Strategy as Design -- Jeanne Liedtka

Rotman School Lifelong Learning 2004, June 6, 2004, 8:40 a.m.

These participant's notes were created in real-time during the meeting, based on the speaker's presentation(s) and comments from the audience. These should not be viewed as official transcripts of the meeting, but only as an interpretation by a single individual. Lapses, grammatical errors, and typing mistakes may not have been corrected. Questions about content should be directed to the originator. These notes have been contributed by David Ing (daviding@systemicbusiness.org) at the IBM Advanced Business Institute ( http://www.ibm.com/abi).

Introduction by Roger Martin

• Jeanne Liedtka
• Same section of Harvard Business School in 1981 as Roger Martin
  • (Hated two years of HBS, but got to meet lots of interesting people)
• Some time in Virginia
• Also at United Technologies
• Article in Rotman magazine

[Jeanne LIedtka]

Both hated HBS

Strategy as design

• This is the most number of business people who have ever come together with an interest in design.
• Was at BCG consulting on strategy
• Leader's role in create strategy, and tell people about it -- not right
• Learned from architects:
  • Frank Gehry
• Design a space, rather than as thinking and disseminating.
• What could we, in business strategy, learn from design?

Normally a case method teacher, so usually don't lecture

• Will give 10 different design stories, with different messages
  • A shamelessly personal list
• Not used to an audience that knows about design

What would organizations do differently if they took the design paradigm seriously?

1. Strategy is more about invention than discovery

• We don't pay enough attention to the art, too much to the science.
  • Tend to bring the analytics
  • Herbert Simon:  not the way things are, but the ways they should be.
• Strategy is about change
  • Strategy is about creating a new future.
  • Powerful futures are in the mind

Example 1:  Sydney Opera House

• Controversy
• Danish architect
• Won the Pritzer prize
  • Ahead of his time
  • Built a building that changed the image of a country
  • If the magnitude of that task was full appreciated, never would have been built.
• Miracle that wouldn't have otherwise happened
  • Project estimators wrong
• Some response as the Eiffel Tower -- controversy when constructed.

2.  We'd get a lot better at persuasion

• The future is made up, thus it can't be proved true, it's always contestable.
• The skill of the leader is to get others to buy into the future:  strategic intent.
• Haven't really had much research on persuasion
  • Actually, more correctly, "seduction"
• Difficult for leaders to pull off:  something new and different, murky, risk
  • Have to step away from certain past for an uncertain future
  • A lot like venturing into a new relationship.
• The wooing is important.
  • Need to learn to treat employers much like lovers, rather than prostitutes.
• Have to help clients with the vision of the future
  • Architects that need to be good with this ...

Example 2:  Guggenheim Bilbao

• Building flows with the river.
• Picked as one of 100 great design picks
• Gehry has achieved what has seemed impossible, that speaks to the man on the street
  • An attraction
  • Gehry has brought hope to an entire profession
• What is it that makes a working class Basque couple to come?
  • Connects to the past, while giving hope to the future.
  • Have to connect to old values, while pushing people towards a new direction
• Building is startingly new and inventive, yet assuringly familiar
  • Tension between the familiar and the new

Exercise:  asked people to think about their favourite object

• Think about the attributes of the object
• Aside from function, they like simplicity

3.  We'd keep it simple

• Not simplistic
• Elegant or parsimonious

Example 3:  The little black dress

• Coco Chanel, 1920s
• Like the dress of servants
• Has endured 80 years
• • Dress isn't overprescribed:  a blank canvas, e.g. add pearls to dress up, flat shoes to dress down
• To see the little black dress as merely functional would be not give it credit.
• Elegant design not when nothing else can be added, but when nothing else can be taken away.

