When people ask me, what is design thinking? Or what can we take away from design thinking? I always go back to the, the old there's a Gregory Treverton who's a, at the RAND Corporation, thinking about policy problems and global policies specifically. And he said there are two types of problems, there are mysteries and there are puzzles. Puzzles are problems where when you have the right level of data disclosure, when you have that absolute number, the problem can be solved. So this is in, in, in his example he said, you know, Goofy videos. That could be a challenge it's finding Osama Bin Laden. If we had GPS coordinates, we'd know where he is. There's another category, a problem called mysteries. Where there is no single piece of data. There is no level of data disclosure that will actually solve the problem. In fact, there might be too much data, and it's about interpreting all of the data that's there. And that's a richer, harder problem that requires more system thinking. That requires protopyting and piloting. And, and that's really where the designers are, are often more adapt at playing, is within a situation like that. And the example he gives is rebuilding a raft. There's no single piece of data that's going to make it easier. It's just about trying different things and experimenting, and trying to move forward towards a solution. We're never going to have enough information. We're never going to have the right information. We just have to interpret what we have now and do the best that we can. And I think that when we start to resolve those. Is when good things happen. But, but certainly it's the mysteries that get designers excited. Too often in the corporate world, there's the belief that you know? We can use these powerpoint reports and these charts and these you know? Statistically significant surveys surveys. To generate ideas from them. And in many cases, that, that does work. for incremental improvements. But if, if you want something more disruptive, you really have to go into the field and, and find something proprietary. And experience it for yourself, and see it for yourself. >> Yes we have abilities that are becoming more valuable, because they have certain attributes to them. They, they are difficult to rutinize, difficult to turn into an algorithm. And, and, when you can't make, when you can't. force them into a set of rules when you can't essentially create an algorithm for doing them then that makes them hard to outsource and hard to automate, and therefore more valuable. So it's things like design and design thinking. it's things like narrative and story, which I think is, is tremendously overlooked and undervalued in a whole range of business functions. symphonic thinking ability which is big picture thinking, pattern recognition, multi-ness, multi-discipline, multi-cultural, multi-lingual, a sense of breadth. Empathy, which is, at least to me one of the one's I'm most interested in, which is the capacity to stand in someone's shoes, see with their eyes, feel with their hearts. again, very difficult to routinize, very difficult to automate or outsource. play, laughter, humor and games, and then also a meaning, a sense of purpose, a sense of significance. And these, these abil, precisely because these abilities are hard to turn into a set of rules. that makes them harder to teach in the explicit way that we think of teaching something, but there are things that can be learned. >> There is not necessarily a great deal of a, a, agreement on what design thinking is, but a in in general a or, or I should say that even if that's the right term that we should be using. Some designers get upset at design thinking and some other people, especially business people sort of get put off, like they're not thinkers. I think that if you reduced it, design thinking is a way of approaching a challenge that offers just a, a, another skill set and another approach. That's complementary to other forms of thinking, other forms of product development. And it centers around some, some constructs that come from the design world. So, both convergent and divergent thinking prototyping and iteration. a certain kind of customer research that's much more ethnographical qualitative. All those things together sort of form a rubric of what design thinking is about. If the whole of business traditionally was about design thinking, then there would be a whole new movement about analytical thinking or quantitative analysis. It's too much to say that it's the answer to every problem. it also isn't accurate to portray it as the only way of thinking, doing, managing, leading, etcetera. it really is one half of, or one part of this holistic approach to management and leadership, that has been missing for a long time. So, by integrating design thinking into management, into leadership. By all means it has a tremendous amount of promise to integrate and balance out a full set of skills. But it only because it's been missing all along, not because there's something inherently incredible about it. >> How does design thinking fit with traditional strategy, in organizations today? And for me it boils down to two things. What traditional strategy has given us, is it's given us strong analytics, great data from which to make the most logical of decisions about where we need to move in the future. What design thinking gives us, is it gives us curiosity. The ability to look out into the world and find new solutions to traditional problems, it also gives us the power of observation. Which takes data and puts it into context of a given situation. A given point in time, and I think that's where the two can be married in a really significant way. What does design think have to, have to contribute to business? I, I think for me it boils down to the fact that there is, the types of challenges our leaders face today, are so vastly different than the ones we've faced in, in previous times. And so you take wicked challenges like sustainability. In this challenge we won't solve our way out of in our lifetime in business, its always going to be in there. And so design thinking gives you flexibility it allows you to be curious it keeps you on trend and on point with where that wicked problem is today, and it allows you to generate prototypes and solutions. That may or may not be the answer, but they'll move you in the right direction. >> I think one of the more interesting examples is in a giant company like Proctor and Gamble, which I think has done some really, really interesting things. I mean, if you think about empathy, there is a move in market research of all