#mindset
We kick off our Hyper Island, Digital Management Masters’ Course proper, with a module focused on Design Thinking. When deciding to commit to the experience, one of the primary motivations was because I felt that whilst I was involved in Design Thinking as part of my role, I lacked the knowledge, skills and tools to effectively contribute to the discussion. I very much prescribed to the view that Design Thinking was something that UX Designers, or Product Managers were skilled in; and to that extent I was a relative outsider to our internal discussions.
To that extent this was also a bit of a bogeyman for me when meeting up with my crew, I’ve always been the commercial / operational guy and definitely felt quite nervous about how much I could contribute off the bat, with a bunch of “experts”. I think this is also a reflection of my personality.. being someone who doesn’t like to get started on something until he has a thorough understanding of the issue or the process required to address it.
It was eye opening that the very first academic paper I read, suggested that I had been slightly myopic; and was missing a very crucial piece of the puzzle, one which was far less rooted in methodology and far more so in terms of beliefs & attitudes.
The paper was written by Zaana Howard & Melis Senova of Huddle and Gavin Melles of Swinburne University of Technology and was published in Journal of Design, Business & Society, V.1 #2, 2015, entitled: Exploring the role of mindset in design thinking: Implications for capability development and practice
In the paper they reference 4 key ingredients essential to fuel the design process. These are mindset, knowledge set, skill set and tool set. Mindset being the perspective that a person approaches the world; knowledge being acquired through education and experience; skill-set being practiced abilities and tool set being frameworks used to apply the other three.
It then goes on to describe two very different approaches to Design Thinking, one being a way of life and the other a way of work. Describing Design Thinking as a way of life focuses on how humans engage with and behave in the world, in contrast to a way of work being a practical, process-oriented approach to reach a particular outcome.
The core argument made by the authors, is that without taking an entirely holistic approach, Design Thinking is limited to a set of processes, that will fail to drive an organizational cultural change, or a paradigm shift. Further to this they argue the prevailing viewpoint of academic study and industry is more focused to process and tools. This infers that the more nebulous and perhaps rarer “mindset” is both the most overlooked but most transformative ingredient, to drive change.
They then explore the common characteristics demonstrated, by groups applying Design Thinking principles, either as a way of work, or a way of life. The five characteristics of human centeredness and empathy, collaboration, creative thinking, visualization and prototyping were common across both approaches. The three additional characteristics of optimism, curiosity and holistic thinking being evident only in the way of life approach.
This immediately raises questions to me about how best to view these attributes across a large diverse team. The paper describes a set of common characteristics across several studied groups, whereas in reality it is likely that those traits will be dialed up and down across many individuals.
This would suggest that in order to drive a paradigm shift across a business like Audio Network, using Design Thinking principles, not only do you need to agree to align the business around Design Thinking methodology in the first place, but you will have to be conscious to the fact that some within the group would see it as a means to an end, whereas others perhaps as a way of being.
I don’t think the authors explore this potential tension and would further question when trying to drive organisational change, whether having complete alignment around the way of work approach would in fact be more successful than having a few outliers who adopted a more expansive mindset. Furthermore is there a tipping point within a group where one mindset is more likely than not to prevail?
These questions around collective and individual mindset are likely to be the next avenue that I explore.. more to follow.
