Design Thinking and the DNC
Anthony Bourdain recently let loose with a criticism of the urban liberal elites for discounting the lives of people living in predominantly Red states. I can’t agree more.
First, Anthony wrote:
The utter contempt with which privileged Eastern liberals such as myself discuss red-state, gun-country, working-class America as ridiculous and morons and rubes is largely responsible for the upswell of rage and contempt and desire to pull down the temple that we’re seeing now.
This is spot on. “Pulling down the temple” is spite in action. See my brief article on the topic here. The caricature of the other as stupid is an ethnocentric discounting of a divergent world-view.
So Bourdain goes on to state:
I’ve spent a lot of time in gun-country, God-fearing America. There are a hell of a lot of nice people out there, who are doing what everyone else in this world is trying to do: the best they can to get by, and take care of themselves and the people they love. When we deny them their basic humanity and legitimacy of their views, however different they may be than ours, when we mock them at every turn, and treat them with contempt, we do no one any good.(http://reason.com/archives/2016/12/29/anthony-bourdain)
He hits upon the key challenge of the anthropologist, an issue we experience time and again with our clients. On the one hand, there are overwhelming human universals that bind us all together — the fundamental building blocks for empathy. These common denominators make divergent tactics understandable when the core drivers are shared, be they making a living, having choice and freedom, etc.
On the other hand, culture matters. In some ways, culture matters more than anything else — even the most basic of human needs. But the tendency is to think of everyone as being the same. We see it all the time with clients who choose to skip doing research out of a confidence of knowing the intentions of others. It is the same issue that undermines empathy as a design technique. Because it is about presumption. It assumes that the would view of the observer is shared by everyone else.
Startup founders are particularly prone to this cognitive bias. They often define their initial value proposition out of a personal experience. A personal pain point. When others buy into this value proposition, it confirms their belief that others are like them. But as the startup taps a larger market, this logic runs afoul and growth quickly slows.
Because other populations do not share the same values or basic assumptions about the world. They do not have the same pain points necessarily.
The shock of the urban coastal liberal populations of the results of the election are a culture shock. It is disconcerting to think that the core truths about the nature of the word that one hold’s so dear may be arbitrary. And so the tendency is to defensively double-down rather than try to understand the orientation of other groups.
This is not an argument for cultural relativism. I think Robert Edgerton was right when we wrote Sick Societies. Cultures can be maladaptive. They can be derailed from evidence and data. Indeed, we live in a society has is experiencing a deep chasm around the role of evidence versus faith in defining perspective and driving behavior. A topic for another time.
So I would push back against Bourdain’s view that one should not critique the legitimacy of another views. But he is right. Before one can successfully challenge the views of another, one must first establish deep psychological attachment and acceptance. Empathy is core to the process.
So, as the Democratic Party looks to retool itself, design thinking should be a central modality. The DNC should leverage empathetic research to understand the constituents for whom the party no longer resonates, constituents who used to be core to the party. It should then set out to re-design a platform and set of policies that fold in the needs of these large constituencies in such as way that is inclusive but aligned with core principles.
And where these core principles seem to be in conflict, they should re-visit and apply the thinking of Willia Ury and Roger Fisher — who wrote Getting Past No and Getting to Yes. Move away from position and get to the underlying interest. Find the common interests and create solutions that engender coordinated action. Here is where Bernie Sanders was successful. As an independent, he was addressing the core interest and not the political position.
Refine and iterate.
At the end of the day, Bourdain is right. We all want the same basic things in life. If coal is not the path forward, find a real alternative that is meaningful for West Virginia and Kentucky residents.
The real challenge here is a cultural one. It is feasible to re-giggler economic positions along common interests. But ideology is less flexible. Ideology politics are hard to reconcile. Thus the DNC should have a regiment of anthropologists and sociologists to help the party gain a better understanding of the core beliefs and values of a very large segment of our population. A segment for which, they understand little and empathize with even less.