kinds toward more ethnographic resarch, of really understanding how somebody uses a product or a service. Getting in that person's head. and so P and G, and other places as well are, are doing research that's really about how do you understand the product from the user's point of view. And that can involve not giving people literal questions and watching from behind a two-way mirror to see how they respond, but actually going into they're homes and seeing. How did they use toothpaste, how did they use shaving cream I think that's P and G and other's have done that. and, and P and G has a made a big push on design thinking essentially making it part of what it means to be at that company. Now at the same time they haven't abandoned, serious business metrics. I mean, you still gotta make money, you still gotta hit your numbers, you still have to the products still have to perform. but they do a lot of other interesting things where people have a certain amount of autonomy to try to try a new approach to, to research or experiment with a new product. So I think the fact that I, I, I like that as an example because it's such a behemoth of a company. And, a lot of times when we see size, we say there's no way any of this will work in a place like this, it's only for really small operations. And I think P and G is a good example of doing it in a different way. >> So, design thinking's been used in mars in a couple of different ways. I break it down in terms of what we actually do. And how we work. And so on the side of what we actually do, we have a GM in one of our Latin America businesses who took her 100 employees. We call them associates, but they're basically employees, out into the field into channels, retail channels that we currently don't have products in. And she asked them to use the basic components of design thinking like observation, ethnography. question asking and interviews to help understand what could we do to get in this channel. And how might this channel allow us to make a big difference in the way our products reach our, our customers. So that's a what piece. On the other end of the, of the scale is how. The how we work. And so when we look at organizations today, it's vastly changing. Mars has gone through huge transformation in terms of the way that we work. One of our GMs in the AsiaPac region, actually took his top 40 leaders through a breakthrough thinking process, understanding how do we allow new ideas to, to become a part of the challenges around what we work. Things like how do we attract new talent? Things like, how do we need to reward our employees and our associates to do the kind of work we need to get done? Things like, how do we have to show up as a leadership team in our meetings, to actually bring the best and the most potential to bear? And so what they did was they worked those challenges, which typically aren't a part of traditional, idea generation, traditional brainstorming. But that was an example of where they applied design thinking clarifying a challenge. Ideation, prototyping to the how we work as oppose to just what we do. >> I am actually fairly bullish about those, the stain power of design thinking. I really I am. only because if you follow the, the trajectory of just the, the discussion of business and design. it isn't like one of those management fads where you can kind of see it fading away, where fewer people are talking about it. You see that it has this pretty steady trajectory, and I don't think that it's risen too quickly. A lot of times you have a business, management fad that, that has a kind of super nova trajectory where it explodes and everybody is talking about it and then it disappears. Whereas, I think design thinking has had a slower, steadier trajectory and I think that more people are, I think more people truly are, are, are understanding it. Now I, I think that the phrase of design thinking still is not necessarily the most resonant phrase. I do think that even the word design in some people's heads, is freighted with the meaning of, of sort of ornamentation or prettifying things. And so I'm, I'm glad to see the introduction of thinking along with design, but it really is just a form of problem solving. >> Inefficiency and ambiguity are both conditions of the design process. There has to be time for reflection and disagreement, and these are these are core to great new big ideas. But reflection and disagreement are the things that make [LAUGH] processes inefficient. And it's important to have time within, within your process just to take a step back and look at. What did we create, where are the connections that we're not seeing, can we bring these two things together in ways that we hadn't thought of before. I mean, that's really where great ideas come from. You also have to have time for disagreement. Because good design thinking is about bringing very different points of view together. So that you have that diverse set of inputs. You know, if you want efficiency, you get everybody who thinks the same way, and they'll get to a decision quickly. And that, that works, you know, 80% of the time. But for that, that 20% of the time where you, you need something very disruptive, very innovative, very creative, you're going to have to put up with a little bit more of the ambiguity. That's ultimately what a successful leader will be able to do, is understand there is some projects that can follow this very linear, straightforward. But others that require a little bit more of an open mind and a little more creativity. >> I just think that the metaphor of the algorythm is really powerful. And we're always looking for the algorithm. We're always looking for the set of rules and techniques and steps we can follow. Or I give a lesson of the analogy. I was looking for the perfect recipe, okay? Add these five ingredients, mix three times, cook at a certain temperature and all will be right with the world. And that's not it. If that is our, what we're after it, we're leading down the wrong path. It is, it is more kin to, as you say value system. It is more kin, I think in some ways to a, a literacy in a way. It's a matter of understanding the vocabulary, and having the syntax, and, and understanding how the language works, and being able to express yourself in that language. That is that a difference between mastering a language and actually merely knowing the rules of grammer. one is a very impoverished learning. The other one is reaching robust. And we need to steer in that direction and recognize that the search for the recipe for the algorithm, is essentially an impossible search.
