Design Thinking Workshops temporarily abolish company culture

When talking to Design Thinking colleagues and asking them about their experience when it comes to running Design Thinking workshop I often hear them complain and voicing frustration that after the workshop is over the company goes back to business as usual.

Design Thinkers are frustrated their workshops don't create long-lasting organisational change!

Thank good your Design Thinking workshops doesn't change the organisational culture because that's not what it should do !!!!!!!!

The assumption many Design Thinkers have is that they automatically have a mandate, not only to run a Design Thinking workshop but also to inject Design Thinking culture to the organisation buying the workshop.

I personally don't believe that this is true.

Only because you are ask to run a Design Thinking workshop does not mean you should change the organisational culture.

Design Thinking Moderators don't have the mandate to change the culture of and organisation only because they are asked to run a Design Thinking workshop.

Changing company culture belongs to the most complex, complicated and risky tasks when managing organisations the idea of and outside stepping in to an organisation and changing the culture without in-debt know-how and a having a mandate from top management is absurd.

In many cases it takes many years or generations until a company adopted a working method that makes the organisation successful in a specific marked niche.

Often a companies success is mainly due to adapting a company culture that allows the company to be successful.

A companies culture is responsible for the companies success but at the same time prevents the company of being innovative.

Because you as Design Thinking moderator don't have a mandate for changing the companies culture the only option left for you as Design Thinker is to ensure your workshop is a success is to deliberately and temporarily abolish and destroy company culture in your Design Thinking workshop to make innovation possible.

Temporarily destroying company culture allows temporary creativity

Organisation often wonder why they are not innovating and why they cant monetize and benefit from their employees ideas. The thing they don't understand is companies can't simply tell their employees to be creative and innovative if the company doesn't supply a proper frame work for innovation.

Such an innovation framework certainly includes

• Collecting ideas
• Giving intensives and rewards for good ideas
• Providing time and budget for innovation
• Accepting innovations requires funding and risk taking
• Acknowledging innovation needs proper investment to follow threw with projects
• Willingness to adapt innovations and make them part of company operations

Because most companies neither have the resources nor the willingness and commitment to fund and maintain an proper innovation framework Design Thinking workshops are used to at least temporarily destroy company culture and at the same time create a temporary innovation frame work providing employees with an environment to be creative.

What does temporarily abolishing company culture actually mean?

You might be wondering how removing company culture during a workshop works and you might be surprised to find the answer is very simple and there are only a view things you need to change to make innovation possible in your Design Thinking workshop.

1. Ensure equality and remove company hierarchy during your workshop

This means you must ensure C and Top level managers cant use their position and power to make their ideas more important then ideas from other participants in the workshop.

The way this is best achieved is to used a workshop design that ensures each participant gets the same amount of time to present and share ideas with the group.

Low ranked employees get the same time slot as higher ranked employees.

2. Help participants who don't love to speak share their ideas.

In addition you as a Design Thinking moderator need to ensure that each and every participant contributes even if they are not eager to do it. For example not everybody likes to stand up and voice ideas but often those that speak the least have better and unique ideas then those who are gifted speakers and love to communicate.

Further more those communicative employees usually love to speak about their ideas and chances are good they have been promoting them in the past any way.

Encourage those that don't enjoy being on center stage to give it a try and share their ideas with the group.

3. Democratic decision making by voting and group decisions

Successful workshops ensure all decisions are collective decisions where each single participants opinion is equal valuable.

This can be achieved by voting on ideas giving each participant the same amount of points to distribute on different ideas.

A second method is to have moderated parts where the group is for example asked to formulate a value proposition and the moderator ensures the value proposition is based on a group consent rather then on the most prestigious person simply deciding for the group.

Ensure all group decisions are based one everybody being included in the decisions process

4. Prevent and prohibit discussions at all times

Authorities mostly exert their position and power threw discussions and arguments. In many cases the content of the argument is not related to the problem discussed but mixed with dogmatic claims and declarations.

Almost all leaders have good communication, presentation and speaking skills and they know how to use those skills to win discussions and make their arguments heard even if their conclusion are wrong and most others object and don't buy into their arguments.

Preventing discussions automatically robs managers and leaders of one of their most powerful tools end helps lower ranked employees to be heard and taken serious.

Preventing discussions robs higher ranked authorities from exerting power during a workshop.

After the workshop is before the workshop

Once the workshop is over everything returns back to normal. The CEO is the CEO and the employee is the employee again.

Once the workshop is over company hierarchy, power structures and culture are reestablished and company business goes back to normal as if the workshop had never existed.

For me a successful workshop means I have enabled innovation and creativity with a minimum of disruption when it comes to creating uproar and confusion in the organisation after the workshop is over.