Strategic Design 24–01
Building opportunities and trust in a future
Economic crises typically cause companies to reduce their investments in innovation as returns are considered to be uncertain or with a long-term goal. Strategic Design is a way to address aspects that impact organisations in any given situation, unveiling opportunities also in new or changing circumstances. They are translated into projects however small or immediate they must be, and that can work as plug-ins to initialise evolutionary change processes.
The trouble:
Innovation capital is less available in this period of economic decline, high inflation and interest rates. Budgets get hit, innovation initiatives slow down or turn to standby. Budget owners tend to give tickets to big consulting firms who engage subcontractors, which means that smaller innovation steps are dependent on greater efforts which appear as too big to be addressed in periods of uncertainty.
The Energy crisis aggravated by the war in Ucraine has increased costs for energy-reliant industries in particular in Europe, impacting also their suppliers. This will be solved with the production and distribution of renewable energy sources, processes that must speed up as they had been neglected in the past. This massive challenge coincides with an aging population in western countries causing the imminent need to integrate missing workforce.
Psychological factors resulting from continuous intertwining of various crisis augmenting each other nurture nostalgia of past comforts and therefore resistance to change. We are assisting social crisis, polarisations and radicalisations searching simplistic answers to complex questions, reflecting the worst effect of any economic crisis, the loss of trust in the future — which can be re-established with innovations that show new directions for sustainable growth opportunities.
The opportunity:
Address these challenges with innovation strategies and change processes that are tangible for stakeholders and wider audiences, visualise paths for implementation, predict impact based on insights that relate to real and felt circumstances — show opportunities that can be assimilated, evaluated, and take people, employees and customers, with them.
Strategic Design has been evolving over the past decades with the human centric design approach and increased its areas of application which span any imaginable field: products, services, and organisations; designing interactions, processes, and systems, for any sort and size of organizations. The systemic approach of Strategic Design unveils and models complex interactions amongst components that comprise a system and designs a path to implementation with effective use of available resources.
A good strategy is not necessarily one that results from big investments, and great innovations are born in times of great need. Innovation enables growth and recessions can act as innovation accelerators for those who are able to take it as an opportunity. To say it with the words of Winston Churchill: “Never let a good crisis go to waste”.
Strategic Design Plug-in
A Strategic Design intervention aims to address a greater goal then the design project itself. We look beyond the project, see how it relates to an overall system, visualise the potential in relating fields and show paths to scale it up. It will align with the overall purpose of a company, and it can be used to test how to integrate and evolve change processes. We can plug-in an organisation from any corner, any area, leadership or mid-level, product, service, or management related. For a manager in a specific area this means to shed light on the own area but also impact connected areas or even the overall strategy of the organisation. Our projects can work as plug-ins to start change processes. No project is too small to initiate a change process, and no system is too big to be changed.
We lay out potential impacts the various contents and functions this project can initialise, looking at any project from a multitude of perspectives. To be successful at this work, in-house or consulting teams need a series of disciplines from 3D tech, business-, service-, organisational-, to content- design, all savvy in Strategic Design. It is a transversal discipline evolving very fast, in terms of approach, techniques, and areas for intervention, which adds on to a solid practice experience in the design process.
Throughout Design history it has become evident that design interventions on products can have a profound impact on related services, providing opportunities for marketing and sales strategies. In the same way, interactive technologies such as VR/AR for product personalisation enhance customer experiences and engage new retail concepts, 3D development processes speed up collaboration improving the sustainability of supply chains.
Applying principles of accessibility in web and interaction design projects can be a precedent to introduce Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) principles within an organisation, new app services can provide tangible support to customers facing challenges such as rising energy costs and initiate a stronger focus on ESG initiatives across corporations.
The Strategic Design of cross-functional initiatives can significantly impact holistic organisational growth. A specific up-skilling program can serve as a precedent for continuous learning and development, to enhances the skills of individual employees but also to create a culture of adaptability and improvement across various departments. A Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) project can be designed to include various disciplines within the organisation. This not only aligns the company’s values but also introduces new priorities. By involving employees from different departments, a CSR initiative can create a sense of shared purpose and foster collaboration among individuals who might not typically work together. An HR career event can be an opportunity to identify and place in-house innovation competence across different sections to build an interrelated entity where innovative ideas and practices can be shared and implemented across the organisation. Organising and defining collaborations even with external teams and potential partners for specific projects can unveil synergies, initiate ecosystem integrations and open new growth opportunities.
Strategic Design Leadership
Maybe the most significant quality of Strategic Design is that we do not use an one-size-fits-all approach but take any project as new, not generalising with experience but using experience as a spectrum to individuate unique company specific solutions that will help them to better fit in and to stand out in current situations. Information and knowledge, critiques and solutions can frequently be found in organisations already, but without the capacity to bring them to light in safe spaces and translating insights into scalable and measurable strategies they remain a hidden potential.
