This particular night the workshop spent three hours on the topic of ‘Shared Leadership and Framing Big Questions’. Basically what this amounts to is asking the big questions that invite user participation. Accordingly, users then feel empowered because they have some personal skin in the game and this generates an open community for shared contribution.

Leadership Choices

I am sure everyone can remember a time in their office environment where change was coming down from the top and this change seemed somewhat disconnected from the realities of the job at hand. With a good facilitator, this doesn’t have to be the case. For those who run their own businesses I am sure you remember every situation in which your clients basically got to the point of “How much?” and “How long?” far too quickly in your conversation. When this happens there is a feeling of loss of control and/or project ambivalence or unimportance. These how questions sometimes derail a project from the get-go because the task at hand hasn’t necessarily been framed in the best way to allow for innovative thought and therefore the project is stifled or even worse purposeless on arrival. The following ‘how’ questions are common enough but when used at the beginning of the conversation, inhibit a project:

• How do you do it?
• How long will it take?
• How much will it cost?
• How do we get people to change?
• How do we measure the success?
• How has this been successful elsewhere?

If the client asks these ‘how’ questions it is important to try and modify the conversation parameters. The main goal is ask open ended questions that make noticeable differences that invite participation to produce the best framework for a project. The following questions have been suggested by Peter Block:

• What is my crossroads in life/work?
• What is my contribution to this problem?
• What is my commitment to the solution?
• What refusal have I been postponing?
• What is the price I am willing to pay?
• What do we want to create together?

These are obviously somewhat obtuse to the previous set of ‘how’ questions but they do in fact invite participation and lead to better dialogue about the framework of a project. Each question is intentionally open and personal and each question leads to reflection with no immediate solution. Instead these questions initiate useful discussions about a project that open barriers and lead to group participation that increases mind share. As a result the company will get a more cohesive vision that ultimately serves them better and is much more than the result of an order being followed.

Of course there are other questions that can be asked which will tend to open the dialogue. Pictured at left is our groups contribution.

I found this exercise to be encouraging. As designed, people were opening up, the participants networked well and the ideas were taken seriously. I can honestly say that if this type of approach had been taken in previous projects that I or others had lead, the time would have been well spent and the project results would have been better.

What impressed me the most about Jane

First I must point out that Jane Suri has a varied and full portfolio of work. There is no question that her enthusiasm and thought process are integral to everything that she does. She has had the good fortune of working on many different projects and after much time, has amassed a great amount of wisdom from working on some very different problems. I truly believe that people earn their opportunities and Jane’s are impressive.

My take on IDEO

IDEO have a very similar design method to most any design lab. I really don’t think that there was anything overtly special about it, just that their confidence and track record can speak for itself and that they have built upon each of their successes with one interesting project after another.

What IDEO knows is what we already know

There is a standard approach to human-centred design which acts as a ‘glue’ for interdisciplinary designers. The basic idea is that ‘people’ have a ‘desire’ for something they want, a ‘business’ will have a ‘viable’ plan to produce said something and then to be workable the ‘technical’ aspects of the project must be ‘feasible’. This process requires that the designers act as research organization and design shop. For all involved the project must have a sense of pleasure and enjoyment and the designers must empathize with their intended audience. (see Good foundations for eCRM, last paragraph)

Suri observes that there are two sides to the equation: rational v.s. intuitive, observation v.s. empathy, data v.s. insight, intellectual v.s. visceral, reality v.s. imagination, etc. But even amid this incomplete list, it is paramount that a designer lives the life of the intended client; watch people use the product, lend space to the customer experience and allow them to get a sense of control. When properly understood this simple idea allows the designer to align themselves with the customer’s goals and produce a better result.

Coming around

Unfortunately I do not believe Jane Suri’s presentation was as good as it should have been and when I arrived back home to review my notes I realized that the lecture seemed insubstantial and that my initial opinion was not going to be a favourable one. I also recognized that I did not appreciate Jane as a speaker, maybe because my expectations were set too high because I have heard so much about IDEO and her personally; after all, she is somewhat of an icon in the United States. In addition, I may have wanted to hear something new from her presentation and I was let down because there wasn’t anything. I think that her presentation really needs to be reworked and at a minimum it should include empirical data that supports the claims made by her and IDEO.

However, now that I have had some time to mull over her talk, I have a different appreciation for her and IDEO. Their work is wonderful and their employees must be good to produce it but it is their passion and their creative insights which are special. And maybe that is the point. People know how to produce great work but sometimes they just don’t spend (or cannot spend) the necessary time and resources on a project. Teamwork is also crucial and although she didn’t say it, she intimated it frequently.

In conclusion

There are many different design labs like IDEO and many superb designers (I will used this term loosely in this article) and I think it is too bad we can’t swap our experiences/companies in which we work on a seasonal basis, I think we would all benefit greatly. Certainly anyone would gain a lot from working with Jane Suri.