Who Should Lead Design Thinking in HR?
Nicole Dessain ????????
Human Resources Executive | Talent Management | Employee Experience | Learning & Leadership Development | Talent Acquisition | Adjunct Faculty @ Northwestern University | ex-Accenture
“In your experience have you seen any success stories that came from outsiders or experts in design from the business pushing in to tackle the people practice problems vs HR professionals applying the techniques of design? I wonder if in addition to leadership buy-in, one solution is getting outsiders to take on more of a lead with organizational issues that seem like they belong in HR, but really require broader thinking and scope. I feel like this happens in larger organizations often providing stretch/growth opportunities for people, but not as much in smaller organizations,”
wonders newsletter reader Keli.
As I started to reflect on Keli’s question, I realized how biased I am in my own conviction that HR should build design thinking skills and capability to enhance the employee experience and refocus the function on the “human” factor. A good reminder how important reflection is…
So, I sat down and brainstormed pros and cons for both, HR leading design thinking in the people space, and designers leading the work. Here is where I landed:?
HR Leading Design Thinking
Pros
Cons
What resonates? What doesn’t? What did I miss?
?
Designers Leading Design Thinking
领英推荐
Pros
The points that Keli made in her comments resonate with me here:
Cons
What resonates? What doesn’t? What did I miss?
?
MY CONCLUSION
In an ideal world, I would have a designer and an HR professional co-lead the project to benefit from both perspectives and complimentary expertise. This is how I discovered design thinking six years ago. During an HR related client project, I was introduced to their Innovation Lab, and we ended up co-creating the experience. That’s when I decided to become a student of the framework and to explore its potential for our function.
I am so curious: What do you, my dear newsletter subscribers, think? What are success stories for either scenario that you can share?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The Design Thinking for HR newsletter is a biweekly LinkedIn newsletter designed to inspire HR professionals to experiment with the design thinking framework. The newsletter is curated by?Nicole Dessain who is an employee experience consultant, design thinking workshop facilitator, and Northwestern University instructor. Nicole is the host of the?Talent Tales
HR Leader
3 年So first, thanks, Nicole, for this and your on-going conversations on design thinking and HR. A really good voice and topic. Very helpful (well, and needed). All three, I think, is the right answer. Outside (the enterprise and the function) brings perspective and breadth of vision (and skills and experience). Inside brings necessary detailed understanding of the opportunity to be captured and factors to be considered. HR and Business creates the balance of customer needs, wants and what is reasonable, practical and appropriate to do/deliver. The mix helps build the skills, the track record and ability to deliver at speed. If all this seems "more than", I would suggest revisiting the value needed/wanted/to be delivered.
Senior Research Designer
3 年I am so happy to have just found you and subscribed. What a great and timely article! I have been in the design thinking space as a designer for 15 years, and joined an HR team a month ago. So I am bringing that "designer" perspective into the HR culture. So much of your article resonates with my (limited) experience so far. I was particularly struck by the con for designers designing - "Designers tend to be solely focused on solving user pain points. This focus might lack systems view and/or can be misaligned to business outcomes." I am hopeful there is a way to start with BOTH user pain points AND business outcome being important, and then continually be weighing them equally. Just as you suggest - trying to take the best of both worlds and work together. I look forward to following you as i try! Thank you!
Business Project Manager ? Prosci Certified Change Practitioner ??? MS in Industrial/Organizational Psychology, PSM, PHR
3 年Thank you for featuring my comment!? Wonderful to hear about your co-creation experience, which makes perfect sense. HR teaming up with designers who are interested in our problem space, seems like a great way to address the true pain points and get to a win. One of your cons resonated with me “Designers might lack an understanding of how to adjust design thinking methods to an HR and internal audience.” I can see this challenge being addressed with more pilots similar to what you experienced. HR’s biggest problems are likely everyone’s problems at work. Taking those initial steps to co-lead on projects could be a way for Designers to start to gain that understanding and at the same time a co-leader in HR can facilitate and translate things to the HR audience.? Maybe we need more people in general who are hungry for improvements at work to tackle these needs. There are lots of complexities involved, but with the right amount of time, resources and psychological safety provided, we can empower Designers to poke holes, tinker, critique and provide further positive disruption into how we approach HR. We also need more leaders like you at the intersection of Design and HR to share success stories. And we need Designers to share their perspective of the impact made by solving employee experience problems.
Enabling gamechanger solutions with AI | Baryons (co-founder)
3 年the more inclusive we can be to create brave spaces using DT the better! teaming on design leadership is an amazing opportunity to do that... I like the perspective you are stating very much Nicole!
Equity-Centered People & Culture Consultant & Leadership Coach Helping Organizations Advance And Retain Senior Leaders | Instructor, Northwestern MSLOC | Host, The Intersection Podcast
3 年This is very helpful and I like the recommendation to co-facilitate. That way, you get the best of both worlds. You listed this as a "pro" for HR designers but sometimes employees feel less inclined to share confidential information with HR. It depends on the organization and the HR team but it is something to keep in mind.