Designing Change
Part 1/2: The Need
I am a designer. The focus of my design activity has evolved over time. I began by designing physical products (e.g. chairs and tiles), then swiftly transitioned to digital products (e.g. websites and apps). Eventually, I shifted my attention towards services (e.g. banking and healthcare). Services are particularly intriguing as they encompass numerous products and a wide range of experiences, both for customers and employees. After a few years, my focus shifted once more, this time towards the organisations reimagining these services and products. It became increasingly evident to me that without reevaluating the way firms approached the creation and delivery of new offerings, my ability to make a meaningful impact on the world would remain limited.
Most recently, my object of design changed once again, becoming change itself. Or better yet, the way organisations and institutions at large go about changing themselves to tackle some seriously hairy matters. What are examples of hairy matters? Take circularity in the fashion industry, for instance. It requires a complete rethink of how the fashion industry works, from the materials used for the garments, to the way they are produced, to the way they are moved around the world. It is a challenge bigger than any single organisation; it is multistakeholder, and it is systemic.
Maria Giudice and Christopher Ireland help us clarify the very concept of designing change. In their book ‘Changemakers’ (2023), among other things, they describe the evolution of the dominant processes to make change happen in business. In organisations, the process or approach employed to design change and to implement any desired transformation follows the specialty that business values the most at that given time.
For example, in the 1960s, the approach to change favoured by executives mirrored the era’s emphasis on manufacturing. Change was meticulously planned and executed, akin to an assembly line process. Any modifications required halting the entire operation, making the necessary revisions, and then resuming activities. Leadership followed a top-down approach, reminiscent of a military hierarchy.
The 1980s marked a shift in focus from manufacturing to service-oriented offerings. Finance emerged as the dominant function, and change became a means of enhancing capital allocation and increasing share value. Leadership approaches adapted accordingly, adopting a more strategic visionary stance. While leaders still made most decisions, they began to foster followership among employees.
The authors continue their exploration, describing how change management evolved again in the 1990s with the proliferation of the internet. Change became synonymous with innovation, driven by traditional organisations’ imperative to keep pace with rapid technological advancements and globalisation. Leaders, in the words of the authors, “were inventive renegades who moved fast and broke things” (p. 8).
This brief overview illustrates how approaches to change have continually evolved in alignment with prevailing mental models and the dominant corporate functions of the time. Each approach gradually waned as the business context shifted.
Today, most organisations continue to drive change in a siloed and disconnected way. By doing so, they struggle to address some of the challenges of our time that are mostly complex, ambiguous, fluid, systemic, and multistakeholder. Design offers a way forward.
I really like the definition of design that Maria Giudice and Christopher Ireland use in the book:
“In this context, where it is central to change, it [design] means to develop a future state or condition in concert with those affected by it.” (p.13)
The connection between design and change is not new. In 1996, Simon Herbert argued that “Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones” (p.111). Designing entails striving for change, transitioning from the current state to a new, ideally improved one.
As the complexity and interconnectedness of contemporary challenges continue to grow, the scope of design has expanded. It now encompasses not only products and services but also the organisations that deliver them. It also extends to encompass large-scale systemic transformations. When I refer to designing change, I therefore mean fundamentally reimagining how organisations and institutions approach self-transformation to adapt to their operating contexts.
Anna Valtonen did all of us interested in the topic a favour by summarising the literature of the past few decades on the relationship between design and change. She argues that when thinking about large-scale systemic transformation, one must consider the organisation embedded within a given system. Why is this perspective important? For a couple of reasons that Kees Dorst (2015) explains very well:
1. Context: The environment in which an organisation operates is fluid and rapidly changing. Businesses, even those acknowledging the dynamic nature of their context, tend to seek a concrete problem definition. In doing so, they freeze the context at a particular point in time for analysis. By the time the solution is developed, the context has shifted, and the problem with it.
2. Practice: The way an organisation is structured and how it conducts its business defines its identity and culture. This culture permeates every aspect, from goals and values to accepted standards of quality. It dictates what is considered acceptable behaviour and thinking, and what is not. It therefore becomes very, very hard for employees to introduce new practices to tackle new emerging contexts, even if it is clear that existing practices are not fit for purpose.
We need an evolving set of practices relevant to designing in the service of systems-level change. In other words, adaptable practices to design within ever-changing contexts. Using Terry Irwin’s (2015) frame of reference for Transition Design, we know that what is needed is the following:
- Visualise and map out complex problems and their interconnections and interdependencies;
- Situate them within wider, spatiotemporal contexts;
- Bridge stakeholder conflicts and leverage alignments;
- Facilitate stakeholders’ co-creation of visions of desirable futures;
- Identify leverage points in the wider problem system where the organisation might situate design interventions.
This is something that no given professional practice can do alone. It therefore offers an opportunity to look beyond the existing boundaries of the different professional practices. Design has a key role to play there.
In the first part of this series I looked at the need to think about designing change, in the next one I will unpack how we can go about it. Find me on Linkedin.
I have migrated this blog to Substack, follow me here: designmavericks.substack.com
References:
Dorst, K. (2015). Frame Innovation: Create New Thinking by Design. MIT Press.
Giudice, M., & Ireland, C. (2023). Changemakers: How Leaders Can Design Change. Two waves.
Irwin, T., et al. (2015). Transition Design 2015.
Simon, H. (1996). The Sciences of the Artificial. MIT Press.
Valtonen, A. (2020). Approaching Change with and in Design. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation.
