This is the final post in the series Inspired by Chengdu: Adopting the Leadership Personality of a Design Thinker. We signed off last week after talking a bit about design thinking. Today, we'll talk about why those design thinking traits matter in leadership. Now that the entire series is published, I encourage you to go back and read all four posts in succession, then consider which pieces of a design thinking leadership personality you possess - and which ones you might foster still...
There are unique issues embedded in our efforts to take giant leaps forward in urban development: technology, transportation, education, and social reform are just a few examples. Trying to tackle them all at once seems a daunting task. Design thinking, as Mr. Brown describes, gives communal structure to the issues, helping us tackle each one individually without losing site of its place within the global human framework. That last sentence has design thinking written all over it, by the way: it creates a picture in our mind of why and how design thinking functions as an architecture to help creatively solve complicated problems. As you consider one issue from several different perspectives, the issues related to it are naturally considered as well.
With as popular and successful as design thinking is, however, thinking like a designer is simply not enough. Great solutions are not discovered, developed and implemented on design thinking alone. The real impact of thinking like a designer is in adopting the leadership personality of true design thinkers, those who not only understand how to discover and develop practical solutions by applying the methodology of design thinking to their work, but understand how to successfully inspire and work with others to implement those solutions.
In other words, discovering the best solution is step one. Implementing that solution is step two+. For design thinking to result in tangible outcomes, the traits described in Post 3 must be converted into a leadership context: the leadership personality of design thinkers must blossom to communicate why this is the best solution, gather the resources (and fans) necessary to support its development, and finally, implement!
When you begin to see the personality traits of design thinkers as leadership qualities, you realize design thinking places far more at your fingertips than a methodology to organize and test ideas, on its own, can do. Some of us may choose to stay within the discover and design arena, some may choose to work within the inspire and implement arena, and some may choose to function along the entire continuum - bringing their creative, inspirational and execution talents to bear on a project from start to finish. In projects around the globe, including many I've worked on in the past, the designers do the creative problem solving and then pass it off to leaders to implement. This tends to work when the leadership team has been intricately involved in the design process because even if they don't know they are adopting design thinking traits, they understand exactly why a particular solution was chosen and can see how to implement it effectively within their organization. I maintain that it works even better when the designers themselves think like leaders - applying their design thinking traits to the leadership realm, inspiring those close to the project but outside professional design to do the same, and designing solutions that innately consider what successful implementation will require. This combination is the golden ticket, and when those aforementioned popular design thinking efforts in large organizations fail, the reasons can often be traced back to a lack of one or the other - designers or leaders - adopting the leadership personality of design thinking across the continuum of good design and effective leadership.
In every stage of development, and in nearly every situation, design thinkers strategically consider how people will feel about solutions proposed. That is why those who adopt the leadership qualities of design thinkers are able to make such a difference. Leaders who constantly ask: What do people want and what drives those desires? How will they react? How can discoveries be modified along their ongoing development path to better accommodate those reactions? - and then observe the answers - are embracing the personality traits of design thinkers as leadership qualities worth fostering, both in themselves and in others. Great designers do the same.
Remember, empathy promotes empathy.
Design thinking is driven by empathy, and empathy is the foundation of superb leadership. By adopting the leadership personality of a design thinker, we tie these two powerful tools together in a win-win approach that can solve even the most challenging of problems. As a leader, once you become comfortable with the iterative, seemingly chaotic cycle of design thinking, you will find you are able to capitalize on its inherent leadership qualities and rely on it as a flexible, extremely effective tool for smart growth. As a designer, when you embrace design thinking traits as a leadership personality, your effectiveness in working with leaders to translate your designs into lasting solutions will reach new heights - in urbanization and beyond.
Xie xie.
