Come Bearing Gifts: Practical Advice for Designers Working on Organizational Change
By Jeanne Marie Olson, Lecturer, Northwestern University
Jeanne Marie Olson
Traditional design professionals who want to apply their methodologies to organizational systems change and business strategy should be prepared for a diversity of responses from organizational managers. Some will welcome your unique perspective and experiences, your creative problem-solving and communication skills, and your willingness to work collaboratively across disciplines. However, you also need to prepare for the possibility of disdain, confusion, and resistance from others.
If you arrive at an organization expecting that you are delivering something entirely new—even if you are there at the invitation of an enthusiastic executive—be prepared for a different welcome from that executive’s direct reports or even other department managers. To be received well, you also need to arrive with:
An acknowledgment of new terms for some familiar organizational activities
Awareness of why and how new ideas aren’t always implementable or sustainable without changes to cultural norms
Sufficient knowledge of all organizational components and their effects on the system
Organizational change and strategy methodologies
As someone who often traverses the worlds of management and design consulting, I believe that designers can bring value when it comes to executing organizational change, formulating business strategy, and practicing management consulting. And I think that working at the level of scalable organizational change and business strategy requires designers to also focus on the internal organizational landscape in order to avoid potential career pratfalls.
The Challenge
Some clients will recoil when they hear the term "creativity" because they will remember the "corporate creativity era" of the 1990's (e.g., the resurrection of the 1960's de Bono lateral thinking research as "Six Thinking Hats," the proliferation of various "styles" quizzes, or the overuse of team-building exercises). Picture uneasy mid-level managers in colorful baseball caps sitting uncomfortably in conference rooms cluttered with Koosh balls and you will understand what I mean. Designers will not be able to limit their offerings to "creative ideas" and be valued over the long term. There are millions of great ideas presented in boardrooms, factories, and retail stores every day. Few of those ideas survive a round of self-congratulatory management back-patting to implementation or lasting initiatives.
The Opportunity
Culture-savvy designers will understand that discrete events or innovation workshops do little to create lasting change. Avoid the "Flavor of the Month" syndrome that historically plagues organizations and results in short-term activity, book buying, and workshop rollouts, only to soon be replaced by a new initiative. Designers will have to work to facilitate needed transformations in culture and systems that overcome the homeostasis inherent in organizational bureaucracies. Perhaps your client needs skill development in a design approach to problem solving. Or perhaps your client already has innovative people trying to work in a culture with norms, policies, and systems that unintentionally kill innovation. These are two different problems with different solutions. One problem would be addressed with competency development, the other through culture and systems change. Recognize which problem you are trying to solve so you aren't sowing the seeds of innovation on rocky soil. Balance the ability to invent with the capability to help implement.
The Challenge
There is a distinct difference between influencing customers, who have the power of choice in the marketplace, and creating change with or motivating employees inside of an intact organization where choices are constrained by organizationally-defined parameters.
The Opportunity
Don't assume that members of intact organizational systems will behave in the same way as market consumers. Power imbalance, politics, reporting relationships, resource control, reward systems, and social networks—all of these influence the adoption of new behaviors needed to support new strategies or other changes. If your portfolio is stocked with customer-focused projects, acknowledge that you have something new to learn. Leverage the talents of user researchers to map the landscapes of motivation and influence within client organizations.
The Challenge
Expect that the organization may or may not value the qualitative research that human-centered designers offer. There are some organizational agents who will look at your user research plan and declare, "But this is just organizational needs assessment! We already do this!" While qualitative research isn't new to the world of business, it hasn't been as popular as quantitative and financial data analysis. Nor is quantitative data to be discounted entirely.
The Opportunity
Enlist the help of, rather than try to replace, the internal associates already performing assessment for the organization. Encourage the use of an appreciative perspective in examining conditions, as well as techniques for uncovering and framing opportunities versus problems; employ user research to locate examples of positive deviance; and focus on defining the right problem before offering solutions. Internal consultants can help access historical data trends; identify areas of resistance to information sharing; and secure participation from reluctant employees. Avoid assuming that internal associates don't already understand problems or available opportunities. They may share your desire to convince those unable to understand the real needs of the organization or unwilling to make the changes needed to take advantage of innovative opportunities. They can help you to map the social networks of influence, advocates, and sponsors not illustrated in any organizational chart.
Having to deliver the numbers to shareholders will still be important, and figuring out how to make contextual insights and patterns uncovered by user research data meaningful to those who value quantitative data will still be a challenge. The ability of designers to communicate complexity more visually and sometimes experientially will be appreciated by PowerPoint-weary organizations. Leveraging these skills by helping large, diverse groups to understand problems and create consensus around solutions will go far in the service of successful change.
