battling the demons of complexity: design thinking in a business context

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F e at u r e

Scorecards, dashboards, war rooms—all help manage complexity, but none of them takes into account the unique needs of a particular business or project. A general model can create a more agile mindset.

Matt Mayfield, Visiting Professor, Illinois Institute of Technology, Institute of Design

19© 2012 The Design Management Institute

understanding that helps us get past the myriad of specifics to the essence of the situation. Complexity is easier to confront when you know what matters.

Design (and some related fields) creates this type of deep insight all the time. Through methods of abstraction, problem redefinition, reflection, and rapid exploration, design is a constant examination and interpretation of what matters. Almost ironically, what

The typical approach toward managing this complexity is to gather more and more precise data, with the belief that more precision equals more knowledge. Unfortunately, complex problems don’t always scale this way. Complexity is fraught with challenges of ambiguity, data over-load, interdependencies, and masked consequences that are not resolved through precision alone. What we are really looking for is insight—the deep

As markets continue to evolve more quickly and become more interdepen-dent, many aspects of business and design are growing more complex. Market dynamics, including con-sumer adoption and multiple simulta-neous business models, are elevating many heretofore straightforward issues of new business development, manufacturing optimization, and R&D investments into significant business challenges.

Battling the Demons of Complexity: Design Thinking in a Business Context by Matt Mayfield with Miguel Martinez, Catherine Pansard, Rebecca Serr, Joe Shields, and Sally Wong

Solutions to Complexity

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business change for some portions of the organization (sales, supply chain, and so on) and not others.

Executive dashboards: Business at a glance

Executive dashboards consolidate key performance indicators into a single visual display that offers an at-a-glance window into overall business performance. The most effective dash-boards are good at emphasizing criti-cal data, while still providing enough

context to draw a meaningful assessment. In practice, how-ever, the challenge of summa-rizing raw data into a handful of simple, understandable metrics masks subtle shifts in markets de-emphasizing

long-term strategic issues in favor of today’s performance. Leaders looking to dashboards to help guide the direc-tion of the firm are then forced to constantly question and notice what is “not” being tracked.

Scenario planning: Exploring what-ifs

Scenario planning attempts to examine the effects of a wide range of possibilities, especially those that might be most easily overlooked or ignored. It creates the conditions under which different elements and stakeholders of a scenario (organiza-tions, customers, markets, products, regulators, and so on) might interact,

Some quintessential business tools

This problem of finding deep insight for business is not new. For decades, executives have encouraged their teams to be strategic and smart about their choices. In this sense, they want their teams to be thoughtful, obser-vant, and reflective about the changes and choices in their business. Many processes have been created to address this desire. Examining a small set of these gives us a landscape of successes and weaknesses to learn from.

Scorecards: Tracking metrics

Developed in the late ’80s, the Bal-anced Scorecard bridges the gap between short-term financial mea-sures and long-term strategic plan-ning. In practice, the implementation of a scorecard involves translating the strategic vision into targeted metrics, adapting strategic objectives into spe-cific short-term activities, and creating a mechanism for review to better align strategy with the activities that sup-port it. The downside is that an effort to synchronize an entire organization’s goals with specific metrics can have a paralyzing effect as conditions of the

many still regard as a “creative” (that is, fuzzy and undisciplined) activity can provide a better view into handling complexity than can many traditional analytic approaches.

To explore this idea, a leading consumer packaged-goods com-pany wrestling with the increasing complexity in its global markets recently worked with the IIT Insti-tute of Design to explore how design methods could be leveraged on the operations side of its business. Gener-ally seen as the antithesis of creative thinking, operations is primarily concerned with optimization and predict-ability of production output. The problem, however, is that focusing solely on op-timization can hinder agility and fore-sight within complex environments. Opportunities that might not be seen as viable or important for today’s op-erations might become the exact ones that are essential in the future.

