In light of the interest in strategy, I have pushed back a story that talks about design research versus scientific research. Though it fits beautifully with our ongoing conversation, I wanted to highlight a few other points first.
John Kotter distinguishes between “management” and “leadership.” For him, “management” is to keep a system running as is by ensuring order, stability, and efficiency. “Leadership,” on the other hand, is the ability to envision and implement change, to lead, guide, and to provide direction when uncertainties abound. Innovation can happen in both cases, but the nature of the innovation or the change that results for the organization are radically different.
Denise Rousseau, professor at the Tepper Business School (and one of my doctoral advisors) distinguishes between three kinds of organizational changes. The first kind is drift. This is the kind of change that just happens. Babies change into toddlers, toddlers into children, children into teens and so on. Organizations “drift” everyday. A client goes out of business, employees adjust their work practices and thus establish new routines, etc. These things just happen and as they happen the organization experiences change. The second kind is accommodation. Accommodation occurs when an organization responds to external pressure. Often, the attitude is “why fix it if it ain’t broken?” Finally, the transformative change, the “radical surgery” is when the system in which the change takes place is in question and subject to change.
The strategy discussion that we have seen emerging in the recent posts – how strategy comes into being, what strategy is, and who participates in strategy development and execution – are inextricably linked with what kind of change organizations seek or pursue. Design activities that are employed when an organization seeks to accommodate a situation focus on the product as system and all the change that will and can occur will take the form of a product in the traditional sense. A product in the traditional sense stands for a good that can be sold and exchanged for money to external parties. Most organizations turn to the activities of designing when they seek to effect accommodational changes. Design management has become an effective tool when designing is assigned this role. The problem is that more and more organizations realize that they need to change the very framework that constitutes their organization.
While design thinking and design methods offer all the qualities and skills Kotter demands from “leadership,” they are rarely put to use in this capacity. With all the good that comes from design management, one worry ought to be the focus on the product as system. Without questioning the purpose of the larger system that provides the context for a particular product, design management can unwittingly contribute to organizational stagnation. An organization becomes less sustainable the more stable it becomes. Since they typically lack an overall vision and a comprehensive, systematic strategy to realize this vision, accommodational changes tend to contribute to increasing fragmentation of an organization. The more fragmented an organization is, the less integrated it is. The less integrated the organization is, the poorer are the experiences it can provide to customers and employees. It is time for a different role of design thinking and design methods within the organization, for the organization.
Reference: John Kotter, “What Leaders Really Do,” Harvard Business Review/Press 1995.
