Where do you start if you want your organization to become more designerly?

There are a lot of discussions about design thinking today. And everyone wants to be better at design. Every company wants to be more designerly. This is all good. But where do you start if you want to change people or companies to be more designerly?

In our book "The Design Way" we introduce what we label as "design learning domains". We show it in a simple schema (see Fig 14.12 below). We explain the idea like this

"Design learning can be addressed in four domains: (1) design character, (2) design thinking, (3) design knowing, and (4) design action or praxis (see figure 14.12). These domains can be expressed as sets. The outcome of design learning or inquiry can be seen as a process of managing competency sets that are interrelated among the quadrants formed by the crossing axis of familiar dichotomies such as concrete reality and abstract thinking, and the individual contrasted to social collectives. These sets—mindsets, knowledge sets, skill sets, and tool sets—must be established and filled, in the process of becoming a designer (see figure 14.13)."

What we see today is a lot of different approaches aimed at improving or enhancing design thinking to create more designerly organizations. Most of these approaches do not address all four sets. The argument we make is that to establish a deep understanding of design that can lead to competent design practice, all four quadrants have to be addressed and "filled".

So, the next question then becomes where do you start the process of building design expertise, all quadrants filled? Do you start by teaching people certain tools, or certain skills, or certain knowledge or do you first engage with their mindset? Among contemporary and serious design educations we can easily find all kinds of approaches, some focused first on skills, others on knowledge or on mindset. Most of them over time addressing all quadrants.

Companies that are trying to transform themselves into being more designerly are unfortunately not as ambitious. Commonly they focus on either the mindset or the skill set. This means that they might invite speakers to preach the benefits of a designerly approach with the purpose to change the mindset of the people or they engage in concrete workshops where some simple tools and skills are practiced. Neither of these will lead to any lasting or serious changes in everyday practice.

To be clear, there is no 'right' way of approaching the design competency sets. Each attempt, each organization, is unique and has to be addressed as such. Each attempt to enhance design has to be adapted and designed to fit the specific situation. And nothing will be achieved if not all quadrants are engaged with.

Is your company designerly enough?

Today a lot of organizations are excited by the notion of design and the ways a designerly approach can enhance their business. Some companies even label themselves as "design companies" or state that they want to be seen as designerly companies. This is all well, but what does it mean and how do you know if and when you actually are designerly enough?

In many areas we have seen different forms of maturity models. A maturity model is supposed to help people "measure" and establish how mature they are in relation to some aspects. Examples are plenty, such as capability maturity models for software, project planning maturity models, risk maturity models, etc.

One of the fundamental ideas that underlie maturity models (even though not always stated) is that any progress in an area has to be built on a solid foundation. Without a solid foundation, any introduction of new tools, methods, approaches or procedures will probably over time fail.

So, does your organization have a solid foundation that can support the development of a designerly culture and improved design thinking and action? And do you have the knowledge and tools to find that out?

There are ways to assess an organization when it comes to how designerly they are and the level of their design maturity. Unfortunately, I see a lot of organizations that try to build a design culture without caring about the foundation. Instead, they start to implement (simplistic) tools and methods locally without the appropriate support and without any intentional effort in developing a strong and solid foundation that can support such initiatives. Not surprisingly, many of these initiatives fail and lead to a negative experience, and to a negative view of what a design approach can do.

So, organizations should (1) engage in assessing how designerly they are and (2) develop and use a design maturity model to better understand where they are and what needs to be done to successfully transform into a design-oriented organization.

Design Thinking and Disciplined Thinking

We all think.

Most of us realize that there are different ways of thinking. Most of us also believe and understand that different ways of thinking lead to different outcomes. So, the choice of how to think about something has serious consequences.

Howard Gardner explores forms of thinking in his book "The Disciplined Mind". Gardner is famous for his notion of multiple forms of intelligence. The idea is that people are intelligent in different ways. Ways that more or less are suitable for specific problems and situations. He argues that people need to nurture all forms of intelligence to be able to function well in the world, and his theories are of course highly influential and debated when it comes to education.

In this book, Gardner explores the notion of "disciplined thinking". He writes "over the years, cultures have evolved systematic ways of thinking about these issues" ("issues" referring to questions about the "true, the beautiful, and the good"). He continues "At any given moment, the disciplines represent the most well-honed efforts of human beings to approach questions and concerns of importance in a systematic and reliable way" (p 144). He shows that over time different disciplined ways of thinking may find themselves in conflict, or in competition, or going through a radical change. For instance, the scientific way of thinking has grown over centuries and has evolved into an extraordinarily powerful and efficient way of thinking if the purpose is to establish solid knowledge. However, scientific thinking is aimed at revealing what exists and how it works (the "true") and is less efficient when it comes to finding out what is "beautiful" or "good". So, each disciplined way of thinking has its strengths and weaknesses.

We have all experienced the extraordinary emergence of design thinking as a "new" form of thinking. People in academia and industry have accepted design thinking as a powerful way of approaching the world and to achieve change. Design thinking as a broad approach (and not as a simplistic process) seems to be able to provide humans with a way of approaching the world that other ways of thinking can't. However, if we want design thinking to develop we have to let go of the idea that design thinking is a well defined step-wise process, or a set of tools and techniques, and something that can be learned in an afternoon workshop.

Instead, we have to understand design thinking as a broad disciplined way of thinking, similar to what Gardner describes in his book as a "disciplined approach". Design thinking is not about using post-it notes or being user-oriented, or working in creative teams. It is a broad form of thinking that is disciplined in ways that other approaches are not. If we do not accept this, design thinking will only become a temporary fad and will after a few years disappear and be forgotten.