Inspired by Chengdu: Design Thinking (Post 3 of 4)

Welcome back to "Inspired by Chengdu - Adopting the Leadership Personality of a Design Thinker."  Let's continue our journey with a conversation about design thinking...

Essentially, design thinking is an iterative (sometimes, seemingly chaotic) process that trained designers use to organize and work through challenging problems. It has received a great deal of attention in the last several years, with organizations around the globe spending millions to incorporate design thinking into their innovation methodologies. Design thinking works because it is inherently human-centered: designers are trained to approach problems with empathy, finding the solutions that humans want and need.  This empathetic foundation makes design thinking extremely flexible, comprehensive, applicable, and effective in exploring solutions for all types of situations. In short, the designer’s tool box offers powerful insight into the whys, hows, and what ifs that can derail even the best intentions when they are not considered first from a human perspective.

So what is in the designer’s tool box? 

“Many people outside of professional design have a natural aptitude for design thinking,” according to IDEO’s Tim Brown in his book, Change by Design. I’m absolutely one of those natural design thinkers - and I’m sure many of you are, too.   

Just how do you know if you think like a designer?  Well, Mr. Brown describes design thinkers as:

1. Empathetic. Design thinkers have the ability to see things from several different perspectives and therefore consider details that may be missed by others.” 

Think about your neighbors and how you imagined they felt as you explored the perfect world in your mind. During that empathetic journey, you tapped into their thoughts and feelings; put yourself in their shoes. You observed the world from their perspective and used that information to rearrange the details, which affected how you responded to their needs. Empathy promotes empathy. And empathy supports leadership.

2. Integrative thinkers. We design thinkers “consider even the most contradicting points in both data and human responses because we understand that often the most innovative solutions lie within the context of the most conflicting issues.” 

Evaluating options for healthy urban development and lessons learned from others who have done it before, through a designer’s lens, will nearly always offer conflicting solutions. Being integrative in approach, design thinkers embrace that conflict, realizing that within it lies the opportunity to do things better.

3. Optimistic. Design thinkers believe “there is at least one solution that is better than the current alternatives, and [we] tenaciously pursue that solution.” 

I would venture a guess that each of you can identify at least one scenario in the world you just imagined that is better than the alternatives that exist today.  Even better, your optimism and energy to pursue that alternative is contagious.

4. “Enthusiastically collaborative.” Design thinkers draw energy from the ideas and experiences of others and openly explore and contribute [our] own various interests and talents to the team.” 

Successfully creating an environment of sustainable growth through an architecture of policy, business, culture, education, community and environmental concern requires everyone’s best work: and it starts with the expectation that our best work is exactly what the team will get.

5. “Experimenters who are not afraid to push ideas outside the box.” This does not mean that you go big or you go home.  It does mean that identifying a lot of ideas, choosing a few potentially good ones, pushing them beyond a prescribed comfort zone, then collecting feedback and adjusting each until you’ve identified the best option, allows us to experience each idea as a tangible solution. Designers call it prototyping. Start small, try something out, make adjustments, and hone in on the best solution.  

Now that we know what the traits are, how do we help leaders leap?  We'll talk about that as we wrap up our journey tomorrow...