You say you have no time for Design Thinking!

I finally understand why project managers, customers, and organizations refuse to use the Design Thinking approach. 

My job is to actively promote Design Thinking, and naturally, I have many discussions with project owners, customers, and management what the benefits are and why they shall use it.

Of course, I give them all the good arguments and reasonings why projects with Design Thinking “ALWAYS” are better than projects without Design Thinking. 

Nine out of ten responses are: 

• That is a great approach
• We understand the benefits
• This is certainly something we need to do

Moreover, then those same decision makers turn around and go back to business applying their old methods.

It feels a little bit like talking to a stone wall and only hearing your echo. When you stop talking the conversation is over, nothing happens, nothing has changed. So I start doubting if I have the right arguments to convince them. 

Today I am convinced rejecting Design Thinking is deeply rooted in organizations and decision makers.

What they have in common is they favor a reactive, passive approach and believe they need to reserve much time for unplanned and unforeseeable events that will inevitably occur. 

 The line of arguments for project planners applying the reactive, passive approach are:

• A project is something that takes place in the future.
• We cannot plan for every unforeseen event that might happen. 
• We reserve much time and resources for cleaning up the mess at the end.
• We do not need to waste time, in the beginning, let’s start we will find those problems later, and we will fix them when we find them.

A typical project estimation for a reactive, passive managed project would be

• 40% of productive project work 
• 20% of the blame game to ensure it is not your fault
• 40% of fixing problems that could not have been anticipated 

The underlying assumption is, extensive upfront planning is a waste of time because at the end of the day reality will prove your project plan wrong. 

It is obvious that if you firmly believe you cannot prepare for unexpected events, you cannot be convinced Design Thinking will help you. 

When I look at the figures above, I believe there is a little space for improvement. As you can see only 40% of the project effort is allocated to productive work, and the 60% are reserved for politics and fixing things. 

What can you do if you want your next project to be a successful project?

I would suggest you use Design Thinking and change your attitude from passive and pessimistic to active and optimistic.

You must be convinced you can actively plan the future, and even if you cannot foresee every single disturbance, you can at least anticipate the biggest problems and ensure you spend more time being productive than fixing problems you created on your own. 

You also need to understand that most problems in projects are self-made and not due to unexpected external events.

For example, lacking usability is no surprise if you have no usability expert on your team and a poor code is no surprise if your programmers do not have the right skills or you cannot complete your project because you have no milestones and time plan!

Here is my project plan for a pro active Design Thinking project

• 10% of Design Thinking (upfront and during the project)
• 60% of productive project work 
• 10% of the blame game to ensure it is not your fault
• 20% of fixing problems that could not have been anticipated 

The obvious benefit is you will increase your productivity by one-third from 40% to 60%. 

So finally, ask your self, the one, and most important question: 

           “Who want’s to be part of a failing project?”

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