I decided to read Mark Dziersk’s paper after meeting him. It is called Visual Thinking: A Leadership Strategy published by Design Management Review. It was a light read and I did that in 5 minutes on the flight back from Chicago. He has articulated a couple of very interesting points on business and design. The core of his paper is around the idea that “design” and “strategy” should come closer together. He urges designers to communicate with those responsible for strategy by using their talent for visualization and storytelling—“languages” that can powerfully convey content in such areas as consumer experience, innovation options and approaches to decision-making. It is good read for designers….not only industrial.
He wrote, “The truth is, very few designers understand strategy, much less leverage is in their work. But the design world is trying, and making inroads……this is a new territory for design—demonstrating business and brand leadership by creating and visualizing companies strategies.” Funny enough, this is exactly what my company is doing. Yes, there are not many firms (if any) out there that bring “Design Thinking” to “Business Strategy”. On this topic, I have a few thoughts....
Great designs can only go so far, not that I am not an advocate of great designs. I am an advocate of great designs. The challenge is most industrial design firms can only engage with clients at a middle senior level and their scope of work are often confined to a product or product family mission. Any innovation would only have impact on a product level. If “Design” wants to fully leverage its influence, it needs to happen at the corporate strategy level. That’s where you can have the most impact and influence. But what can a bunch of creative designers do in corporate strategy planning session when they hardly understand how organizations operate and how (and why) decisions are made? (May be that's fine because 60% of senior executives have no idea of what strategy is anyway) That’s when things fall short.
People often ask me “Idris, you are a hard core business strategist with a 20 years real strategy experience and your extensive b-school training, why do you need designers to help you on strategy? What can they bring to the table? What languages do you speak B or D?’ These are all valid questions.
First of all, I truly believe “Design” is our future. It can help shape and change the destinies of many large organizations. Think beyond products and packaging, think bigger. “Design” is “Strategy”, but “Designers” are not “Strategists’. Design should be the core of all organizations as they switch from product-centric to customer-centric, I know this word is so over-used. I don’t mean CEOs now need to become designers. “Design” is a culture, something that helps bring back the sensitivity and empathy that were long lost in many large organizations. Thanks to B-school training and all those quantitative research, companies think that there have formulas for success. These formulas or numbers can magically bring profits. Wrong. Profits exist because customer buys your products and they buy your products because you fulfill their needs (both articulated and unarticulated needs). “Design” thinking brings those needs to the decision making core of the organization and activities should be developed around these “Design” ideas. That’s strategy.
Designers or design firm alone cannot achieve this goal. They need to work together with strategy consultants (I mean real ones, many claim to be strategist because they have an MBA, a grad degree does NOT make one a strategist) that understand business economics, marketing adoption and most important has a balanced mindset between market-driven and market-driving. My wish is to be able to acquire a good design firm over the next 8-12 months that can work with us and our clients at the most senior level. In the meantime, we continue our B-School meets D-school hiring strategy. We're building something very special.
I wrote on this blog 2 weeks about “How to visualize your business strategy?” May be I should write more on that one. Landing in 10 minutes..... need to turn off my MacBook.