The Challenge
The terminology that is shared by the disciplines of organizational change and design will cause as much confusion as any language that is new or different. For example, a prototype in the practice of design can mean something slightly but significantly different to practitioners of organizational change. This is also true for terms such as needs assessment, research, sustainability, and even learning. You don't want to sell a hammer and then fail to meet expectations when you discover too late that your client expected to receive what you call a drill.
The Opportunity
Learn the language of organizational change and strategy, and become an adept translator. Spend time clarifying definitions by including clear and tangible descriptions of what your work will look like and require, such as how design prototypes are just as much about exploration, idea-generation, and decision-making as they are about determining the readiness for implementation of a final decision (which is what they are more often used for in current corporate contexts).
The Challenge
The tendency of organizations to be risk-averse but hungry for innovation that could drive gains in market share has already been widely discussed elsewhere. Unfortunately, many client organizations still view organizations as machines and linear systems that can be completely controlled and may not understand the conceptual model of the organization as a sociotechnical system; the benefits of reflection and iteration; or the need to balance management and direction with facilitation and co-creation. Risk aversion at the highest levels can be reflected throughout the system. It isn't a forgone conclusion that changing minds at one level will result in the entire enterprise following suit.
The Opportunity
User researchers as well as visual, interaction, and service designers have the chance to make an impact in this regard by helping clients to redefine what can be controlled and what can be facilitated. Link the benefits of facilitative leadership to organizational adaptation and make what this looks like very clear. Creative use of digital and visual media to present insights gathered from examining the interactions of employees and customers can make those insights more concrete for clients who value evidence. Building works-like prototypes of new interactions and demonstrating how organizational changes will influence other elements in the system will allow clients to become more comfortable with changes that they perceive to be risky. Testing small-scale prototypes and using the results to make needed revisions prior to larger implementations will enable clients to experience the future state before it has a deeper impact on the balance sheet. Employing participatory design and co-creation strategies with consumers and employees at all levels will build more readiness for adoption of changes throughout the organizational system.
The Challenge
As designer Victor Lombardi recommends in his excellent blog post about the world of design making overtures into management consulting: "Know and respect your limits." To ignore your limits is to risk over-selling while under-delivering to your client, damaging your reputation and the reputation of design consulting.
The Opportunity
However, if you aren't satisfied with your limits, change them.
Pursue skill development in organizational change and business strategy, especially in the areas of culture change and the interactive elements of organizational systems. You won't need to construct an annual report or income statement. However, it is valuable to be able to read artifacts such as Letters to Shareholders or high-level financials in order to understand disconnects between organizational operations and strategy; clues to real decision-making systems (versus espoused ones); or tacit priorities and concerns. Although supply chain logistics, commercial real estate, and managerial finance may seem far from your professional interests, these areas and others have significant implications for organizational changes that can affect consumers of products and services. Leverage user research practices to uncover the "desire lines" of an existing organization before you attempt to set it onto a new path that doesn't acknowledge what already works or which employees didn't help to create.
Some progressive studios are already pursuing the option to partner with design-sympathetic organizational change consultants and business strategists who can help to navigate the management consulting space. Look for candidates who have experience in influencing organizational behavior and facilitating change for complex systems, as well as linking the operational and financial components of organizational systems to human behavior and motivation.
Designers have the opportunity to develop new clients and expand the domains in which they can influence innovation and change provided they re-tool the traditional design consultancy to better meet the needs of these organizational clients. The ability of the design studio to reinvent itself rather than rely on past successes in traditional domains will mean the difference between the marriage of design and organizational change being a long and productive one, or just a one-night stand.
Biography:
Jeanne Marie Olson is an independent consultant with 20+ years of experience in the fields of human factors, learning and cognition, user experience/participatory design, instructional methodologies, organizational strategy, and knowledge management. She is most interested in the intersection of design thinking, learning theory, and organizational change. Prior to building her own consulting practice, she led the Chicago User Research Lab for Scient. She helped to establish the knowledge management practice at Hewitt, and was a charter member of Hewitt’s Center of Expertise for the Learning and Development. She is also passionate about urban public education and community-based problem solving, and has been a volunteer and consultant for a number of not-for-profit organizations.
She has been a Lecturer at Northwestern University since 2006 for the Graduate Program in Learning and Organizational Change at Annenberg’s School of Education & Social Policy, and also more recently for the McCormick School of Engineering’s Segal Design Institute. She serves as a Faculty Advisor for Design for America, an award-winning national design initiative using design to make local and social impact. Design for America’s mission is to create a national network of active designers and community members confident in their ability to create social impact through design.
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