top of page

Design Thinking: designing winning arguments for action


In a previous life (20 years ago) some of my poetry was published in journals in the US, I dabbled in dinner theatre (a singing Henry VIII), I play bass (badly), drums (not as bad) and I was in a band (Strange Brew) – I used to come out from behind the drums to sing a 5 minute ad lib story set to Van Morrison’s Gloria (sorry to all who were there). Why am I telling you this? I love the arts. I am a creative systems thinker, which provides me an interesting insight when exploring the science of business. It is also one of the reasons that Design Thinking resonates with me so deeply.

In my last post, I touched upon the science of business – Design Thinking really is based an a scientific process (Abduction – Induction – Deduction) – but users of the process also need to to be pragmatic; this is where designers, and their love of the artistic process, struggle in the business world. This is also a warning to all those playing with the new shiny toy that is Design Thinking, are you about to get stuck in the mud of the observation phase?

Observing and engaging people may help in developing deep empathy, but permissions have to be given if empathy is to move to meaningful action. In business, this means that Design Thinkers need to focus on gaining “permissions” to proceed by designing “winning” arguments that open funding gates.

Empathise, but use the “intelligence” to craft winning arguments!

Such arguments use the “intelligence” gathered during the empathy phase (all those rich observations) to design arguments for progression. Some things to consider:

  • Is your argument credible – is the evidence from your observations and engagement dependable and credible (e.g. findings that fail to consider the law of large numbers)?

  • You want to prototype! Okay, no problem, are your reasons logical? Do they fit with the goals (mission, vision, strategy) of the organisation; do they align with the value of the organisation; do they fit with the organisation’s standards? Have you considered that the argument for disruption is more-often-than-not more difficult than an argument for incremental change and relies heavily on a connection to emotion? [I’ve published a case study on this, which has just been announced as one of the top 5 winning articles for the 2016 CMI Articles of the Year Award, and I’ll share the decision process we created in the next couple of weeks]

  • Does your argument trigger emotion? We know that the two strongest human emotions are love and fear, so your argument should act as a tuning fork that creates the perfect pitch – see what I did there :)

Now, ask yourself, do you know your audience? You need to communicate your message in such a way that it resonates with individual stakeholders, their groups/teams and the organisation/wider world.

This method isn’t a silver bullet, but it will certainly help you to move from dreams to reality. The bottom line, respond to these challenges and you’ll unlock the gates to action. Miss any of these challenges and the risk of failure increases.

Featured Posts
Recent Posts
Follow Us
  • Facebook Basic Square
  • Twitter Basic Square
  • Google+ Basic Square
Archive
Search By Tags
No tags yet.
bottom of page