Design Thinking at TechM

Dear All,

Lots of discussions on Design Thinking are happening in our industry and it was very apt that we had a dedicated session on this topic during our MI16 innovation seminar. The TechM MI16 is the annual innovation event done to showcase all the innovation done by our teams and also showcase innovations from our partner start ups.

I also liked the idea of the simple 4-step process to do a Design Thinking problem solving exercise suggested in the Coursera Design Thinking course.

What is?   What if?   What Wows?  What Works?

 Fairly simple but yet powerful 4 –steps;   

Some traps to avoid are also very relevant and I have seen this in many projects I have been part of;

1. What is? get data from ground where rubber hits the road ;  Not some PPTs and spread sheets.
2. Spend quality time on this step ; avoid tendency to jump in to future state quickly
3. What if? do constraint less imagination of future. I am reminded of old Kenny Rogers song " Don't count your money when sitting at the table, there is time enough to count it when the deal is done”; you can short list ideas later
4. What wows? : do not ask for a precise definition of “wows” ;   use your gut ;
5. What works?   Failure and rework of prototype is good;  Reminds of me of a detergent advertisement "  Daag Accha Hain" or "Dirt is Good" ;  

I am also intrigued and encouraged by the people or the softer aspects. I have been practicing this for the 38 years in my IT services career. It is amazing how much productivity and motivation improves when you treat your people with respect and empathy.  

I am sure most of you have seen the Hindi movie Munna Bhai MBBS or the Hollywood movie Patch Adams.  In this movie, the doctor-student or a pretending-to-be-a-doctor-student uses just empathy to dramatically improve the quality of life of many patients. I also understand that some large US hospitals are measuring empathy quotient of their senior doctors, as they found a positive correlation between empathy and patient wellness.

 When you are in the “what is “ phase of a Design Thinking project, it is easy to “bad mouth” everything current , both people and process ;  why else do we need a Design thinking project to fix the current mess?  However, we need to believe that “what is” is run by qualified people with good intentions and the current processes are also developed using good techniques and with good intentions during that time & context. Show this empathy in all interactions with people in the current process;

 Also respect all the team members in your Design Thinking teams; especially the ones with the crazy ideas which sound like “science fiction” to start with;  

I was also happy to see discussions on “purpose motive of a enterprise;  for e.g. participate in changing the way in which people buy or listen to music will motivate every Apple employee to be charged up every morning;  “solutions to reach billion people” will do the same for Google employees;  Not increase my company EPS by x%;

Instead of a motive of “improve TechM developer productivity by x%” old motive , I have created a new purpose motive “ TechM developers to become the best in the world “;  the by product will be increase in productivity anyway;

 We at TechM have embraced the Design Thinking problem solving technique in a big way to solve long standing problems of productivity and revenue enhancement and I am sure we will start getting benefits soon;

 Best wishes to all in using this great problem solving technique;  Let us share notes and keep improving the execution; 

Bye for Now,

L Ravichandran