is hard, but necessary.

  Focus on do-or-die assumptions. Testing takes time and energy, so deal with crucial assumptions first. These are usually related to value—and be sure to include value to all of the stakeholders whose support you need, not just users. You may save yourself the wasted effort of dealing with assumptions that don’t matter anyway.

  Harness the power of emptiness. Hold workshops instead of meetings—everyone wants to be part of a work in process—and let your stakeholders tell you what features your idea needs or doesn’t need. Don’t let your prototype look or feel as refined or polished as a dress rehearsal.

  Worry about engaging, not convincing. Though it’s difficult for most of us to avoid, stop trying to sell or defend your choices. Let your stakeholders fill the blank spaces with their ideas and insights. Tell your story—then let others reshape it. Maybe you’ve arrived at a great idea, but without others believing they had a part in the idea, it likely won’t succeed. Take stakeholders to the water, but let them decide how much, and when, to drink. Help people find themselves in the new future. We’ll repeat Eli’s great advice one more time: buy-in comes when people see themselves in your offering.

  Our journey into design thinking has led us to believe that succeeding at it is ultimately about managing a set of tensions. We would like to see them go away, but giving these tensions thoughtful attention every day is more the reality of the life of a committed design thinker.

  Here are our favorite strategies for your consideration. We are sure you will develop some of your own!

  Stay in the question AND have a bias for action. Staying in the question isn’t an excuse for endless theorizing that gets you stuck in the problem; having a bias for action doesn’t mean rushing to solutions. Our approach to understanding the problem during What is is action based; our approach to understanding What works is based on thoughtful experimental design.

  Love both the George AND the Geoffrey in yourself and others. Both have an important role to play in innovation. We need both dreamers and skeptics, so work as hard to develop empathy for the colleagues who drive you crazy as you do for the stakeholders you serve.

  Have a plan AND feel free to toss it out. Plan the project and a pathway to it, but remember to be flexible as new information arises. This whole journey is about learning—but in a disciplined way. There are no “right” answers, just steps that advance, or don’t advance, the efforts to meet your stakeholders’ needs.

  Immerse AND detach. The best ideas come to those prepared to wallow in the What is? question and to immerse themselves in the functional and emotional needs of their key stakeholders at the front end of the design process. But when we enter testing, we must be careful not to let our own emotions blind us to the reality of our solutions’ ability to meet those stakeholders’ needs, instead of the needs of our own ego. When we fall in love with our own ideas, our investment in personal ego can easily trump our investment in meeting client needs. Success in testing is about finding our inner scientist—a steely-eyed investigator of the truth, detached from any ego investment in the idea.

  Give tools AND rules. We need rules for how we talk, and tools to see what solutions may be possible. We don’t need rules to tell people what to do, or conversations that run amok, without structure or coherence.

  Pay attention to the big picture AND the little picture. Peter Senge reminds us that we should consider the whole system—the big picture—to change the world. But, as Luigi Ferrara of IwB cautions, we also need to pay attention to the details. This moving back and forth between the abstract and the particulars is one of design’s great strengths. Take advantage of it.

  Where Do We Go from Here?

  Or, as our Monash colleagues put it, “What next?”

  By drawing attention to this fifth question, Monash underlines the point that change is the only constant and that the organization that settles into the status quo in this era of powerful uncertainties faces risks from inaction that may well be more significant than the risks of taking action. The old axiom “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” might have worked well in stable times, but today it endangers an organization that can’t create new ideas or get them off the back burner because of internal politics or overworked staff. With futurists noting that the explosive growth in artificial intelligence has made the old “smart” into the new “stupid,” many are arguing that mankind needs a stronger commitment to being human than ever before—to embrace humility, empathy, and human communication. The ability to explore deeply, empathize continually, ideate rapidly, prototype simply, and iterate constantly is what matters. These actions lie at the heart of design thinking and its contribution.

