How do you scale design thinking?

Full transcript

Intro

Doug: It was about changing the way that the company behaves, and operates, and the way that we work together as IBMers.

Jay: This is episode 14 of Facilitator's Q&A, I'm Jay Melone from New Haircut. In this episode, I'm talking with Doug Powell, VP of design at IBM, where he's sharing challenges and his expertise around scaling design thinking practices. Not only getting it off the ground, but seeing it through and scaling it, especially in large enterprise companies - topics that should be near and dear to your heart, if you're a facilitator and an innovator.

If this is your first episode in the series, what you can expect to find are ideas and inspiration for facilitators of innovation and design thinking. People that are charged with organizing and leading critical team conversations, easy stuff, you know.

Well without further ado, let's get into the conversation with Doug and I.

Today’s question

Jay: So Doug, in the work that I do as a facilitator a lot of the time I come into the conversation when the group is saying, "Things need to change." And what's become more and more popular is this idea of innovating work itself. And in my world, design transformation and using design thinking to change those conversations, has become this sort of battering ram or a framework, a way to change the conversation. So what are you seeing in your world?

Doug: So 8 years ago, IBM was in a situation that is basically what you described, a company that needed to sort of find a new way of working, a new way of solving problems, a new way of, you know, connecting across functions and disciplines and silos.

Part of why we've had the success that we have, is that we had a mission to create a sustainable culture of design, and design thinking at IBM. So it was a mission around culture change, not a mission around product delivery. It was about changing the way that the company behaves, and operates, and the way that we work together as IBMers.

Jay: Well in a company the size of IBM, if you are the person that's trying to move the stone and you don't have the global CEO's permission and sort of alignment. What mistakes do you see people making?

Doug: What I've seen with organizations, businesses that are, that are trying to boot up a design or design thinking program, and they do it as a design lab or a design center or whatever, that was not going to work for us. And I would caution any business that's trying to boot up this type of a program, to really focus on how you can get the activity, and the behaviors of design and design thinking into the teams.

Jay: Well you talked about it, right? Instead of having these centers of innovation, your mission was to have a culture of innovation.

Doug: I think there's an overreaching, especially early on in the first, even in the first 6 months, we, it was very tempting for us to to think, oh, it's IBM, it's this vast scaled company, global company, we've gotta get, you know a hundred projects going right away.

But we resisted that temptation, and instead we found 7 projects, and we ensured that each of those 7 projects had some key elements in place. First of all, they were, they were strategic projects that were meaningful to the company. Second of all, they were led by executives who we knew, we trusted, we had a relationship with, and we knew that we could work with them.

And then we were able because it was a fairly concise number of projects, we were able to staff those teams with the right number of design talent. Not each of those 7 projects was a real success. 3 or 4 of them were. And we then were able to tell the story of those, those 3 or 4 successes and in the next cycle, so the next 6 months cycle, the line was around the corner for projects and executives wanting to get into the program.

So we kind of, by starting small, there was an interesting dynamic there that turned into a real sort of benefit for us in the longer run. The ironic thing is that while you're kind of containing yourself in that very earliest stage, in our case those 7 projects, you also need to be thinking about scale.

So you're starting small, but if you're not already thinking, well, what are we gonna do next? Then you're gonna keep doing 7 projects at a time. And that doesn't work. That doesn't work in a company the size of IBM. We needed to be thinking about, okay, how are we going to get from 7 to 70 to 700. So we needed to be thinking about, at some point we're gonna need a digital learning platform for this.

So, you know, even at that earliest stage we were beginning to plant the seeds for, okay, a couple of years down the road, we're gonna have to have something that really scales.

Jay: What else were like the bridges between 7 projects and 700 projects?

Doug: Well, I'll tell you 1 thing that that was surprising to us, but was an important aspect of getting us through those middle stages of scaling.

Something happened in those initial, probably 20 projects or so that we dealt with. What we found is that in each of those teams that we were working with, there was 1 or 2 people who, for whom, and you've seen this, Jay, I know you have. These people who just get, it's like a religious experience. They are so, some light bulb goes on with them when they're in their first design thinking workshop. And they are like, "Oh my God, this is what, I was born for."

And so, pretty soon we had a community of, let's say, I don't know, 30, 40, 50 people who, our code word for them was magic people. They were very powerful, and all they wanted to do they wanted to spread the word of design thinking to everyone they could.

We gave them some resources, we'd give them a little bit of extra training, but not a ton. And we gave them a mission. We challenge you in the next year to go out there and deliver this material, and do some sort of training with a hundred people in your world. And they were like, "You're on!"

And so we were able to, kind of grow the circle in 1 sort of concentric loop with, with a very, a very light touch. I mean, that, that didn't take a lot of money. It didn't take a lot of staff. It really wasn't like, oh we got to sink another million dollars into this. It was really more about finding the right people and activating them.

Jay: So what I've got here then is you started small. You found sort of like the small circle of team players as well as the executives, that were gonna support you and sponsor you. And you were thinking small this whole time, but thinking what are, what are we gonna do to scale this? Because the small will peter out at some point.

Doug: Yep.

Jay: And then, what I heard you talk about are these magic people and finding those folks that come, have this religious experience inside of a design thinking workshop. It's always the people that we don't expect the most too, that like really stiff engineer or something.

Doug: Yeah, they're the best.

Jay: Turn those evangelists, educate them, give them the resources, create a mission, and then maybe come sort of this like second tier of support to bring, it kind of becomes exponential.

Doug: Yeah, yeah.

Jay: Okay well, so for the person that's feeling charged up, what do you think the best first step is for them?

Doug: Well, find those allies. Find out who your believers are. Build trust, build relationships, get them to be willing to extend themselves, stick their neck out a little bit for you. And with that, you can do a lot of good things.

Jay: All right. Thank you so much, Doug. I think it's great. I hope that it inspires you if you're watching.

Doug: Okay, you're welcome, Jay.

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