The Power of Design Principles In Your Talent Transformation

Part 6 of Allyn Bailey’s Series on Driving Talent Acquisition Transformation,

In my last article in this series,?Take Control of Your TA Technology Choices and Use Them to Drive Your TA Strategy, I talked about the power of leveraging technology to help advance your transformational journey. If you missed that or any of the other articles in this series where I outline lessons 1 - 24, you could read them all?here.

In this installment in the series, I am going to talk about the power of design principles.?Design principles are a tactic I became enamored with during my years working as a UX designer.?Before that time, I was familiar with “requirements” and requirement documents.?I knew about goals and measurable outcomes, but what all those tools lacked for me was a way to simply articulate to multiple partners the intent of a design and how to meet that intent even in circumstances that were not yet known and if I was not in the room to tell them what I envisioned. Requirements documents told me what was needed in a particular circumstance but did not support team members in applying critical thinking when faced with scenario variations or new elements that need to be designed for.?Basically, what I was searching for was a way to navigate real life, in the moment decision making, that did not require me to write a thirty-page process document that no one would really read anyway.?I wanted to empower the partners and teams I worked with to be self-sufficient and still trust we could be aligned in a common intent.?Enter the world of design principles.

Lesson 25: Design Principles Articulate Your How

The word “principle” means “a basic idea or rule that explains or controls how something happens or works”.?For our purposes design principles of transformation are the basic ideas or rules that explain how your talent transformation is manifested.?Now the underlying assumption of this is that you have developed a point of view that is the basis of your transformation.?I know that seems like a basic, but you would be amazed how many teams I work with who tell me they are engaged in a TA transformation and when pushed cannot articulate what they are transforming to, i.e., what their point of view or vision is for a transformed talent acquisition system.?It is often in this stage of generating design principles that we uncover that a team has identified that there is a problem and that they would like to change some elements of their TA ecosystem, but they have yet to do the work of imagining what they want a future state to be versus what it delivers or outcomes it will produce.?That’s ok, now is the time to do the work to define your transformational point of view and by so doing create clarity on what “rules” need to be in place to ensure everything that is developed in service of the vision is aligned and supports the future transformed state.?Now you take your what and translate it into your how.?This how is a clear statement that can be applied as a litmus test against every decision, action, and design you create going forward.?For example, if your talent acquisition transformative point of view is that relationships with candidates over time are essential to understanding how best to match them to future opportunities and be more likely to engage with you once you find that match even if it is many months in the future, then you are likely to have a design principle that states something like, candidates are engaged with in ways that make them feel like they have a relationship with the company where they are valued and heard. Now you have a clear litmus test you can apply to choices, decisions, and designs by simply asking does X engage candidates in ways that make them feel like they have a relationship with the company where they are valued and heard.?Yes or no?

To create your design principles you need to follow this simple recipe

1.?Have a vision for what your transformed state is (Your Transformative Point of View)

2.Create a set of “rules” that are you can apply to any decision, choice, or design that if followed will ensure you are acting in ways that are likely to create that transformed state (Your Design Principles)

Lesson 26: Design Principles Are Simple and Easy to Understand

One of the tenants of a design principle is that they are easy to understand.?Remember your goal here is to create “rules” that anyone of your team, your partners or even your stakeholders can use to help them make decisions and take actions that are aligned to your transformative vision even if you are not there in the room to guide them. Design principles are not a different way to sneak in excel sheets full of system requirements in a new format.?Design principles are the 3 – 5 big “rules” that apply to anything from a system, process, organization, or communication design.?They should reflect the major things that you believe must exist or be done to ensure your transformative vision is achieved.?Think of it this way.?When a stakeholder comes to you and says I hear you are transforming talent acquisition you respond with, “Yes we are.?We believe a transformed talent acquisition is >>>>> and is achieved by ensuring the following is applied to everything we do, >>>>>>>>>>.”?The believe statement is an elevator pitch of your transformative vision and your, is achieved by ensuring the following is applied, are your design principles.?I use this example so you can reflect on how these must inherently be simpler, and more encompassing than a specific list of system requirements in an RFP document, if they are to be understood and brief enough that your conversational partner does not die of boredom before you finish talking.?

Design principles are:

·?Opinionated - Effective principles offer a point of view.?

·?Unambiguous - Good design principles should be clear and exacting and have no double meaning.

·?Relevant - As much as possible, pair each principle with a common example.

Lesson 27: Design Principles Create Alignment

One of the benefits of generating design principles is that they help align everyone on the expected “how” of a transformation.?But it is not just in the sharing and socializing of the design principles once they are created that generates alignment it is in the creation of the design principles themselves that you can create both alignment and ownership of your transformative how.?Going through the process of unearthing and aligning a team’s personal perspective on what actions generate the intended transformative outcome you are going after is a cathartic process many teams overlook.?In all honesty in comparison to aligning on the need for transformation and even the vision for what a transformed TA ecosystem looks like in an organization, the aligning on “how” to do it or what actions need to happen is often the most acrimonious parts of the transformation journey. When you get to the point of agreeing on the big “how” statements that become design principles you are starting to get past the big glossy words of an imagined better tomorrow and starting to get at the heart of what must change in individuals’ daily actions.?This is difficult because the belief systems or mental models that define how we act are deeply ingrained and it’s hard to face up to the fact that to achieve a new reality we most likely will need to change behaviors, actions, and beliefs we have held for a very long time.?This is the moment when everyone involved in crafting the transformation must align not just on the desired end state but on the rules that will govern how everyone will act going forward.?It is not a part of the process to be rushed through or created in isolation and communicated down. It is critical this part of developing the transformation rules, design principles, is collaborative and inclusive.?As difficult as this phase may feel, I can speak from experience that once achieved it pays off in untold dividends and increases the impact and speed of your transformation by ensuring everyone is playing from the same sheet of music.

Lesson 28: Design Principles Are Measurable and Should Be Measured

Once you have a set of opinionated, unambiguous, and relevant design principles, you now have something to measure.?You can look at every step in your process, every system configuration decision, every process decision and ask, does X meet the spirit and intent of design principal Y??If the answer is yes, woohoo you have design success.?If the answer is no, then what do you need to do to fix it or if not possible to mitigate it. You can even create a design score to help guide and prioritize your efforts.?

Here is an example of how I score design principles.?The lower the design score the higher priority an element is to address.

We are reaching the end of this series on driving talent transformation. Just two more installments to go and we will have discussed all 35 of my lessons for driving transformation.?As I wrap up this series, I am excited to start hearing from you about the lessons you have learned during your transformation journey.?Please share in the comments. In the next installment, I am going to be talking about how the power of words to create momentum and transformation alignment.