How to Use Design Thinking to Lead a Changing Workplace
What frameworks like Design Thinking, Agile, and SAM can teach us about how people work best
One of my favorite bosses, Matt, had a philosophy that he often repeated, one that continues to stick with me today: The quickest way to get to the right answer is to put the wrong answer in front of people. As I reflect on how much employee expectations have changed in the last three years, and how leaders are trying to keep up with these rapid changes, Matt’s philosophy serves as the backdrop for how I believe leaders can navigate today’s messiest challenges — even when there’s seemingly no “right answer” for everyone.
The Three Models: Agile, Design Thinking and SAM
I started my career in the technology space, at a time when our team was transitioning the way we built software from clunky “Waterfall” methods (which severely limited the feedback loop between the people creating an app and the people who would actually use it) to “Agile” methods (which emphasized quick, iterative value and continuous feedback). A primary advantage with Agile was the ability to get a functional prototype into end users’ hands within weeks instead of months, when it’s a lot easier and cheaper to make the changes that are inevitably needed when you build something from scratch.
Along the way, I also learned about “Design Thinking”, an approach to problem-solving and innovation that begins with a team putting itself into the shoes of its target audience (a step actually called “empathy”, which is awesome) and considering the audience’s wants, needs and pain points, before iterating + evaluating potential solutions through real-world pilots. Design Thinking is incredibly scalable across industries and disciplines — it has been used in everything from healthcare to education.
Now, as a Talent Development practitioner, I’ve learned about the “Successive Approximation Model” (SAM), a framework in instructional design in which a cross-functional team convenes to create a learning experience, with the end users (in this case the participants of the course) helping to shape the content and delivery at every step. This is fundamentally different from traditional approaches in which instructional designers worked in a black box to create experiences with no feedback from the intended audience.
There are a ton of similarities between these three problem-solving models (Agile, Design Thinking, and SAM), but I want to focus on two: human-centric design and iterative development. In other words: trying some stuff out to see what works versus what needs to change, doing that over and over again, and never losing sight of the people who will be impacted.
What can the overlap in these problem-solving models tell us about the way people work best? What can they teach us about the needs of today’s workplace? And how can they inform the messiest challenges leaders are currently facing, such as flexible work?
Agency and Agility
One important thing to note is that none of these concepts are new: SAM was introduced in 2012, Agile in the 90’s, and Design Thinking traces its roots back to the 50’s and 60’s. Still, it’s important to consider their popularity and convergence in the context of today’s society, in which smartphones, algorithms, two-day shipping, and other elements amid a wider tech boom have supercharged expectations of choice, curation and speed. It’s also worth mentioning that each of these models was born within the walls of the workplace to make work easier.
With all of this in mind, we can consider that one of the reasons these models became so popular is they built upon fundamental human needs for agency and agility. They tapped into how we already like to get work done: transparently (regular feedback loops), collaboratively (cross-functional teams) and impactfully (empathizing with the target audience).
In today’s workplace, the need for agency and agility is relevant beyond software development or instructional design — it permeates across the biggest challenges we face at work, from where and when work gets done best to providing dynamic career journeys beyond “climbing the ladder”. And I think the common ingredients of human-centric design and iterative development hold the key to how we can address these challenges.
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If we use remote/flexible work as an example of a timely challenge for which many organizations are searching for a sustainable solution, we can use human-centric design and iterative development to guide our approach:
Human-Centric Design: Creating personas for each segment of the target audience can help us craft solutions based on their unique needs and working styles. In this case, personas could be “early career professionals”, “working parents”, “managers”, or “neuro-divergent employees”
Iterative Development: Instead of getting hung up on defining every single detail from the start, work to quickly build + test a functional prototype on a representative sample, taking note of what’s working and not working. In this case, consider piloting an imperfect beta flexible work policy within a department, office, or audience segment, and continuously refine based on feedback
At its core, what Design Thinking asks of us is less technical and more emotional:
Courage to iterate, put unpolished work out there, and fail forward
Empathy to think from our target audience’s perspective
Vulnerability to provide candid feedback during iteration; to recognize and accept that what we’re creating will never be perfect
All of this is easier said than done, of course. Any significant transformation requires careful change management. But I think cultivating a culture of experimentation can make our organizations more nimble, embracing the agency and agility that humans already need. Tapping into this need can differentiate our organizations as the innovators who don’t shy away from ambiguous, messy challenges.
Embracing Design Thinking means accepting that the best way to get to a right answer is to try a few wrong answers first.
I’m a Certified Executive Coach and Future of Work Advisor. I help forward-thinking leaders make disruptive impacts in their careers, build best-in-class cultures and foster a people-first, human workplace.
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