The project, which was carried out with a small group of talented graduate students, focused on identi-fying tools and techniques that opera-tions leaders can use to broaden their understanding and create a richer foundation of insight into what mat-ters. The remainder of this paper is a portion of what we found and how it can be used to battle complexity.

For decades, executives have encouraged their teams to be strategic

and smart about their choices.

Batt l ing the Demons of Complexit y : Design think ing in a Business Contex t

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documented and practiced (surgical wards, airplane cockpits). Beyond life-threatening situations, though, it is unclear which activities deserve such investment and which are too highly varied to benefit.

One size does not fit all

Looking at all these methods, we see that the approaches range from ad hoc adaptive tools to continuous, day-to-day methods, and they either try to reduce the complexity or step back and see it in context (Figure 1 on next page). Figure 1 shows their relative positions, with war rooms and scenarios leaning toward more broad and holistic planning for the future, as opposed to checklists, dash-boards, and scorecards, which tend to be more about continuous tracking of the present.

All these methods have some merit, but as discussed, they also have significant shortcomings. And many more variations exist in the world of business, all promising a new angle on cutting through complexity and revealing the path toward insightful decisions and effective management. Unfortunately, these promises tend to be like fad diets. Each solution is pre-packaged and effective to a degree, but none of them really helps us better understand the underlying forces involved. Also, while many companies

tion are kept current. The needs of the topics under investigation change over time, and it often seems that the effort in collecting, updating, or restructur-ing the information might not return clear or substantial results. In a self-fulfilling prophecy, war rooms often devolve into reference libraries when the initial crisis wanes, rather than remaining active support tools as the business manages its ups and downs.

Checklists: Compensating our shortcomings

Originally created for airplane pilots, checklists are essentially well-crafted to-do lists that standardize a process. They are a useful aid in compensat-ing for the natural limits of human memory and attention, by helping to recall the mundane tasks that are easily overlooked, as well as making explicit the minimum, expected steps in a complex process. Checklists are now widely used, and to great effect, in aviation safety, surgery protocols, qual-ity assurance of software engineering, and risk management, among others.

Atul Gawande notes in his book The Checklist Manifesto that the checklist itself needs to be tested and rigorously iterated to ensure that only critical items are covered; otherwise, it may become a hindrance. Checklists work best in situations in which pro-cedures are made routine or are well-

and is used to craft compelling and memorable narratives around what-if and what-could-be.

A scenario is not so much a prediction of the future as it is a disci-plined way to challenge the prevailing mindset. However, in practice, it is difficult for many businesses faced with very little time and resources to sit back and reflect on the larger context they are working in. Many times, the challenges to consider can feel random, making it difficult to rationalize precious time spent in responding to conditions that may never exist. Thus, scenario planning is often left to small, isolated teams and done on an ad-hoc basis.

War rooms: A thinking space that brings it all together

War rooms are often considered to be either crisis centers where dozens of people work hurriedly in the midst of workstations and monitors, or private executive meeting rooms where sensi-tive decisions about human resources and project strategy are made. The war room is thus a thinking space stocked with tools that support managing and sharing information, as well as a place that supports other collaborative work, such as generating and synthesizing ideas.

In practice, the key to a successful war room is that it and its informa-


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experience similar complexity issues, each firm is unique. The makeup of its workforce, its combined experi-ences, its culture, and its goals make it difficult to fully exploit a pre-defined, off-the-shelf solution.

Beyond silver bullets and toward a general model

Given the unique situations each company faces, it seems that rather than trying to find a pre-defined, uni-versal, fail-proof recipe, we should be looking to articulate a general model that can be used as a guide to sup-port each company’s own culture and situations, while improving the overall aim of initiatives like the ones above.

We can then begin to see a more com-plete picture of the critical activities necessary to generate better insight within complex environments. Our general model resolves into four core activities that, when well-supported, create the agile mindset required to confront complexity (Figure 2).

Keeping up to date

The most obvious and often the main activity for running a company is tracking the state of the company’s processes. Are initiatives on track? Numbers coming in as expected? This is about staying on top of prog-ress as it happens and monitoring critical metrics.