Businesses would be understandable, e.g. fit on a wallet-side card

• Focus on the basic functions
• Would allow adding adornments personal to the individual
• While acknowledging our flaws, it would allow us to find a better tomorrow.
• Would echo the past, while looking to future
• If a little black dress can do this, why not a business strategy?
• Even Barbie has a little black dress

4. We'd aim to inspire.

• Why don't we get more inspirational designs?
• • The functional, and the aesthetic

Consider two bridges:  the Bay Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge, both 100 years old.

• One inspiring, the other functional.

Each of designs works:  combines innovation creativity with techology

• Sydney roof
• Bilbao exterior cladding

5.  We'd master the core skills first

Pablo Picasso at age 14:  The first kneel

• Girl kneeling at altar
• • At 14, Picasso had mastered the skills of conventional art
• Later, abstract art
• • People who don't understand say that a 4-year old could do this, but a 4-year old really couldn't

6.  We'd learn to experiment

• Most organizations are not set up to experiment, and tolerate failure.
• To think that we could design something fully is foolish
• Modeling, prototyping, is what we think we have to translate.

Example:  Ikea

• Ingmar Kampar:  visionary
• No respect for a solution until we know what it costs
• • Expensive solutions are usually the result of mediocrity
• Warehouse, picking -- all discovered by employees, not by the founder
• • e.g. in the original Stockholm store, customers got frustrated at the lineups and went to the backroom themselves.
  • In the U.S., would probably have prevented them from going back
• Have to learn from the voice of the customer.

Now want to talk about the design conversation:  the process, rather than the design.

7.  We'd be more inclusive

• The more variety of perspectives, the more creative the solution that comes out the other end
• This goes against the great man (Gehry or Picasso) theory
• • There's an enormous amount of work and contribution of the people behind them.

Example:  urban planning, more complex

• Town of Seaside, Florida
• A different kind of beach community
• Brought out the new urbanism
• • Strong emphasis on the design process, as well as the design concept
• Charette:  design conversation
• • Originated at the Beaux Art museum
• Undertaken by team, with principles:
• • Involve everyone from the start
  • work concurrently and cross-functionally
  • Short feedback look.
  • Work in detail
• Not enough to just get the right people

8.  We'd talk differently

• Not debate
• • In a large group, debate is more likely to cause breakdown.
  • Need to get better questions
• Senge calls it process of inquiry
• • Need to balance it with advocacy
• Innovation as revisiting assumptions in the core planning process

Example:  Central Park

• Advocates of the park who were originally the rich, who admired parks in London and Paris
• • Seen as private, would keep out the working class
• Competition, then accepted design by Olmsted
• • Their plan was the only one that met all criteria
  • The hard part:  allowed cross-town traffic, while maintaining the pastoral setting
  • • Submerged roads
  • They tested the assumption of a two dimensional space.

9.  We'd work backwards

• Normally, we define the problem, create alternatives, pick the solution.
• As Covey says, start with the end in mind.
• • Work backwards
• If you ask people to start with the customer experience that they would like to create, and then work backwards, would get better design.

U. Virginia founded by Thomas Jefferson.

• Third president, but had many other roles
• • Had a passionate, lifelong interest in education, and spent the last decade of his life creating the university.
  • Jefferson was responsible for everything:  architecture, grounds, selection of faculty.
  • This is a good example of working backwards:  to create a purposeful space
• Site was not destroyed by Sherman in the Civil War.
• Different from other designs:  replaced the central building with multiple small buildings.
• • Jefferson agnostic, library as the central (instead of church)
  • Student and faculty housing nearby, second floor
  • An academical village
• Jefferson linked, in his mind, democracy and education
• • Jefferson feared a return to monarchy
  • Believed that the only hope of maintaining self-government, was education
• Liberty, and freedom of spirit and mind.
• A space that evokes education as a community of learners coming together in self-governance.

10:  We would start the conversation with possibilities

• Design from three things:  constraints, contingencies and possibilities
• • In business, we overwhelmingly start conversations from constraints.
• Great design starts with the question:  what, if anything, is possible.
• We rarely ask this.

