How does Design Thinking Shift How We Work in HR?

I recently had a conversation with, Ivellisse Morales, a brand strategist with experience at IDEO and Ogilvy, now founder of her own agency, Bombilla Creative, working with impact entrepreneurs.

We touched on a variety of common questions around design thinking as it applies to human resources and employee experience.

Here's the best of the conversation right here:

How does Design Thinking shift the way we work?

For many years HR has relied on networks of peers to talk about best practices to learn from each other and understand what the others are doing in their company. This is not necessarily a bad thing. But, it's also not the way forward.

The term 'best practice' means -- if if we just copy what worked the last time it should work this time, too.

If I repeat what was done at Google, they have a great culture, so we will have a great culture, too... if we just follow their best practices.

We live in a time when things are changing quickly so best practices are becoming obsolete because what we did last year is completely different from what we should be doing right now or in the next six months.

Technology is changing the tools that available to us in managing people and companies, so we need to be nimble.

You’ve probably heard a lot about agile and integrating agility into how you work. Design thinking is part of this shift of been more nimble, and being more iterative in our approach.

So what this all means is ... we’re living in evolutionary times.

You can stop calling your work "HR programs" and start calling them 'experiments and 'iterations,' because that’s truly what they are. We allow other departments to have this kind of language "I’m experimenting," or "I’m testing an idea." But for HR and People Operations we've been conditioned to just following best practices --sticking to what what was done previously.

Best practices are in line with the need for safe and certain. Emergent practices is where we embrace uncertainty and create as we go.

Design thinking gives us permission and a roadmap to be iterative and experimental with our work in people and culture.

You don’t have to have all the answers.

One of the pieces that I like the most about design thinking is that invites us to be collaborative and bring others into our work and have it become a conversation.

This goes back to one of the core concepts in a human centered design approach - you approach problems with a learner mind (not an expert mind)

One of the first things we do in design thinking is to start with empathy. What that means is we go listen to other people's experiences and stories before we start deciding what we are going to change in order to best serve them.

So, if somebody says:

"We should change our performance management to a realtime feedback system."

It's common for someone to say, "Yah, I know someone that works for XX company and they use realtime feedback, we should ask what software they use."

But what works someplace else doesn’t necessarily work for your company and your context. That’s why you need to capture insights on what is relevant for your particular situation.

That’s where the focus on empathy comes in. It asks us to stop solving problems and start asking better questions in thoughtful ways. To figure out what currently is happening at your organization before we start to decide what could be the new opportunity.

Case: Dealing with a Work From Home Policy that was taking over the culture

One example is from Taneen, who works at Philosophie. They had a very flexible work from home policy - and everyone seemed to think it was a great idea. But after time, morale was low and engagement started to decline as well. So, the common knee-jerk response? Well, let's update the policy and change the rules. But Taneen took a different approach, she conducted empathy interviews, and recorded the answers. She published quotes (anonymously) but un-edited of how people felt about the work from home policy in all company newsletter. And unanimously people felt like they missed their coworkers, wish people were at the office more. So, what happened next? She didn't do anything with the policy, she didn't do much, actually - people just naturally started coming to work more. (You can read the full story inside the Design Thinking for HR Toolkit).

Is Design Thinking a toolkit? a process? And why is it so popular?

We live in times that are very ambiguous because of all of this rapid change.

Most people are really uncomfortable with unknowns and ambiguity a lot of executives don’t like this either, they want answers, they want results, they want data.

We need tools to help us navigate ambiguity and build confidence that we have an idea of where we are going.

Design Thinking is a navigation tool to help guide us through the waters of ambiguity, with a sense of direction. When we feel we are amidst chaos, I have found that the concept of deciding whether we are at a Divergent or Convergent inflection point has helped me feel like I know what I need to do next to help the team.

What does human-centered leadership look like?

For most people - expressing creativity feels risky. We are worried that we'll be exposed, our ideas will seem silly and so we stiffle our creativity at work.

Human-centered leaders understand this, they know that building safe space and brave space at work to help unlock creativity is a core part of their role.

Most people, once they finally are given space, permission and the invitation to be creative - often feel a mixture of thrilled to be set free, and scared that they might be judged.

It takes a lot of courage to be creative, and I've personally found that the more I OWN my creativity and let it lose in front of people, they feel safer to show theirs, too. Its taken me a long time to get here and that's why I created The Workplace Lab - to help us unlock our creativity in a safe community environment.

How does design thinking support diversity and inclusion at work?

An additional benefit of design thinking is that it is a collaborative approach to work.

Design Thinking asks us to put ourselves in the position of being learners, in the HR context that means we are learners of the employee experience.

We need to talk to people with a variety of perspectives to help us see different possibilities. This is where diversity becomes an essential ingredients to make our work the most effective. In a design thinking sprints you’re going to want to speak to a variety of people and understand their experiences - the act of doing this will help you relate to others and the variety of experiences around us.

This is an essential piece to building a more equitable workplace where a sense of belonging starts to become real.

Am I saying that design thinking is the answer to diversity equity and inclusion? No. But it certainly does help and it does give us a stepping stone towards what I view as a better future and more human workplaces.

Empathy interviews are focused on understanding human needs, in the act of listening to understand the experience of others, you create empathy for people you might not have listened to before.

Being connected to the experience of other people helps to build relationship and for me, relationship is the foundation to create more inclusive environment at work.

It’s a wonderful feeling to take time to listen to each other, to learn about those who have different perspective and experience, and then create something together that better serves all of us as colleagues, as people and as a community.

How do you go about establishing a Design Thinking mindset in an organisation that is undergoing a lot of change and restructuring, specifically when there is a lot of resistance and insecurities?

In this kind of situation, you're going to want to think about some 'quick wins' you can have at a team level, that could be implemented without a lot of effort and show the value of applying a design thinking mindset.

But its important to remember - design thinking is not necessarily about 'quick wins' but longer term effective strategy. But what can always help in a situation of low trust is creating space for discussion, dialogue and listening. Perhaps have a tour of coffee conversations, and help people feel heard and listened to, approach it like an anthropologist studying what's happening, and being empathetic without trying to fix/solve/change what's happening. There's more methods and ideas inside the Design Thinking Toolkit for HR, Talent & Culture Leaders - here's where you can get your free copy of the toolkit.

Particularly - check out page 17 with the examples of a traditional approach and a new human-centered approach. Understanding that all of this change is a lot for people to take in, so giving space for empathy conversations and listening can help understand whats really happening for people.

Can Design Thinking be used in Higher Ed?

YES! Design Thinking applies really well into higher education as well - so many great opportunities for insights from students and staff. Also, for those who love research and science-based approaches, Design Thinking will satisfy the needs for 'research-backed' approach.

Where do you even start to bring design thinking into an organization and gain buy in and support from the C-suite level?

Start with self. Start practicing some of the design thinking practices on your own. You could look at a habit you want to change personally - as you get to see how its working with yourself, you can start to test it out with your team or close colleagues. Another approach is, start with a small moment, like how you approach a team meeting or how you facilitate a discussion. If you want to do a larger design sprint, or really overhaul how something is being done in your department, you want to get data/insights first- so conduct your empathy research and use that to build the case. Using the voice of the employee as data points can be powerful in getting buy-in from those who are resistant.

Getting buy-in is definitely a much longer discussion, but those are a few places to start.

Are there any structured set of questions in design thinking? Or, we can use questions as per the situation and individuals?

In design thinking you want to use some "question prompts" to help with ideation, many people use HMW questions... "How might we..." I talk about this on page 21 in the toolkit.