On how to think in circles.

I always experienced inner conflicts with not having an “exact action plan”, to work upon. This became especially noticeable for me when I was introduced to the concept of design thinking about 5 years ago. I was never a perfectionist, nor was I someone who took a lot of action. Where this urge for structure within the business world came from is something I am still only capable of having hypotheses for. One of them being that it might be one of the quickest ways to get to a result, which would then allow me to focus on something else, as I am someone who likes to work in the most colorful ways. I prefer having different challenges and tasks and not having to go through the same thing over and over again. Circularity somehow portrayed this to me, provoking a feeling of being “stuck” and “moving slowly”. This all changed when I took the lessons from this design thinking course and saw them as a tool for authentic growth, not only for projects but for my personal development as well. I realized that the pattern of starting with empathy, followed by exploration, and ending with the stage of “just testing” without expecting immediate success was what I would also call a “soft start”. This is something I used for myself, creating my own entrepreneurial projects in turn as well. All it took was reflecting on what I was already doing, and I discovered the natural patterns of “design thinking” and each of its action steps. Just like storytelling or systems thinking, these are principles that are not new. They have always been powerful tools for humans; now we just put a strategic design behind these processes and tools. Does that extract them from their original, natural ways? I don’t think so. It just helps to empower these beautiful practices in a world where they sometimes might be forgotten. It’s a way of modernizing them without losing sight of their core principles.

The project we worked on during this semester showed me how effortlessly the process of creating can become with a team, where each individual can leverage their own strengths and the main focus is not on financial success but on supporting the community. We used a holistic approach to target problems that we realized were even bigger than we originally imagined them to be. Our guidance came from the community. Each and every individual who was kind enough to open up about their needs, wishes, values, and worries. It made our call to action sound even louder, as we were all aware of what and who we were doing this for. By using creative thinking for each step of our project, we not only had fun working on it but also came up with many ideas for making it even better along the way. Looking back at it now, I feel quite accomplished by what we did and that we are still in the process of handing over our valuable insights and prototypes to people who will continue to benefit from them.

My biggest learning after all is the overcoming of my inner conflicts. The feeling of being “stuck” and “moving slowly”. I discovered that both of these stages allowed me to truly transform and grow deeper into who I wanted to describe as the best version of myself. Why, you might ask? Because it allowed me to be reflective. To slow down, listen to my intuition, and try things out without being scared of failing or pivoting. To sometimes just go for it and call it a “soft start”, as I personally benefit more from consistently staying in movement than rushing from one thing to the next. What an irony that the two stages I felt most uncomfortable being in are now the sources of my biggest strengths and growth. I learned to stay creative and get out of my head to start creating. Prototypes, vision boards, or just a constellation of simple tools that visualize my ideas. This is the first step to getting active. The second step is to stay in motion. Something that the design thinking process allows us to do really well is stay in motion. We always know where to start and where to continue. A perfectly imperfect loop of thoughts and actions.

I truly believe that this course deepened my passion for creativity and, especially, for following holistic and authentic ways of being and creating. It allowed me to put all these learnings and creativity into my own “soft start” as a business owner now. I recently published my first website, where I will offer services that will always reflect the core principles of design thinking. The core is that we as humans are as individual and diverse as it can get, and I truly believe that everyone is capable of finding his or her authentic way of being and creating.

Thank you for guiding us on this beautiful journey through this semester and to ourselves! @ Anne-Laure & Beatriz

website: www.monamarieclaire.com