How We Work #6: Design Thinking in Building Cultural Alignment

How do we use Design Thinking in our approach to build cultural alignment among leaders?

While we are not big fans of adhering to any one framework, we are strong proponents of borrowing good ideas from wherever we find them, including seemingly unrelated sources. Design Thinking, originally an ideology based on designers’ workflows for mapping out stages of design, aims to provide professionals with a standardized innovation process to develop creative solutions to problems—design-related or not. We took the “or not” to heart!

Design Thinking is typically used in the context of designing new products or services. It starts with “Empathizing”—building empathy for the users whose problems you are trying to solve. When we began developing our approach and thesis for building cultural and strategic alignment in organizations, we realized that organizational culture and alignment are products, and the employees are the customers. To solve problems for employees or leaders, we need to fully understand them—their world, what blocks them, what is going well for them, what drives them, etc.

Empathy in Design Thinking

All consultants understand the importance of empathy, but factors like cost and time often lead to cutting corners. Some consultants may lazily copy-paste a solution from the past or rely too heavily on their favored methods. It takes conviction to do the right thing and an open mind to avoid biases and premature conclusions.

Building Empathy Maps

So, we agree that it is crucial to build empathy for the users you are solving for. But what does that mean?

Design Thinking teaches us about building empathy maps, which capture what the user thinks, says, feels, and does. In our case, we aim to understand how the average employee thinks, says, feels, and does along different aspects of how an organization is run. The key deliverable of our “Insights by Design” phase are these empathy maps. No wonder CEOs often tell us that we know their company better than they do.

The Role of Surveys and Interviews

This is also why we usually administer our own employee surveys and conduct employee interviews. If we could gather this intelligence from existing surveys run by HR teams or external certifying agencies, we would happily use them. However, the truth is that surveys often reveal what the designer is looking for. The designer of the survey may have already decided on the ideal culture they want to compare your organization against. Unfortunately, culture is unique—you need to figure out what works best for you, in your context, on the journey you want to undertake. There is no right or wrong culture, and you cannot simply copy someone else’s culture.

The Effort and Reward of Understanding

Here are examples of empathy maps we have created for some of our clients.

One comment we hear consistently from all our clients is how well we understand their organizations. It takes effort. It is costly. But it is the right thing to do.

References to the Series:

• How We Work #1: Introduction to Our Approach
• How We Work #2: Who We Work With
• How We Work #3: You Do You
• How We Work #4: Insights by Design
• How We Work # 5: Articulating Purpose