Introducing Design Thinking into Big Corporations: Small Steps, Big Impact
Our economies are moving at the speed of light, but many large corporations are still struggling with a migration from waterfall to agile methodologies. All too often, they are caught in what we call "wagilefall": an in-between state that relies on a heavy organisational structure with corporate meetings, complex approval processes and long development cycles.
However, things are evolving around us every day and corporations can no longer afford to stand still, since failing to innovate results in business failure. Yet, at the same time, change in large organisations tends to occur slowly and needs to be handled in baby steps.
To help with the transformation towards a more efficient and adaptive methodology that will future-proof businesses, we recommend infusing design thinking into big corporations in small steps. Introducing design thinking into a business model can be very efficient and promotes more collaboration as well as happiness at work.
What is design thinking?
In essence, design thinking is a methodology that zooms in on the user and problems that need to be solved. It centres around understanding the user and defining their challenges/pains and opportunities. In other words, it's about understanding the issue first before focusing on the solution.
How to introduce small infusions of design thinking into big corporations?
From experience, we have learned that the introduction of design thinking is best accomplished in small incremental changes. The idea is to start small so you can make big future changes. What's a small change that big corporations can implement easily and quickly?
As corporations begin to implement agile development in weekly or bi-weekly sprints, they need to host regular retrospectives. Unfortunately, these retrospectives tend to be ill-structured and complicated rather than achieve their purpose. At TPA, we promote using a Sailboat exercise at the end of a sprint to structure the retrospective.
The Sailboat exercise is a simple tool that is frequently used in design thinking workshops to quickly determine what went well and what was less optimal. It captures the positives and negatives of the current solution(s), or what went well and badly in the company or market. In essence, the Sailboat is a more intuitive SWOT analysis that circumvents the typical analysis paralysis that some participants experience during more abstract exercises.
How the Sailboat exercise works?
All you need is 30 minutes, a Sailboat poster, Post-its, thick markers, voting dots and a timer. After setting up the Sailboat poster on a Miro board or wall, give each participant a stack of Post-its and a thick marker.
Let participants write down all of the positives and then all of the negative points to fill out the Sailboat poster. As design thinking aims to empower the good and only change what is not going well, this exercise will clearly capture these points. Participants can be very open-minded to capture every potential negative or positive.
Once the positive and negative sides of the Sailboat are complete, then have an educated conversation about it. Participants will explain their Post-its, then everyone will vote on the best positives and worst negatives (participants can't vote on their own Post-its).
Finally, summarise the learnings so you can empathise with the user and design a future solution that removes or diminishes the negatives, but expands on and empowers the positives.
The Sailboat exercise is incredibly easy to integrate. For corporations that are a bit stuck but want to incorporate design thinking, it's the perfect way to introduce small infusions of design thinking. By starting with this baby step, you're on track to making big future changes. Get in touch with us for a copy of our Sailboat poster, try the exercise, and let us know if it worked for you. Don’t hesitate to ask if you have any questions.
