It seemed that Design Thinking would contribute to solving the world’s great challenges. It was a new approach that could generate strategic, disruptive breakthroughs capable of keeping up with the rapid pace of change within the business and in customers.
Some, like me, deduced this promise from its promoters, made more than 20 years ago, such as the mythical IDEO, the d.School , and other prestigious institutions and business schools, such as MIT or Harvard. Along these lines, many organisations have achieved the correct sponsorship of their top management.
They have stopped systematically penalising failure (which is saying a lot) and have provided themselves with colourful, casual workrooms designed to facilitate radical collaboration and cross-functional creativity, with a focus on solving big corporate challenges through disruptive projects.
The walls are filled with colourful coloured post-its, or with attractive large-format visual templates, prototypes are built in different materials (EVA erasers, cardboard, Lego pieces, etc.), etc.
However, the expected results in many organisations are still not forthcoming. Many of the important challenges that were to be addressed by this new way of working are still not being met with effective and efficient proposals.
I have had the opportunity to accompany for almost a decade dozens of innovation or improvement projects on strategic challenges in clients and, in my opinion, most of the time it is the execution of the framework that fails and not the Design Thinking.
I share 11 of some of the relevant aspects where, in my experience, implementation fails and it is extremely important to correct them:
- The post-it posture, which disguises the same old way of working. Often, the Design Thinking framework is adopted superficially, without fully understanding its key elements, such as empathy, problem definition, ideation, prototyping, etc. The results will be the same as always, albeit with colourful wallpaper.
- Falling in love with solutions rather than problems. How often do we not start an innovation process with the solutions already clear. Well, just like all our lives. In Design Thinking we must initially “fall in love” with the problems and forget any hint of a solution in the first phase of the framework. The better and longer we do it, the more and better solutions will be found, some of them really surprising and unexpected.
- Not looking for the relevant insight, neither empathising nor observing correctly. The work of empathising with the customer/user does not consist, for example, only in sending surveys (which will often return what we already knew) or making journey maps without depth, strictly transactional, but it is very important to correctly observe (shadowing) customers/users. A few in-depth ethnographic interviews must be carried out and care must be taken to identify basic emotions in interactions, etc. Only in this way, and by being very careful, will we be able to extract powerful insights that our customers will often not be aware of and that our competitors will not even sniff out. These will be the levers to devise powerful and disruptive solutions or not.
- Slaves to the tyranny of the tools, where is the customer-centric mindset? Many teams dedicate themselves to sequentially following the Design Thinking process and tools with poor results. However, when teams become obsessed with truly putting the customer at the centre, different ways of using methodologies, tools, etc. emerge. Then, that’s where the magic happens.
- The one who is paid the most (or the one who talks the most) imposes his or her opinion. Teamwork processes are poorly facilitated and a principle of psychological security is not created among the participants.
- Neither here nor expected, the mysterious case of the missing customer/user. The worst question you can ask a project team applying DT when they present their proposals is: where is the customer/user? That said, it is still often forgotten that we are in a customer-centric process. But really!
- The corporatist spirit sabotages the customer. In working sessions, when a customer/user gives an opinion against a service/product, the stakeholder in the room feels attacked and moves on to try to convince the customer. This is not putting the customer at the centre. What the customer perceives is not the point. Something is being done wrong, it is not the customer who is wrong. It’s hard to believe, but I’m tired of seeing it.
- Same old meeting, same old solutions. Working teams are not sufficiently multidisciplinary, nor is there sufficient customer/user representation.
- Design Thinking yes, but what for? Does the innovation project respond to a complex problem? Do we need creative solutions? Do we have little information or are historical data of no use to us? Does it add value to put people’s needs really at the centre of the process? There are projects where the answers to these questions are not affirmative. So perhaps DT is more of a nuisance than a benefit.
- Landing a crazy idea is easy, making a mediocre idea shine is impossible. Out of fear, or lack of ambition, proposals in the ideation phase tend to be overly cautious and uncreative.
- The leg shaking syndrome. Many teams “skip” the prototyping phase, forgetting to put the customer back at the centre. Two main reasons: there is a fear of prolonging the innovation process, and the customer may even scupper the solutions, so it’s back to square one. But isn’t it better to get it wrong quickly and cheaply than to “make amends” and crash and burn?
Design Thinking is a powerful tool for innovation and problem solving, but it does not always provide value or the correct implementation of the framework is not always understood.
Organisations must be aware of these potential pitfalls and actively work to overcome them. Only then will it be a truly valuable and effective tool for business strategy.
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