Change The Way You Solve Problems Using Design Thinking

when you approach a problem to solve do you ever wonder if there's a better way to get to the solution stick around to learn how design thinking can help start it up so what is design thinking anyway let's take herbert simon the american economist and something he suggested in the late 1960s his point of view was design can be a way of thinking that design is nothing more than moving from an undesirable situation to a desirable one you design every day from the clothes you choose to the food you eat an undesirable situation is i'm

hungry a desirable one i'm fed so you're doing this every day just at different levels that is the power of design thinking now what design thinking asks you to do is look at all these problems as interconnected systems to come to a more elegant solution now design thinking is essential to problem solving for two really big reasons one it puts people first in the problem-solving journey the closer you stay to the person and their stories the better the solution will be number two design thinking provides a repeatable process that leads almost virtually to successful solutions

and there are studies to show this from stanford university to fortune 500 companies like pepsico now what kind of problems can design thinking solve simply put any you can look at anything from a business problem to a personal problem i use it to help my customers solve communication strategies but i also help my daughter communicate more effectively with her peers the process is the same the content is the only thing that differs and when you see the universality of this it becomes such a powerful tool okay so how does this work let me help you

by having you take a look at this graphic this is called the problem tree analysis now what you see here the center of the trunk is the problem and as you look upward you see all the visible effects of this problem but if you look down below there are all the different causes now like in real life the challenge is really getting to the root causes you can't see what's underneath and what design thinking helps you to do is get to the heart get to the root of that potential problem and what design thinking provides

is the ability to question do i have everything i need to solve this problem so let's make this real the washington monument in washington dc is a great example there's a group that's responsible for maintaining the monument and what they saw was that it was crumbling little bits and pieces were actually coming off the monument now the group responsible for maintaining the large monument felt that it was the chemicals in their cleaning process that was creating the deterioration but one lonely design thinker asked why are we so aggressive with the cleaning process to which most

replied it's because of the pigeon poop why are pigeons pooping there it's an obelisk there's really no place for a bird to sit let alone poop and the group replied it's because they're there for the spiders pigeons love to eat spiders okay well why are spiders there right there's a lot of foot traffic you know that's not a safe place for spiders well spiders are coming there because of moths moths are a delicacy to spiders so they're willing to risk their lives to have that moth okay well why are the moths there and the group

replied well because of the lights they turn on the lights an hour before dusk to which the design thinker pointed out why don't we just turn off the lights so over the next six weeks the group tested this root cause out and what they found was that there was an 85 reduction in moths and which led to less spiders which led to less birds and their poop and a wonderful byproduct is that they were able to spend less money on the cleaning and maintenance process so the design thinking is a powerful way to reframe and

get to the root of the real problem let me share a little bit of my experience i was invited to a silicon valley company a few years ago to help them with a growth problem at the time the company was experiencing a 10x growth not a bad problem to have but what was happening is all these top sellers were trying to respond to these customers and prospects but were being dragged down by administrative work like contracts and sows and that type of thing and it wasn't that the team was above doing the work they just

couldn't scale fast enough and even if they did hire people the onboarding process was just too long in order to really effectively help their clients so when i entered the building and met their stakeholders they were already pre-diagnosed as knowing the problem and the solution they said eric the issue is we need a new piece of software a new platform would just fix everything and they could go back to selling before i even think about solving the problem i asked three questions of my clients first do we know this is true if you make decisions

of this type or do this type of research what does that look like what i'm trying to unearth are any biases or mental models helps me get into the mind to figure out what they've done in the past number two who else believes it's true if you've done research what do the researchers say is there context that needs to be said and so we want to get these people in the room talking and exploring lastly who makes the final decision even if you all agree that the problem is what it is you have to figure

out are you tackling it the same way are you coming at the problem from the same approach if not it creates misalignment which creates some real red flags design thinking helps surface that so what did i just learn well asking questions and asking questions again is a great start to using the design thinking approach but most importantly you need to keep the person at the center of the conversation how are we solving for other human problems but we also want to reveal any biases or mental models that might get in the way of an elegant

solution when you keep the human front and center of the problem-solving journey you will come to elegant solutions that makes them raving fans number two design thinking is a repeatable process and when you use methods like the problem tree analysis it helps build a universal language to have others join in your problem solving journey number three design thinking is about asking questions to get to the root causes i want you to put this to use today download the problem tree analysis template in the description below get teams together your friends to figure out what you

could do using the problem tree analysis to learn more check out our links to powerful design thinking books and articles across the internet we think you'll find these very useful in jump starting your design thinking [Music] process