How to get your design thinking practice to the next level and deliver even better outcomes?

Level 5 Design Thinking is a simple and effective way to help Design Thinking practitioners develop their own Self Awareness and Design Thinking skills.

Now you may ask why is this important? The reason is straightforward.

A process or an approach is only as effective as the mental state of the practitioners who use it.

Design Thinking is a non linear process to tackle complex challenges in a creative, systems thinking way, going back and forth, iterating, testing, failing and learning in continuous loops.

Keeping pace with the Design Thinking process and guiding others through it demands tremendous emotional agility from us practitioners.

Have you also already experienced some of these challenges?

• What we feel as great ideas may simply not get the required buy in from stakeholders
• We may not find leaders who will create a safe space that supports experimentation
• Customers may still expect short term outcomes

So how do we as practitioners deal with the above challenges? How to improve our emotional agility?

The answer is in becoming deeply centered and aware of our own biases during the course of the Design Thinking process. How we manage our own mindsets individually and collectively during the Design Thinking process makes all the difference to the innovation outcomes.

However this aspect of practitioner’s Self Awareness and how lack of it impacts the effectiveness of the Design Thinking process has not been dealt with adequately in the Design Thinking community. This key gap has invited us to conceive of Level 5 Design Thinking which provides an approach for practitioners to develop their Self Awareness at five different levels.

The ultimate objective of Level 5 Design Thinking is to help practitioners operate at the fifth level by being “I AM” Centered. So a synonym for Level 5 Design Thinking is also “I AM” Centered Design Thinking.

The uniqueness of Level 5 Design Thinking is that it is a fusion of Western Approach and Eastern wisdom.

So what are the benefits of Level 5 Design Thinking?

1. It allows us to access our deepest sources of humanness and compassion, the core quality for any Design Thinker, helping deeply in the empathizing process
2. Helps us to get over our biases, prejudices and false self images which are due to our ego, making this extremely valuable during the overall Design Thinking process in every phase
3. Allows us to be fully be in the present, helping immensely in the idea generation process
4. Allows us realize our full potential individually and collectively helping us in the visualization process
5. Helps us go beyond our ego centered interest ie “Me”, “Myself” and “What’s in it for Me?”
6. Helps us get anchored in our Real Self which is a state devoid of thoughts, allowing us to operate from our sources of creativity and imagination

Now given the above perspectives & benefits of Level 5 Design Thinking, are you ready to get deep into yourself, get rid of unconscious bias and unfold your real innovation potentials?