(Part I) — Bringing Design Thinking (DT) & How learning networks can help your employees

André Moreira Dias
Sep 6, 2018 · 5 min read

It is known that Design-driven companies perform better (211%, to be precise), and in the race for competitive advantage, companies now look at Design Thinking as one of the yellow brick roads to success. But how does a company actually learn to apply these principles, tools, and methods in a holistic way, and when do you call it a success?

Over the past year, I researched 6 international companies in western Europe trying to bring Design Thinking as a capability, having quite similar issues on their different paths. It became clear that there was an opportunity to gather these organizations together for learning purposes putting on an effort to get through shared barriers. In this first article, I will lay-out the similar journeys, common barriers, enablers of Design Thinking and the key actors of this transformation inside these companies. My next article will be dedicated to developing an inter-organizational learning network.

— If you need an introduction on Design Thinking, check the famous HBR article by Tim Brown, his book Change by Design or check some content on Youtube.

The Common Journey

  1. An imminent pressure to innovate: starting with your director or CEO’s not very optimistic earnings report, or from the rise of an unexpected competitor.
  2. Need to deliver services: Delivering a relationship with the customer is related to the choice to implement DT throughout companies
  3. A Series of design thinking workshops and training sessions: that causes a clash of mindsets between the current state and DT principles, sometimes stuck on a loop that makes employees give up on the learning.

My main learning at this point was that this process is done under a big time-pressure, making the organizational context a barrier to learning new approaches such as Design Thinking. Recognize your company?

Left — The common journey. Right — 4I Organizational Learning Model, adapted from Lawrence (2005).

Organizational Learning

Organizational Learning is seen as the sum of social processes by Lawrence (2005) by the 4I model (Intuition, Interpretation, Integration & Institutionalization), and very well fits in the process of learning new approaches such as servitization, design thinking, agile and many of the current transformations. This means that learning new approaches as a collective is a complex interaction between groups of people in constant discussion, influencing each other. When an organization tried to institutionalize a new approach, it needs to tackle problems such as lack of trust in the innovation, of management skills to provide systematic implementation, of skills and knowledge to adopt the new approaches and counteractive behavior from members.

But what is this mindset clash when it comes to DT?

To start with, employees are not design-skilled: visualization & prototyping are not in their repertoire, as well as this whole new working language. Secondly, involving customers in your new product development is not unsafe, is necessary. Finally, working in a different way often shakes up power dynamics.

“Push back against the new way of working came a lot from the managers… Managers just find it scary to work in a different way, because it means you lose your hierarchical influence.”

Director X, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines

Key Actors embedding Design Thinking (DT)

Actors of the Design-Driven Transformation

During my research, I came across two prominent figures: Design Advocates and Managers.

Design Advocates: Design-savvy, driving the DT transition strategy by taking bigger roles — educating others and managing the relationship with external design partners.

Managers: The ones translating strategy into action. They are project, product, service managers, and connect both ends of the strategy — plan and action. These can support the change or block it, being a catalyst for transformation.

The Barriers & Enablers of embedding Design Thinking

— The barriers found in this research relate to how Design Advocates manage the transition into a Design-Driven Company.

During this journey, I found three main barriers that can be seen in different levels of progression towards embedding Design Thinking. They work as a series of behaviors of employees towards this new way of working. In my research, I tried to understand how the Design Advocates get past these barriers. They are:

1. Starting to Work with DT

The difficulty of employees to see how can DT principles improve a specific area or department, so not seeing the relevance of it for improving their way of working.

“…everyone has their own tasks, I don’t know if that would work if we are all going to make it transparent to each other, because I don’t need people from other teams, you know?”

HR Management Trainee, Albert Heijn

How Design Advocates deal with it: Success Stories. Examples of successful projects in the company and especially from competitors help to frame the process, explaining the particular value of DT for a department, and help to get support and generating demand for expanding DT initiatives.

2. Lack of Translation

During research, this turned out to be the biggest barrier to learning DT. After experiencing the approach through workshops and creative sessions, (very) often employees don’t know how to apply the knowledge acquired (but not mastered) on day-to-day activities. Employees are then inspired but confused.

“…I think the most difficult part is what do they take away and start using on a daily basis… So there you need to have some room for translation to their own business.”

Director, Barco

How Design Advocates deal with it: Less top-down push and more reflection. By revisiting and creating consistency on this educational process, Design Advocates are coaches of their newly bred advocates, aiding on which design tools and processes to focus on depending on which area, making it relevant and useful to employees.

3. Aversion to Design Thinking

Often employees follow DT pilot project or sessions following the design process in a prescribed way. The advocates called this “checkboxing behavior”, resulting in not very new ideas and failing to meet prior set objectives with the project. Employees then become negative towards learning.

How Design Advocates deal with it: Facilitated experience and clear vision. When employees followed design workshops with professional facilitation, the results were more positive. Moreover, if the organization is standing behind the new (designerly) way of working, it gives managers and employees a mandate to try the new approach without the fear of being accounted for failing.

Improving outcomes of learning

In summary, design thinking challenges the way companies work, so the change won’t last if not with structural support, manager involvement, and continuous effort. Also, Innovation managers might consider moving the learning outside of the corporate environment, such as events, professional academies or networks.

On the second part of this article, an inter-organizational learning network format addressing these barriers, enablers, and actors is explored, as the result of this research project.

André Moreira Dias

Written by

Allround designer & Strategist. I want to create cool shit with real societal impact.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade