How Design Thinking changed my perspective (and my career too)- interview to Grazia Maria Giordano, independent business consultant
I digitally met a cheerful Grazia Maria Giordano a few weeks ago and since then something has been tickling my brain.
Grazia Maria is a business consultant, she comes from my same hometown, she has lived and worked in Rome, Milan, Washington DC and Amsterdam and she speaks four languages. Apart from her professional and life achievements — which I believe can be considered as a model for women struggling with starting up a career while taking care of the family, that is sadly still very uncommon — when chatting during a Zoom call she said something that surprised and fascinated me. She said that she had been unconsciously looking for a fun, fast, adaptive and flexible framework for her entire career and that she knew she had found it only when she came across a book about Design Thinking (you will read more in this interview).
This surprised me (a fairly green UX designer and a cognitive psychologist) for two reasons: I kind of felt the same when I started using this method in my daily working life, often asking myself “how did I manage to work without it?”; also, she discovered Design Thinking after years of “traditional business processes”, while creating her own process, and without any hesitation, she started using it.
So this gave me the hint to wanting to know more and I asked if I could interview her. She kindly agreed and this is what we discussed. I hope her story can inspire those managers and entrepreneurs that feel like they need to change their methods in order to meet people’s real needs and improve the working environment and the customer experience.
NB: “Design Thinking” will be “DT” from now on
Grazia Maria, how would you introduce yourself to a stranger?
The most difficult question someone can ask me is “where are you from?”. This question throws me really in confusion! I’m originally a Sicilian from Messina, have lived in Rome, Milan, Washington DC and Amsterdam. My husband is from Genoa so we spend a significant amount of time there and I’ve always traveled a lot. Each place I’ve lived in, each place I’ve visited has left a tiny mark in my heart, in my soul, and in my mind so nowadays I feel that I’m from all these places. It’s difficult for me to provide a straight answer to such a simple question. I have three daughters, and I speak 4 languages. I love reading. I could read (and sometimes I do) anything.
I work as an independent consultant. My ambition is to help organizations to grow their business improving the way they interact with their customers, their employees, and their partners.
Over the years I’ve developed my own approach, “People Friendly Processes”, which is at the base of the projects I manage. “People Friendly Processes” aims at bringing the person to the center of the processes to create the best environment where people can thrive.
My ”People Friendly Processes” approach can be used in different contexts such as Product and service innovation, Customer Experience design and improvement, Employee Experience design and improvement, Business Travel, Project Management, Change Management, etc.
I love mixing tools from different fields of the management theory, depending on the project I’m managing.
So I use more traditional instruments such as Lean, Organizational Design, Change Management, and Procurement best practices, but I’m leveraging more and more on newer tools such as Design Thinking and Storytelling.
My background is quite traditional: before starting my consulting business I worked in the corporate world (Procter & Gamble, Vodafone), where I covered several positions within Financial Control and Procurement.
Let’s start from the end: with whom and for which purpose do you use DT today?
Today I use DT for several purposes.
First of all, I use it to design and develop the best Business Travel Programmes for organizations that need to create or improve the way they manage their Business Travel. I believe that in this particular situation DT is a very powerful tool to put together in a harmonious way the different interests of the several stakeholders with those of the Business Traveller. The Business Traveler is the end-user of the Travel Programme itself but usually is not involved in the creation of the Programme.
It happens then that what it’s decided by someone else is not meeting the needs of the Traveller and this is when the problems raise. With DT all these issues are easily overcome.
Second, I use DT to help organizations improve their Customer Experience. Thanks to the input coming from Personas and Customer Journey Maps, organizations can quickly create new products or new features based on what their Customer really needs.
Last but not least, I’ve started using DT to promote a sounder and faster decision making and more effective project management. This very simple, yet powerful approach with sticky notes, voting and so on is the perfect way to address challenges of any sort, overcoming the difficulties of traditional approaches such as long tedious PowerPoint presentations, endless conference calls with several people where it’s very difficult sometimes to even understand what’s being discussed.
What is the reaction you get when you introduce DT with your clients?
The knowledge of DT is still quite low in organizations outside the Innovation/CX/UX field. People don’t really know what we’re talking about. And when you start explaining the methodology, they’re a bit put off as they think it’s something “fun” just for creative people, or they see it as the next “shiny thing”, which will cause a lot of hassle with no result.
That’s why I tend not to speak about DT in the beginning. I start speaking about their problems, and how the method I use can solve them. This put people in a listening mode and makes things a bit easier. [this is how powerful DT is, I guess; you adopt it starting from changing perspective within your own work, ndr]
It’s not always been like that… how did you work before adopting DT? What were the main problems, what the difficulties?
My background is quite traditional: before starting as a consultant, I’ve worked for several multinational companies in financial planning and procurement roles. In my roles, I’ve always had great international exposure as a member of several important global projects. And the way of approaching a project of any kind was always the same.
You get some input from your boss or a global function “dictates” what you have to do next. Then the negotiations start: negotiations with the global function as you’re trying to mediate their request with your reality (global functions are unfortunately well known for completely lacking any understanding of local realities!), negotiations internally with other departments/functions as the activity has some kind of impacts also for them. And all this is done via endless conference calls with a huge amount of people online. The projects would last months and, in the end, the result was not always what you hoped for.
Why did you decide to change your approach in the middle of your career? What was an enlightening moment or situation?
I happened to learn of DT by chance. My business partner at that time advised me to read Change by Design from Tim Brown and it was love at first sight! That book it’s a kind of “Bible” for DT. While I went through the pages, I became more and more aware that my personal way of addressing problems was very similar to the DT method. It was the cherry on top of the cake.
I had acquired a method, which could allow me to solve basically any problems in collaborative, engaging and, why not, fun way.
Tell us about an event or project that could have a different result, had it been developed using DT
Well, I’ve run several projects over the years. But the one I’m sharing today goes back to my time as Purchasing Manager for Marketing and Communication in Vodafone Italy.
I remember we were trying to change the way we approached the production and printing of the material the client could find in the stores (flyers, brochures, etc). My teammate and I started talking to various printers, to the print management company which did the job on our behalf. We also tried to involve the Advertising agency which would design the materials. And, of course, we also involved the Communication department. And at each meeting, we were really disappointed by the kind of conservative attitude of the people we met and this, of course, didn’t bring a lot of new ideas on the table. At each meeting, our frustration grew and at a point we had to abandon the project because we were really at a dead end.
I’m deeply convinced that with DT this project would have had a very different outcome!
Young entrepreneurs are advised to work on execution to implement an idea… Is DT “start-up stuff” or can it be beneficial to more traditional organizations? What are the attention points in this case, what are the differences?
I strongly believe that DT is a method that can be used in every organization, it doesn’t matter the size or the industry. And I also think that it’s very powerful not only to innovate, to create new products or services but also to improve the way each organization designs their own internal processes and the way they make decisions.
Every process has its own “user”, which might be a customer, a person in another department/function or a supplier. And once you design the process having in mind the needs of that user, you’ll have a better, more efficient and effective process.
In larger organizations, one of the most critical aspects is siloed activity. Department A doesn’t know what Department B does. DT helps to break down silos and fostering collaboration, but it has to be a company-wide action. So implementing DT in bigger organizations calls for extensive participation and diffusion from all functions and departments.
What is the DT tool you like best and why?
I particularly love the empathy interviewing, which leads to the creation of “Personas”. I particularly like how you can create a rapport with your counterpart, and bring them to talk more freely about their challenges, their motivations. Once you learn to listen to them, you’ll get access to a world full of discoveries.
Which tool have you not yet used, but one you look forward to giving it a go?
I’ve used more or less all the tools, I now aim at increasing the use of DT based methods in the management of more traditional projects. I strongly believe it will bring tremendous benefits.
You come from a long experience outside Italy. How is the Italian situation, compared to the rest of Europe or the US?
The awareness about DT is growing in Europe. There are very interesting examples of organizations which have succeeded in developing DT such as the Design Thinkers Academy London or AJ&Smart in Berlin. In Italy, we’re still a bit behind, as we’re lagging behind in DT related disciplines such as Customer Experience (CX), User Experience (UX), and Employee Experience (EX). I feel in our country, DT is still too much enclosed behind the doors of innovation departments.
We need to bring DT in the daily life of the organization, so as it can produce a significant change.
What is the reason why some companies are more resistant to experience new methods and processes?
Companies are most of the times victims of a sort of inertia: it’s difficult to penetrate and make them change behaviors. It’s easier to keep doing things the same way as usual. The different departments or functions work in isolation: they have department objectives which clash with those of others. People don’t talk to other people. And people are blamed when they make mistakes. And all this is definitely very detrimental to innovation!
Good ideas stop at the door of the person’s own office! Promoting innovation requires a change in the mindset, in the whole company and not only in those functions facing the customer or which are in care of innovation itself. But it’s not easy to achieve and it requires a coordinated effort within the organization. Innovation has to become a way of thinking and approaching a challenge and not a function.
What is a good approach to spread the DT culture and build DT mindset?
Based on the above, I believe the best way to promote DT culture and mindset is through experience. It’s very hard to explain how a DT process works, but once you experience it, it’s done: people are usually won!
After a workshop, I’ve heard people saying they couldn’t imagine they would accomplish so much in such a short time. People who didn’t want to interview clients came back from interviews saying it was one of the best moments in their career.
So the best way is to try it!
And you don’t need to go with a big project, you can apply it also to small things. There are so many techniques which can be applied. The other factor I’d consider is to apply it to a real challenge/problem you want to solve: this will make immediately apparent the benefits of the method and how it can produce results in a very short period of time.