  As we began this journey together, we argued that design thinking is following a path blazed decades ago by the quality movement—that design thinking could play the role in the innovation movement that Total Quality Management played in quality. Quality was eventually integrated into the fabric of organizations and simply became their way of doing business; quality became everyone’s job. With the deeply wicked problems facing us today, particularly in the social sector, our future depends on making innovation the same kind of core competency, on combining the best of George’s analytical thinking with the best of Geoffrey’s creative ideas, to create the kinds of conversations that catalyze change, that democratize innovation, that invite everyone to be part of the process.

  In talking about what he learned as a community organizer in Chicago, Barack Obama commented, “Change only happens when ordinary people get involved, get engaged, and come together to demand it …Show up. Dive in. Stay at it.”

  NOTES

  CHAPTER THREE

  44 circles of influence and control Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989).

  53 “I think …to solve!” Laura Prestia, “An Alum’s Perspective on the Ignite Accelerator,” HHS IDEA Lab blog, October 7, 2015, http://www.hhs.gov/idealab/2015/10/07/alums-perspective-ignite-accelerator.

  55 “Ignite gave …promote innovation.” Prestia, “An Alum’s Perspective.” The final pitch is at HHS Idea Lab, “Illuminating the Technology Transfer Path: HHS Ignite Demo Day (04/23/2015)” (video), YouTube.com, published June 12, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D1V05Y8Gn4.

  58 creative confidence is defined Ben Grossman-Kahn, “Defining Creative Confidence,” OpenIDEO, September 18, 2013, https://challenges.openideo.com/challenge/creative-cofindence/inspiration/defining-creative-confidence.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  62 “One of the most urgent …support.” John Donvan and Caren Zucker, “Five Tips for Candidates Who Want to Talk About Autism—Responsibly,” Washington Post, February 11, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/here-is-the-conversation-candidates-should-be-having-about-autism/2016/02/11/19d208b0-cb49-11e5-a7b2-5a2f824b02c9_story.html.

  62 “there were probably …priority.” Dame Stephanie Shirley with Richard Askwith, Let IT Go: The Story of the Entrepreneur Turned Ardent Philanthropist (Luton: Andrews UK, 2012).

  CHAPTER TEN

  184 “When we criticize …thorough.” Ashley Halsey III, “TSA Struggles with Balancing Speed and Security at Airport Checkpoints,” Washington Post, May 12, 2016, https://www.
washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/​tsa-struggles-with-balancing-speed-and-security-at-airport-checkpoints/2016/05/12/615ccdbe-1860-11e6-924d-838753295f9a_story.html.

  185 “Two million …working together.” Kip Hawley, “Welcome,” The TSA Blog, January 30, 2008, http://blog.tsa.gov/2008/01/welcome.html.

  186 “The transformational …and passengers.” IDEO, “TSA Checkpoint Evolution for Transportation Security Administration: Improving Airport Security through Human-Centered Design,” accessed August 18, 2016, https://www.ideo.com/work/tsa-checkpoint-evolution.

  197 “We continue …top priority.” Ben Mutzabaugh, “TSA Takes to Facebook Messenger to Answer Fliers’ Questions,” USA Today, July 7, 2016, http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/todayinthesky/​2016/07/07/tsa-takes-facebook-messenger-answer-fliers-questions/86762580.

  198 “It also …its image”; on Instagram Lori Aratani, “An Unlikely Star of Instagram: Airport Security,” Washington Post, November 28, 2016, A3.