Example:  Barcelona, unfinished cathedral

• Church to be built through the faithful, for expurgation of sins
• Vision:  to be a bible in stone, so that people could read the story
• Gaudi:  ignored the usual constraints
• • "My client is in no hurry"
• Construction, design, and then when ran out of money, would go back to design
• Natural world as inspiration:  wanted soaring interiors, hated flat walls.
• Didn't have the technology of Gehry
• Physics of the cathedral a problem:  wanted to avoid arches and buttresses
• • Knew that cathedral couldn't be built with technology of the time.
  • Found two tools:
  • • Catenary arch:  could simulate with a chain, upside down.
    • • Used small bags of sand to create model
      • Computer models today use this model.
    • New material:  cement
    • • Exterior walls bore weight, not internal walls.
• Built and learned, allowed possibilities to emerge
• • Tested the constraints he thought he couldn't
• Gaudi got hit by a streetcar
• • Fire, but plaster models survived
• Now estimate that the cathedral will be finished in 20 years.

Design process is difficult

• A lot of bad designs exist

What makes design so difficult?  Three central tensions:

• 1. Familarity/invention paradox
• • The comfort of what exists, but pushing them into the uncomfortable domain.
• 2. The coherence/chaos paradox
• • Successful designs create coherence and alignment, but the process is chaotic.
  • Most leaders don't like to let go.
  • Ultimately, control comes from a great design, but getting a great design comes from giving up control.
  • Andy Grove:  Chaos interrupted by punctuated focus.
  • Have to open up the organization to inclusive design conversations.
• 3. Closure/fluidity paradox
• • Users like closure and clarity
  • Great designs emerge and unfold in a messy way.
  • Gehry:  Difficult to get people to a different vision, from the one that they're in
  • • Not replicating
  • Two examples:
  • • Schizophrenic facility, and MIT building
    • If anything was possible, what would the space be, that they would like to inhabit.
    • Painful process
    • Schizophrenic gave a great description, but until she described the crack above his head, he didn't realize that it was the building they were already in.
    • Similar for the MIT faculty, but they hide the schizophrenia!

Design has a lot to offer to business.

[Questions]

Designing strategy in a volunteer organization?  Board that comes in and out, once per year.  Ability to master core skills?

• Good news:  looking for people who create strategic conversations, the non-profit world is ahead.
• e.g. museums, botanical gardens, community planning (Search Conferences)
• • Tavistock
• In a non-profit, you can't tell people what to do.
• Central challenge:  to get people to sit still long enough to sustain a conversation.
• • Board meetings, and then have people missing that need to be filled in, is a problem.
• Have lost the ability to pay attention to any one thing to get to a solution
• • Interrrupted by e-mail, more meetings.
  • Losses from not having a focused conversation.
• Need to talk, several days on end.
• People complain that they don't have the time to do this.
• Charettes last up to a week, but then have a detailed design for a city, with everyone bought in.
• With all advances, still need to talk to people.

Who needs to have the sustained conversation?  Is there a role for the traditional planning process?

• A design conversation is actually multiple conversations happening simultaneously.
• People often actually don't know what they're talking about, and create infeasible designs.
• Need to have leadership create the context, through boundaries
• • Don't like vision.
  • Need to invite more people into conversations.
  • Traditional planning processes need to work this way.
  • Need planning, and measurement systems to get the single-minded focus.
  • Have to have implementation, as separate from design

In Bell Canada, invested the Delta centre last year, 10 facilitator for 2 to 3-day planning sessions.  Biggest challenge as a lead facilitator in designing sessions, is involving customers.  How to do this better?

• Who you invite to a design conversation is one of the most important.
• Customers are difficult to involve.
• • Hard to get people to talk about the present.
  • Want to talk about the future, but need people to tell the truth about the present.
• Need an atmosphere of trust.
• • Involving customers shuts down conversations.
  • Still want the voice of the customer.
• The voice of the customer needs to be included, the question is what's the best way to do this?