the
innovative LEDGER
An e-Newsletter from The Innovative Edge™ Inc.
Vol.
6, No. 10 - October 2006
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Designer
Genes
By Jeff Govendo
The
current issue of Fast Company features an article by Roger Martin,
dean of the Univ of Toronto’s Rotman Business School, entitled
Tough Love, with the byline “Business wants to love design, but
it’s often an awkward romance.” In it, Martin makes the
distinction between business(es)-as-usual – those whose main
operating principles are based on what is observable, quantifiable
and reproducible vs. business-by-design, a more holistic, customer-centric
approach which he neatly describes as being based on “the logic
of what might be.”
Martin
makes it clear that even the most design-centric businesses rely on
the inductive and deductive reasoning that dominate traditional enterprise
thinking; otherwise there is no business to speak of. But where
design in the past was often seen as the stylistic add-on to the “real”
running of the business, it is increasingly occupying the forefront
of strategy and decision-making. And not just in companies that
are renowned for design excellence, such as Apple or BMW. Companies
associated with decidedly more mundane products – P&G, for
instance – have become far more attuned to such “soft”
criteria as anecdotal customer comments, intuition and aesthetics
in making product development decisions. He recalls that A.G. Lafley,
P&G’s chief executive, defied available market data in championing
their conversion to so-called “compact” detergents, a move
that opened up a multi-billion dollar market for the company.
To
be successful, Martin suggests, companies must now excel at both kinds
of thinking, and the best do. Google, behind its famously unbuttoned
down public persona, is run like a tight ship day-to-day. On the other
end, older, more traditional companies, like P&G and Whirlpool,
are letting design sense and emotionalism become more important in
strategic decision-making. Martin calls this duality “a schizophrenic
way to run an organization” (which, in this context, he means
as a compliment).
But
is it really schizophrenic at all? Are people really so thoroughly
right or left brained that, say, an accounting firm would have to
go out and hire a cadre of “non-accountant types” in order
to bring a little “color” to the company?
Not
necessarily. Each of us is a complex, multi-faceted organism, not
one-dimensional. Certainly we gravitate toward certain professions
or specialties in line with what we excel at and enjoy. But that
doesn’t mean we don’t have the capacity to think in new
ways, to cross the right/left threshold every once in awhile and exercise
those neurons on the other side to look at things differently. Most
of us can do that.
But,
while people are not one-dimensional, some organizational cultures
are. In these, individuals are pigeon-holed and expected to think
and contribute in highly constricted ways. Reward systems are set
up accordingly. Employees are de-motivated from thinking more expansively.
Year after year of working in such an environment leaves people believing
they are, in fact, as narrow in scope as the confines that have been
set up for them. They lose touch with their own imaginative, exploratory
selves. These are the folks who might say, “Well, I’m not
particularly creative,” when asked to brainstorm some new ideas.
As a result, the organization loses out on a huge amount of creative
potential lying right within its reach, among its own people.
Most
companies don’t have the means to go out and hire expensive design
consultants every time they need an infusion of creativity in their
planning or execution. They need to do it with the people they’ve
got. So in the next installment of this newsletter, we’ll
explore some ways of tapping into the creative potential of your existing
employees, and discovering the “designer genes” within your
own organization.
Without
paying the designer price.