  199 “The crunch…five-year low.” Jennifer Scholtes, “TSA Airport Lines: Chronicle of a Mess Foretold,” Politico, May 27, 2016, http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/tsa-airport-long-lines-223666.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  252 “Every Gateway …caring adults.” Gateway to College National Network, “Who We Serve,” accessed February 20, 2017, http://www.gatewaytocollege.org/who-we-serve.html.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  283 playgrounds, not dress rehearsals Michael Schrage, Serious Play: How the World’s Best Companies Simulate to Innovate (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2000), 169-71.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  299 One popular theory of how change occurs Richard Beckhard (originally published in Sloan Management Review, 1975), citing David Gleicher; quoted in Steven H. Cady, Robert “Jake” Jacobs, Ron Koller, and John Spalding, “The Change Formula: Myth, Legend, or Lore?” OD Practitioner 46, no. 3 (2014), 32–39.

  302 Recent research illustrates clearly David Colander and Roland Kupers, Complexity and the Art of Public Policy: Solving Society’s Problems from the Bottom Up (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014).

  316 mankind needs a stronger commitment Edward D. Hess and Katherine Ludwig, Humility Is the New Smart: Rethinking Human Excellence in the Smart Machine Age (Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 2017).

  INDEX

  Page numbers refer to the print edition but are hyperlinked to the appropriate location in the e-book.

  A

  AbleGamers, 148

  Acosta, Robin, 256, 271, 283, 286, 287, 289–90

  action: creating bias for, 13, 181; helping staff choose, 14; at personal level, 311–15; risk in, 198; timelines and, 142. See also steps, in design thinking tool kit

  action capabilities, 65–66

  action orientation, 130. See also charrette process

  Adams, Bruce, 116

  AdvaMed, 116

  Agile development/methodologies: described, 90; at Monash Medical Centre, 90–94; at TSA, 183–84, 187, 192, 199–200

  agriculture/agribusiness. See MasAgro

  ambiguity: comfort/discomfort with, 12–13, 309; design brief and, 262; encouragement of, 43; as manageable, 248

  analogies, looking for, 313

  archetyping (brainstorming tool), 136

  Asperger’s syndrome, 63. See also Kingwood Trust

  assessment impact, 50

  assumption testing, 26, 48, 281–82, 314

  Auckland Co-Design Lab, 21

  Australia. See Monash Medical Centre

  B

  bad news, actively seeking, 37, 285, 314

  BEING (design consultancy), 63, 246, 310

  Berry, John, 5

  Best Mobile App in Government (award), 198

  bias for action, 13, 181

  big picture/little picture, 315

  “big win” thinking, 26

  blog use, at TSA, 184, 197–98

  Bonner, Neil, 187

  bootstrapping strategies, 150, 158, 162, 311

  Borlaug, Norman, 202

  “boss effect,” 276

  Boston Consulting Group, 16

  bottom-up approaches, 162

  brainstorming: vs. concept development, 275–77; Creative Matrix tool for, 112–13; in design thinking, 35–36, 248; IwB process for, 135–36; problems with, 276; transportation example, 177; in What if? process, 275

  Brand, Andrew, 64

  broad repertoire, benefits of, 86

  Bunmei (consulting firm), 215

  Burns, Bob, 197

  Burns, Damien, 96

  Business Innovation Factory (BIF), 217, 219–21, 225, 227–28, 230–31, 234–37, 240, 246, 300–301, 310

  business model, described, 220

  Business Model Canvas, 56, 174

  Byrne, Jean, 127–29, 133, 136, 145

  Bywater, Kathleen, 253, 256, 287, 289

  C

  Cadex Electronics, 116–17

  Camacho Villa, Carolina, 203, 206, 209–10

  Camak, Shelagh, 253, 255–56, 258, 270, 293

  Campbell, Don, 80–84, 95, 97–99, 101, 246, 258, 299

  capability building, 100, 232, 304–6

  Case, Steve, 16

  Casey, Melissa, 84–92, 102, 213, 239, 305

  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 53, 57, 118

  Centre for Arts, Design and Information Technology, 129

  Cerebral Palsy Alliance, 159. See also United Cerebral Palsy (UCP)

