Rothacker Reviews

Change by Design

Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO authored a book in 2009, titled Change by Design. Today it ranks number five at Amazon under the category Organizational Change. Tim writes:

This is not a book by designers for designers; this is a blueprint for creative leaders seeking to infuse design thinking - an approach for creative problem solving - into all facets of their organizations, products or services to discover new alternatives for business and society as a whole.

The high ranking at Amazon is not because a bunch of leaders who want to be creative rushed out to buy Tim's book - even though Tim clearly communicates the strategies and business reasons behind engaging design thinking, c-o-m-m-u-n-i-c-a-t-e-s in CEO and leader language. Rather the high ranking is because those who work for these leaders are desperately in search of - as in crawling across the hot desert floor in search of a tall, cool glass of water - other leaders who get it, other companies that are doing it and other ways to operate a company better.

If you're a CEO / leader and the word change begins to constrict the little fellers in your groin's environment, relax. You don't have to embrace creative problem solving to change your entire company. Learn about it, become familiar with it and change one outdated personal business practice. Once you've gotten your arms and mind around design thinking and have effected a positive personal outcome, you will be encouraged and excited to use it once again. For design thinking to be effective in your company, it must become a mindset in which you truly believe in.

The cold reality of the situation is that if you're a CEO / leader now and are not already tuned into design thinking, you will never will. Your best bet is to step down from CEO and become a Wal-Mart greeter for your company. The only difference is you'll have the wealth and knowledge of your typical WM greeter, but you'll get to actually use it because you will remain on with your company in an advisory capacity. (Wal-Mart shuns the depth-less pool of knowledge and resources contained in their greeter's hearts and minds).

Could you possibly imagine the courage and incredible self-knowledge of a CEO who understands that he doesn't have the capacity to embrace design thinking, but cares enough about his company to turn the reigns over to someone who does and remain on to help?

The cold reality of the situation is that this person doesn't exist. And this leads back to my number one recommendation for reading Tim's work: Learn to identify CEO's and companies who embrace design thinking. Learn from them. Work for them.

Here's another reason for reading Change by Design: Use it as a compass to help navigate your own road. Read the book looking through the window of your own potential development. 

Castles in the Sand

When you were a kid, did you ever build a sand castle? Do you know one reason why you probably got it done? You didn't allow yourself to become paralyzed by whether or not your project was specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. You probably didn't have anyone standing over your shoulder asking if you were done yet. Asking that is, minus any hands-on, support or intellectual help.

Chance are, you might have been on the beach one day and got the idea to build that sand castle. You checked out other kids' sand castles. A picture of a castle began to appear in your mind. You put your thoughts in order and began to build. If something didn't look right, you changed it. Friends came by and suggested you might want to add a moat. You listened and then built the moat. You checked to make sure that the castle's walls were strong. You trimmed away rough edges and put the finishing touches on it. You felt pretty darn good after you finished.

When it comes to innovating, making things better - whether it's relationships, physical appearance, hobbies or stuff at work, we need to be kids again. We need to jump in and do it. It's okay to name things in our process. It's okay to use words like design, design intent, research, concept, prototype, build, test, feedback and modify. But we're not going to get too rapped up in the language. The intent is to get things done.

Photo by ebaumsworld

Use Intent not Goal

I can't believe that I compared a bowel movement to a goal. No doubt my subconscious was driving that thought.

I would like to create a new framework for looking at goal-setting and goal-achieving using the design process and its related language. Our first project is to use the word intent instead of goal. I'd rather this process concentrate more on the feelings and impressions that are invoked by a different language as opposed to the American Heritage's left-brain driven interpretation. To give my case a little meat however, I will defer to my favorite dictionary.

Intent n. An aim or purpose.

Goal n. A desired purpose.

Based on this definition alone, an intent sounds more desirable than a goal. An aim - direct, a target. Desired - I wish, I want. Let's look at the Latin derivative for the word intent to gain traction: intendere. Intendere is also the Latin derivative for the word intend.

Intend v. To design for a specific purpose.

Design v. To have as a goal or purpose; intend.

The key is the v, as in verb. I goal to lose weight? Or I intend to lose weight?

All rightttttty then. With all due respect to my trusted American H., it's time to shelve him, shelve the semantics and get down to design, which I wasn't quite prepared to do. I wanted more time for research and time to flesh these thoughts out. But that's noun creep. To get things done I need verb creep. I need to move from concept phase to prototype phase. I need to sink my mind and hands into the process, get a mock-up out there, play with it, test it and build a feedback loop to refine it.

Moving forward, this effort will be filed under the category Design Intent.