- The best design thinking teams and leaders
tend to approach hard questions and ambiguity
with a mind set of six characteristics.
The first, asking "What if?"
The first part of the mind set is this welcoming
of big ideas and unusual perspectives.
Listen for ideas that feed one another.
Those classic "Yes, and" moments, where people are
working together and their ideas just keep
building on each other.
And listen for a tone of closing down the discussions.
Statement like, "There's no business model for that."
Or, "The CEO will never go for it!"
The other thing to listen for here is,
does your team actively seek outside perspectives?
Or are they always going back to the usual suspects
every time to gather information?
The design thinking mind set really invites
unusual perspectives and sees it as
an opportunity and a chance to grow.
Optimism.
Okay, this is a core belief that the team will come up
with a great solution and a good attitude in that pursuit.
But it's more than just bringing good energy
or caffeine to the table.
It's about seeing the problem before you
and its constraints as opportunities for
creating a better solution.
The third is human empathy.
You'll sometimes find organisations which think they
do human centered design because they have
a high net promoter score and they do a lot of useability
testing with end users, but those
metrics don't necessarily mean the team has a rich
understanding of the people using the products.
And the skills or opportunities to deepen that understanding
when they need it.
So as you listen to your team,
do they bias towards getting user input?
Can they express how the product or service meets real
people's needs?
And don't forget to develop an understanding
of those in your company who are delivering
the user experience.
A sales person or a call center rep is as
complex and important a player in many of the
experiences we create today.
The fourth characteristic is experimentation.
So you can see if your team is making fast prototypes
and iterating ideas through that making and learning,
so that they can improve the next iteration.
But also, listen for a bias towards
failing fast as they talk.
Is failure a word the team is afraid of?
Does every experiment need to be full fidelity?
Or is the team able to focus on
just one key question per prototype?
Is the team comfortable exploring an idea and then
letting it go when it doesn't work?
The fifth characteristic is collaboration.
Listen for how the collaboration is working
on all the channels and slack in the team space,
over email and over drinks.
Is everyone being engaged?
And particularly for those folks on your team with
a different point of view or a different skill set.
Maybe it's the mechanical engineer with
deep knowledge of manufacturing constraints or
a health care lawyer who has HIPA in their
everyday conversation.
How is the team engaging their skills?
Are they being invited to bring
all their skills to the table?
The last characteristic is experience focused.
Does the team have a mind set that is
focused on just the point solution?
Like the shopping cart that you've been asked to fix?
Or are they thinking about the shopping cart,
but how that relates to the full experience
that the users have of your product?
If they are thinking about the full journey,
not just the shopping cart, they're probably
in a good experience mind set.
Over the next week, make a note of how
the team approaches hard questions.
Are they asking "What if?"
Is there and attitude of optimism about the problem?
Are humans, people being brought into the process?
Is experimentation a part of how you work?
Is everybody on the team collaborating?
And is the overall mind set
experience focused?
At the end of the week, define for yourself
what you feel the greatest strength
and the greatest opportunities are.
And consider how you might support
improving one or developing the other.
This is an activity you can do over time.
So put a note in your calendar for sometime
a few months out to do this again
and see if things have changed.