  change, management of, 299–301

  charrette process, 125, 127, 129–33, 135–36, 139–40, 143–44, 300, 302, 304

  Children’s Health System of Texas: business model generation, 234–37, 241; business model improvement, 227–30; design principles/criteria, 224–25; design thinking and, 19; elements of Wellness, 222–24; ethnographic fieldwork, 230–32; family Wellness focus of, 217; foundational research, 220–22; Health and Wellness Alliance and, 232–33; journey map for, 237–38; learning launch at, 238–40; mission of, 218; opportunity spaces for, 225–27; problem definition, 221; process flows for, 221, 228, 234; process reflections, 240–43; recruiting process, 221; story of, 218–20; value proposition for, 236

  choices/making choices, 312

  CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center), 202–3. See also MasAgro

  Clarke, David, 85–86

  co-creation: as design tool, 207; idea sharing in, 74; in Innovation II, 10; at Kingwood Trust, 72–74; term usage, 206, 207; in What if? process, 72; in What works? process, 37

  Collective Impact approach, 219

  Collier, Matt, 5, 44

  Collins, Jim, 307

  combinations, looking for new, 313

  community: charrette process and, 127, 129–31, 143–44; collaborators/collaborative design in, 127–28, 221; conversation structure, 125; hub system, 206–7; human-centered approach to, 107; listening in, 219, 242; self-governance in, 166–67; support/enthusiasm in, 172, 181–82

  Community Mentoring program, 17

  Community Transportation Association of America (CTAA): actionable idea development, 173; community self-governance and, 166–67; customer journey map, 171; design thinking at, 19; empowerment of local partners, 165; learnings out of, 172–73; Mercer County project, 174–76; process reflections, 180–82; project timeline, 169; prototyping at, 173; reporting system development, 174; team composition requirements, 169; Texas Coastal Bend project, 176–80

  “community whiteboards,” 222

  complex social systems, dealing with, 302–4

  concept development, vs. brainstorming, 275–77

  Concept Posters (design rationale), 114–15

  connections, looking for, 313

  Conrick, Amy, 166–67, 171–73, 182

  constraints, as triggers, 313

  Consumer Product Safety Commission, 106

  continuous improvement, 13

  Contreras, Miguel, 253, 256, 283, 287, 289–90, 293

  convergence, in design thinking, 113

 
Cosan project, 138

  “cost of hesitation,” 13

  Coursera courses/platform, 16, 252, 311

  Covey, Stephen, 44

  creative confidence, 19, 33, 43, 58, 59

  creative ideas, production of, 296–97

  Creative Matrix (design tool), 112–13

  Cunningham, Anne, 179

  D

  Daam, Heather, 132

  Darden School of Business, 16, 99, 202, 247, 252, 254

  Dean, Lynn, 186–87, 189–90, 194–95

  debate, judgment calls on, 262

  Del Mar College, 177–80

  Deming, W. Edwards, 13

  Denmark, innovation in, 16

  Denver (city), 13

  Department of Health and Human Services. See US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)

  design, vs. strategy, 217

  design brief, 262–63

  design criteria, establishment of, 273–74

  Designing for Growth (Liedtka and Ogilvie), 33

  Designing for Growth Field Book, The (Liedtka, Ogilvie, and Brozenske), 33, 249, 255–56, 260, 276, 290

  design thinking: divergence/convergence in, 113; four questions for, 33–39; as problem-solving approach, 6; role of, 24; scaling of, 99–100; TQM parallel, 6–8. See also steps, in design thinking tool kit

  design thinking contributions: alignment, at systems level, 79; bridging technology/human experience, 165; building connections, 147; community-wide conversations, 125; creative confidence, 43; dealing with complex social systems, 302–4; empowering local capability building, 165, 304–6; encouraging dialogue, 103; inclusion of new voices, 61; increasing speed of innovation, 306–7; integrating design/strategy, 217; managing change, 299–301; producing more creative ideas, 296–97; reassurance of reluctant stakeholders, 201; reducing risk, 298–99