Today’s world is hyper-competitive.  There are fewer jobs, more talent, and higher needs.  Companies compete with products in their own industries, yet new categories offer novel solutions to existing customers.  Schools and churches even limit the number of kids they can accept into various sports and extra-curricular programs.  To the jaded observer, it seems that only the very, very best survive.

But, is it a matter of being the “best” or really a matter of being the “best prepared”?  Companies and individuals that know themselves well – and understand customers and stakeholders even better – are the true, profitable survivors.  A competition isn’t won by having more skills or more product features.  The competition is won by sticking to a core set of principles, doing the basics well, and by understanding the rules of the game.

So, how do you accomplish the simple elegance of talent, skill, and competency to serve customers and stakeholders?  Let’s look to Design Thinking for three ways to inspire positive change and to beat the competition.

#1 – Customer Empathy

Design thinking is defined as “a collaborative and creative problem-solving approach that integrates customer and user empathy throughout the development process.”  Empathy is the key word in this definition.  Recall that empathy is different than sympathy or acknowledgement.  Empathy is putting yourself into someone else’s shoes to understand how they see the situation and how they feel about it.

In new product development (NPD), we use empathy to identify customer needs.  New product development and innovation are not limited to the technical feature set and marketing campaign.  Instead empathy helps the NDP team observe a customer’s decisions and interactions with a product or service from the point of research through the transaction and to after-sales support.  If any point of the customer’s journey is difficult or challenging, the NPD team recognizes an opportunity for improvement.

In our own lives, we use empathy to understand our constraints and biases.  Often, we end up with tunnel vision and assume a problem can only be solved in one way.  Empathy allows us to view our own decisions and challenges from another person’s perspective.

#2 – Creative Curiosity

Design thinking doesn’t assume that there is one right answer.  In fact, we don’t use design thinking to identify a single answer.  Instead, we use the design thinking tools to generate lots of potential solutions to any question.

In design thinking, we demand curiosity.  Not an idle curiosity, like “Is it going to rain today?”  We demand a deep, core curiosity of how to do tasks better and how to improve the live of others.  Curiosity in NPD includes understanding all of a customer’s problems and learning new technologies.  In Life Design, we seek to find our energies and passions.

One way to regrow your curiosity is to disconnect from the grid for a few hours each week.  Take a hike in the woods or a long bike ride.  Play an old-fashioned board game with your friends and family.  Go to the symphony.

The idea is to let your mind wander and enjoy fresh air and renewed relationships.  On an outdoor trek, you might wonder about the shape of the trees, the colors of the flowers, or the destination of the birds flying across the sky.  Downtime encourages our brains to seek new meaning through curiosity of how the world works.

#3 – Try New Things

In NPD, we often use prototypes to test customer reactions.  With design thinking, you will try new stuff with earlier prototypes.  Instead of testing a new product with a fully designed marketing campaign, test the form and function of a product improvement.  Early prototype testing is inexpensive and can frame the context for a better designed product that will truly delight the customer.  Not to mention, the customer interactions and feedback throughout the NPD process will lead to more competitive product and services.

In your own life, it is important to try new things, but within the boundaries of acceptable risk and expense.  A participant in one of my PMP training classes told me that his wife decided she wanted to do triathlons.  She wanted a new bicycle for her first event.  He suggested she participate in a race first, with her current bike, to see if she liked it.  She didn’t.  And they saved the money for a new bicycle.  However, she also discovered from the experience that she really enjoyed the running leg of the triathlon.  So, the two of them began running together in all distance races (5K, 10K, half- and full-marathons).

Trying new things should not mean abandoning all that we’ve done until now.  Instead, we can prototype parts and pieces to identify the best features and attributes to add, eliminate, or modify.  Especially in innovation, we want to manage new features while understanding customer needs to use and interact with the product or service.

Design Thinking to Embrace Change

Because the world is competitive, we cannot rest on our laurels and hope that things will turn out okay.  We must embrace change and identify opportunities to enhance our competitiveness.  Winning business or winning happiness requires a different approach as our world becomes higher speed and more technologically integrated.  Design thinking tools allow us to refocus on the person with empathy and to generate creative solutions to even the most challenging problems.

In NPD and in life, we use design thin king tools to (1) empathize with the customer and stakeholders throughout the development process and user experience, (2) to generate curiosity about how a product or service can be used and what new combinations of features and attributes will satisfy a customer’s needs, and (3) to establish frequent and candid feedback from customers on prototypes including form and function.  Design thinking allows us to create connections with the people we serve and through empathetic relationships, we often benefit more than those we serve.

To Learn More

Join us in an introductory Life Design Master Mind group in Houston where we start with how you spend your time today.  Over the next 6 months, we will use design thinking tools to take a deep dive into professional and personal motivation to frame and test what next steps you can take to live a joy-filled life.  Check out our on-line tutorial on Design Thinking, too.  Feel free to contact me at [email protected] or 281-280-8717.  At Simple-PDH.com where we want to help you gain and maintain your professional certifications.  You can study, learn, and earn – it’s simple!

Speaking on Design Thinking

• 7 September 2018 at Texas Association of Change Management Professionals Conference

 

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

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