Maturing
I’ve worked under variations of the business designer title since 2012. During this time a conflict has grown in me. On one hand, I have felt more than once an impostor. I have seen how people whose opinion I value challenged the credibility of Business Design as a specialization of Design. Mostly, because of the lack of a formalized discourse they considered solid or honest enough.
On the other hand, more and more signals have confirmed me that things that happen under the Business Design umbrella are not only valuable but fundamental.
The tension
I first learnt about the idea of a tension between reliability and validity in Roger L. Martin’s book The Design of Business, one of the books that helped popularize Design Thinking. This concept describes a tension between two different management paradigms: one based on reliability and another one based on validity. Each of them is driven by its own motivations, has its own internal rules and speaks its own language. From the above-mentioned book:
The goal of reliability is to produce consistent, predictable outcomes. (…) The goal of validity, on the other hand, is to produce outcomes that meet a desired objective. (…) Validity is difficult to achieve with only quantitative measures, because those measures strip away nuance and context. Typically, to achieve a valid outcome, one must incorporate some aspects of the subjectivity and judgment that are eschewed in the quest for a reliable outcome.
This concept is highly useful when working in something close to innovation. Most companies traditionally follow the reliability way, as described by Roger L. Martin and proved by anyone working in or for the corporate world. Things like having a bias towards quantitative narratives and the rule of incremental improvement are for example in the orbit of the idea of reliability. Taking a moment to reflect where you, your challenge and your context sit between reliability and validity is extremely useful. It helps you adapt your objectives, what you’re doing and even your language. It also helps you measure and manage expectations.
Along the years I have learnt a few things about this tension:
- It is not binary. There is a rich spectrum between validity and reliability; situations and responses to those situations can be defined by their position in that spectrum.
- It is multi-dimensional. There is not just one thing, one question you can answer, or one thing to analyze, that defines the position in that spectrum.
- It is not static. Although all of us have a range of the spectrum we tend to feel as our natural space, we move along the spectrum depending on the situation.
- Validity and reliability based management are both necessary. For an organization to be sustainable, the tension must be managed along time, not solved.
A misguided interpretation of this tension has been used many times by the innovation and design industry as a pretext. A simplified version for illustrative purposes of this pretext would say something like this:
In order to innovate with an impact in the age of the empowered customer, it is mandatory for reliability and validity to switch places. For ages, the focus has been on reliability, ignoring validity; now the focus should move to validity, and we can ignore reliability.
Yes, some organizations driven by inadequate paradigms do need a shock treatment. And yes, in some cases, an extremist and over-simplified message is required to drive change. But, even in those cases, right after the shock has been administrated, a more nuanced message should be delivered. And, even more importantly, a more sophisticated way of solving problems should be put in practice. One that manages the tension using the whole range of the spectrum between validity and reliability. One adjusted with a fader, not with a switch.
Semantics
One of the ways of describing what business design is can be illustrated by this definition by David Schmidt:
Business Design is the application of design methods and processes on the development and innovation of business models.
I consider this definition correct, I like it and I personally love the projects that serve as an example of it. Projects where I have the chance to participate in the creation of a new venture or in the redesign of a business model. But in my opinion this definition is missing something I consider potentially an even bigger contribution from Business Design to the Design practice and industry.
Business Design has the capability to enrich Design in order to address what is behind the tension between reliability and validity. It can help us leave those pretexts behind. Essentially, it can do so in three ways:
- With a better understanding of the business model where the design will live — the most over-talked yet ignored design systems.
- Through the introduction of business impact criteria in design decision making — not calculating the ROI of each and every decision, but opening a conscious reflection space and new constraints to consider while designing.
- In some cases, using elements of the business model as part of the design space — things ranging from the pricing model to how the product or service is provided.
We designers love to say that we are already there. That we already understand and take into account the business, that we explicitly work to have business impact. But most times we still hide behind pretexts.
Should designers code? Should designers do customer research? Should designers map the business model that the app they are designing will serve? Should designers build cost structures? Should designers calculate free cash flows? Yes, but one designer will never be able to do it all by herself. Design has already been normalized as a business function in many big companies. Among many other things, this means that it has gotten to a point where the scale allows us to specialize.
The design practice has ignored for too long the richness of what is really behind the tension between validity and reliability. Stop ignoring it means entering in a new maturity space as a discipline and as an industry. That is the most valuable contribution Business Design can make.
