Creating Greater Value: These three things will help you think 'out of the box' and be more innovative

There are many techniques that can help you solve problems and innovate to create greater value for your business.?One effective yet simple approach is by putting the people you serve at the heart of everything you do.?Yes, personal experience comes before process.?Process is what's important to you. Experience is what's important to your customer.??

With origins from the design and engineering fields, 'Design Thinking' is one such approach that is now applied across multiple disciplines.?It's an effective way to "think out of the box"; that is, to step outside of your standard process and pre-conceived notions of what works -- and to step into your customers' mind.

There are three key elements that make Design Thinking so effective: (1) Empathy, (2) Creativity, and (3) Practicality.

1. Empathy

If you "want" to #creategreatervalue for your product or service, you first "need" to create greater value for your customers.?Needs always come before wants.??

To do this, you have to be able to put yourself in the shoes of the people you serve. These could be customers you never meet if, say, you're a numbers cruncher, or prospective clients you're trying to win over if you're in charge of business development.?This could be internal customers, like your own boss, if you're in a back office role.

In #designthinking, the first questions you ask are always empathic questions, such as:

What business problem are you trying solve and for who?

What business goals will you help them achieve by solving the problem?

What specifically needs to be done?

Most people jump straight to "what needs to be done" because this is what's in their job description.?It's how they get paid. It's what's important to them.?But it's not necessarily what's important to your customer.?Remember: needs don't exist in a vacuum.?They're always tied to a specific goal a person wants to achieve, and problems that are preventing him/her from achieving it.

Defining these goals-problems-needs from the perspective of your customer is empathy at work.?You need to understand their market, their competition, their challenges, and other valuable insight necessary to make sure you're addressing the right problem.

2.?Creativity

Once you've clearly defined or framed the customer's goals-problems-needs, it's time to ideate and come up with as many potential solutions as possible.?Often, this requires imagination and thinking out of the box.?The more minds involved, the better.

Most people shudder at the idea of brainstorming with their customers because they think, well, isn't it my job to independently prescribe the proper solution to them??True, but in design thinking, one does not make assumptions about what's best for the customer without first making a thorough diagnosis.?Be humble and approach the process step-by-step, even it it means having to continuously reframe the problem and solution to make sure you're leaving no stones unturned.

When brainstorming in a group, some people use a "round-robin" approach to make sure that they don't miss potentially great ideas just because one assertive person dominates the conversation.?In a round-robin brainstorm:

• Gather the participants and explain to the group what the goal-problem-need is.??
• Ask each person to think of one idea on how to solve the problem and write it down.?No discussions at this stage, because the goal is to allow each person to independently come up with creative ideas without being influenced by others.
• Get each participant to pass on what they wrote to the person next to them.?Each of them should now be holding an "idea" created by another person.
• Ask the participants to use the idea they got from their neighbor to create another idea, or to build on it.?They then pass on that idea to the next person, and so on and so forth.
• You continue the round-robin for as long as necessary until each idea snowballs to a size and scale that would not have been possible with just one person creating it.?Collate all ideas, trim down any duplications, and discuss one or two really good ones.

The round-robin approach is a good way to build "synergy" into the creative process, whereby the whole becomes bigger than the sum of its parts.

3.?Practicality

In Design Thinking, creativity does not mean "impractical, or unrealistic, or unstructured."?You need to bring logic and structure to the creative process and really boil down your creative idea into something that is viable, feasible and desirable.

Three questions you can ask to help achieve this:

• Is it viable??e.g. what profits or specific business benefits will the idea produce?
• Is it feasible? e.g. does the technology or resources exist to implement the idea?
• Is it desirable??e.g. does it create a meaningful and satisfying personal experience for the customer?

For example, you may propose to roll out a brand-new Learning Experience Platform to help your organization's sales force to increase their sales numbers.?You may have tick all the key business metrics (viability), done your due diligence and budgeting (feasibility), but if the end customers (i.e. sales people in the company) don't feel a sense of desirability towards the solution (perhaps because there is no cultural or systemic incentive form them to invest time in learning), then the effort can all go down the drain.

Empathy, Creativity and Practicality are the three pillars that make Design Thinking work because it puts the person -- not the process -- front and center.

Stay tuned and follow CGL Consulting Co., Ltd for more insights on #creatinggreatervalue as part of your #2022goals and to keep abreast of #China's exciting #talentmarket!?