Building the Team

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From the course by Northwestern University

Leadership Through Design Innovation

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Northwestern University

Leadership Through Design Innovation

ratings

Course 5 of 6 in the Specialization Organizational Leadership

Today’s workplace calls for a new style of leadership to embolden and accelerate innovation. Design offers a novel way to discover market opportunities, experiment to validate concepts and mitigate risk, and deliver value to all stakeholders. This course offers hands-on experience applying human-centered design process to real-world challenges, and requires you to explore the world around you. Learn how to engage with end users, effectively frame problems, identify potential solutions, and build prototypes to test assumptions and learn what works (and doesn’t). Then dive into a range of ways large and small to bring design innovation into your organization.

From the lesson

Leading Design Innovation

How do you bring design innovation to your organization and sustain it over time? In this module we will learn theory and practical techniques to help you lead an organization that routinely produces innovative products, services, and systems.

Designing your own Organization4:41

Communicating about Design & Innovation5:37

Building the Team5:41

Creating Space for Design & Innovation4:44

ROI for Innovation4:04

Conclusion to Course 5 with Dean Blount1:30

Meet the Instructors

Elizabeth Gerber
Associate Professor, Co-director of the Research Cluster at the Segal Design Institute
McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science (Segal Design Institute), School of Communication, Kellogg School of Management (by courtesy), School of Education and Social Policy (by courtesy)
Pam Daniels
Clinical Assistant Professor, Design Innovator in Residence
McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (Segal Design Institute)
Ed Colgate
Allen and Johnnie Breed University Design Professor, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Director of the Engineering Design and Innovation Masters Program at the Segal Design Institute
McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science
Greg Holderfield
Pentair - D. Eugene and Bonnie L. Nugent Clinical Associate Professor of Design, Director of the Segal Design Institute, Co-Director of the MMM Program
McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science (Segal Design Institute)

[MUSIC]

In the previous video we learned how to effectively communicate about design

innovation.

Once you've won the hearts and minds of your colleagues,

the next question is how do you build and

sustain your team to support design innovation in your organization?

In this video we explore the ABCs of building and sustaining your team.

Let's start with A, which stands for assessment, but what does that mean?

Start by understanding your organization's current capacity to innovate.

In a six year study to uncover the breadth of skills of innovators researchers

have identified five discovery skills that distinguish most innovators.

Associating, questioning, observing, experimenting, and brokering.

They found that innovators spend 50% more time on these discovery activities

than new people with no track record for innovation.

As a leader you'll want to assess who has these skills in your organization.

Let's talk about each one a little more.

The first discovery skill is associating, or the ability to successfully connect

seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas from different fields.

Innovative companies do well when capitalizing on the divergent associations

of their employees.

The second discovery skill is questioning.

Design innovators question the statues quo.

They start sentences with what if, why not, and how might we?

Without panicking, or simply, settling for one alternative or the other,

they're able to produce a synthesis that is superior to either opposing idea.

The third critical skill, is observing.

Design innovators look closely at the world around them,

trying to understand not just what people are doing but why they are doing it.

The fourth skill is experimentation.

Design innovators are biased towards action.

When they develop hunches,

they test them by playing around with the system, to see if they are right or wrong.

The fifth skill is knowledge brokering.

Design innovators develop relationships with many different groups of people

who know different things.

This makes it possible for them to act as a connector, sharing knowledge and

fostering collaboration between the different groups.

Now that you know the skills to look out for,

how do you understand that someone has these skills?

As you might imagine, these are not the type of skills that you can gather from

just looking at a resume, or asking people whether or not they have them.

Rather you must observe individuals performing these skills

within the company.

Consider how they hire design innovators at Facebook.

They don't ask them theoretical questions, rather they give candidates a real problem

that the company is facing, and ask them to solve it with an existing team.

To be sure, it takes effort to derive the problem and

coordinate the effort to the team, but the assessment of the skills is much better.

Going back to our ABCs, B stands for build the skills.

We believe, while discovery skills may be innate to some, for

others they can be developed and strengthened through practice.

Your job as a leader is to build these skills in your employees.

To foster creative association, ask your team to use metaphors to explore problems.

For example, in 1941, Velcro was infamously developed by George de

Menstral, a Swiss engineer, who went for a walk in the woods.

And wondered if the burrs that clung to his pants and

dog could be turned into something useful.

Encourage your team to integrate experiences across their life experiences.

To encourage your team to practice their questioning skills,

you simply need to ask them to ask why and why not more often.

The more questions they ask that both impose and eliminate constraints,

the more likely they are to see a problem from a different angle.

Scott Cook founded Quicken Financial software when he saw his wife struggle to

keep track of their finances, and asked, why can't it be easier?

When Cook answered this question, he grabbed 50% of the market for

financial software.

To sharpen the observational skills of your team, encourage them to watch how

customers experience your product or service in their natural environment.

Danny Grossman, who founded Wild Planet Toys, always visited toy stores on his

travels and encouraged his employees to do so as well.

They were always looking for what was different than what they expected.

Finally, to sharpen experimentation skills,

encourage your employees to explore new ways of doing things.

At Google, they encourage all of their employees, from engineering to

human resources, to experiment with new ways of solving the company's challenges.

They ask that they share learnings about what did and

did not work, rather than asking permission to try each new thing.

Now that you know how to assess and build your team,

let's talk about the C in the ABCs of building and sustaining design innovation.

Cultivate your team, design innovation is a team sport.

The myth of the lone genius having lightbulbs appear above her head

is an outdated image.

Design innovation teams are characterized by a shared commitment to a purpose.

And the best design innovation teams invest time and

effort, translating their shared purpose into specific performance goals.

Every team member contributes and is accountable with, and to, his or

her teammates.

A team strives to a greater performance than

any one of its members could achieve alone.

Because design innovation work requires going against the status quo and

persisting in the face of uncertainty,

working in teams makes the process more tolerable, even enjoyable.

Design innovation teams are also characterized by friendships

outside of work.

Teams that get together with each other informally, away from their workstations

perform better as teams and report increased employee satisfaction.

For example, Amazon's office features a large community kitchen where employees

cannot only grab lunch but also hang out, play games, and take a break together.

In this video we discuss the ABCs of building and

sustaining your team to support design innovation in your organization.

Next, we're going to address creating the appropriate physical space to foster

design innovation.

[MUSIC]

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