Can you draw a diagram that visualises how information and communication flows in your organisation? Would you be able to show how decision-making processes work based on this diagram? To create and visualise such a company specific diagram is one of the first steps to start working on improvements, making sure that values, needs, and expectations unveiled in design research will be implemented following a strategic plan. We create roadmaps that allow all stakeholders to see their parts and how they relate to other parts, showing the rhythm and interaction of all aspects and functions of innovation processes. We define when to assess which function to see if they satisfy the expectations, predict potential risks, and envision exit strategies. We create a Development Matrix, define a spectrum of qualities to evaluate the performance of a new project and design tools to assess the performance. We are not re-inventing the wheel of Strategy Development but place a value based, human centric and visual approach, bringing together all areas that are crucial for implementation.
Allow new tools for a change: Considering the urgency and complexity of current circumstances that impact our economic systems, a quadrant from 1960 is not a valid planning tool for any corporation. The limitations of the SWOT analysis have been highlighted for decades and today we should question its adaptability and effectiveness in addressing current organisational and economical challenges. Alternatives such as SOAR, PESTLE, or NOISE seem unfit for generalisation. The solution for any corporation is to design own, company specific planning frameworks.
Whilst culture cannot be designed and whether perceived as healthy or not, it stands for a well aligned group with own dynamics, not always at ease with new interpretations and perspectives, at times slow to adapt to new situations. Strategic Design aims to create minimal frameworks that serve as orientation but allow leeway and space for the new. In a period of mergers and acquisitions we learn that they can be effective if they form together an overall Strategy that connects diverse and complementary competences and experiences.
How can we monitor progress if we need to adapt to new situations which take away the comfort of managing continuous growth? The inherent structure of OKRs and KPIs creates pressure to meet predetermined goals, which might compromise taking risks, adapting new strategies, and ultimately hinder growth. They can impede proactive decision-making to address emerging challenges and opportunities.
As we integrate AI in data strategies to bring together and analyse information on markets and customers, we can use data and AI to better align internal processes, define action-oriented goals and individuate needed improvements that work towards the organisation’s strategic objectives and financial goals. AI-powered systems can assist in identifying patterns and trends of evolving circumstances, providing insight for more agile and responsive evaluation processes. They can complete current metrics for performance assessments by incorporating predictive modelling to foresee future trends based on automated data collection from various sources, allowing also for a more comprehensive and systemic KPI monitoring.
We must design processes and data collection tools that ensure that the interpretation of data is contextually relevant and ethically sustainable. AI can only use the data it gets. It is us humans that define ambitions, provide the input, and therefore control what we share for instance what we get evaluated on. We can design tools that collect input in a human centric, individual way, such as diaries, boards, self-made recordings and many others. Natural Language Processing and machine learning techniques help us to understand the context, sentiment, and semantics to extract valuable information from unstructured data sources. We should responsibly design unconventional tools for unconventional times.
The digitalisation of organisations and their services remains a major construction site, alongside with endless opportunities to strategize data and integrate AI. The related fear asks for a responsible and ethically correct approach. However, most studies mention that, besides possible dangers of AI, the current fragility of democracy and inflation, eco-anxiety related to climate change is the main stress factor causing loss of trust in the future. There can’t be one big sustainability or inclusion project, but many small ones creating an evolutionary, living system. This overdue shift is not waiting for the all-solving one project, but for crossing the point where Sustainability and Integration will be considered and reflected in everything we do.
Start small, but start change:
Economic downturns and crisis ask for a greater reform to individuate and strategize potential solutions, focusing on parameters that impact markets, businesses, products and services and maybe most importantly organisational structures.
Strategic Design is not long-term wishful thinking but a way to combine goals with all related constraints and compromises, resources, and timing. Strategic Designers are translators, we connect what we find to form a system which is unique and company specific. The design part consists in learning what really drives a company, engaging people to share a piece from themselves, to find common denominators and particularities. It is an effective way to keep investments low until opportunities can be unveiled, visualised, and evaluated.
There is no Strategic Design without data, and there is greater use of data with Strategic Design. We need data to see a whole picture which is not based on assumptions, and data needs an outlet to transform information into opportunity. Even if processed data describes a scenario in a complete and objective way, there can still be an underlying sentiment, a collective subconscious which bares needs for change, to remove obstacles and enable innovation processes. Strategic Design challenges quantitative information with qualitative insight to unveil opportunities.
The Jakala ecosystem offers such a unique combination of passions and competences. In this group I am a partner of Maize, which incorporates the values, ambitions and consciousness needed to provide high quality guidance and support to a range of industries with the aforementioned set of disciplines. However, I write this note on my blog as my personal point of view as it has matured over the past year, following numerous requests in response to Designing Beautiful, in particular from alumni working in Strategic Design. With my deepest gratitude for your interest and enthusiasm, and admiration for your work in Strategic Design:
Make it beautiful, transparent, honest, and elegant. The combination of Strategy and Design brings planning and change management closer to people. It allows for spontaneous identification, easy access, it creates enthusiasm, and it can therefore bring back hope and trust in the future.