Maintaining a shared understanding

This activity creates a shared context from which typical status updates derive meaning. The deeper and richer this context, the more leaders can understand the meaning of change in a business or marketplace. And main-taining this context across groups of leaders from different domains in the organization creates the foundation for alignment, agility, and responsiveness.

Reducing blind spots

This activity is about diligently exam-ining assumptions. It can help combat our natural inclination to convert new information into explanations that are convenient rather than insightful. It is important to be aware not only that these assumptions exist, but also that ignoring them leaves the company

adaptive

continuous

reductionist

holistic

warrooms

dashboards

checklists

scenarios

scorecards

planning

managing

Figure 1. There are many approaches to managing complexity, ranging from holistic planning to day-to-day management; none, however, is the silver bullet.

Separating issues fromsolutions

Maintaininga shared

understanding

Reducingblindspots

Keeping up to date

Figure 2. A general model of key activities. While all are equally useful, con-ducting them in such as way as to “separate issues from solutions” will greatly enhance the ability to confront complexity.


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open to surprises over time that may give others a competitive advantage. Done well, this activity is where many of the sparks of innovation occur.

Separating issues from solutions

The final, and probably most impor-tant, activity is the effort of differenti-ating among solutions and the issues they are trying to address. In complex environments, this can be especially difficult, as issues are often multifac-eted and assumed to be understood by all. Central to this activity, beyond diligence, are reflection and conjec-ture to expose and create a shared understanding.

The diagram in Figure 2 illus-trates that these activities relate to each other and are mostly done in parallel, as one would expect. Howev-er, it is important to notice that “sepa-rating issues from solutions” is greatly enhanced when fed equally from the other activities of “keeping up to date,” “maintaining a shared understand-ing,” and “reducing blind spots.” The specific mechanism to conduct these activities is up to the organization and its particular situation. Next, we will review some prototypes of how this can be done.

using the model in practice

As part of our research process, the team at the IIT Institute of Design

(with experience in architecture, technology, and information design) worked to envision ways this model can be applied to test its robustness and to further explore its value as a guide for organizations wrestling with complexity.

Given that the nature of this topic is heavily influenced by people’s behaviors, the students used behavior-al prototypes (low-fidelity, low-tech) where the objects involved are not as important as how people use them. This maximized our opportunity to learn and to avoid being seduced by the promises of futuristic technologi-cal solutions. The following explora-tions are organized by our general activity model, but naturally have fuzzy and overlapping boundaries.

Keeping up to date: Interactive context map

Imagining a scenario in which a company tries to keep track of manu-facturing facilities around the globe, we built a physical map of the world and covered it in a clear film that lets people annotate the map with dry-erase markers.

On top of the map is a grid of attach points on which hangs (in many configurations) a set of iPad tablets (Figure 3). These become “windows” into different facilities and allow someone to look into live data on types of products, efficiencies, and broader cultural/national issues. The tablets can be used to compare and contrast facilities at different times for different product runs, and so on. The

Figure 3. Interactive context maps make it possible to compare and contrast facilities at different times for different product runs, and so on. The iPad tablets become windows into these facilities.


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technologies, types of products, sup-ply, and operator flow. The results use Lego building blocks to provide a bird’s-eye view of each facility, without getting caught up in the details often found in traditional 3-D architectural models. Some might argue that this approach could be accomplished more easily with purely digital representations, but we found the physical tangibility and familiar-ity of the toy blocks allow for greater play, and thus an easier jump to what-if observations.

This exploration showed that having a common model that can be made persistent, while still adapt-able, provides a strong grounding that allows all members of a team to remain on the same page, so to speak.

of flexibility and novelty to keep teams engaged with the content.

Maintaining a shared understanding: Physical models

This prototype (Figure 4) was built to explore how to model a business system that encourages what-if con-siderations, and to do it in a way that would allow non-experts to modify it during discussions. We were look-ing to create a systematized way to help people from different disciplines and perspectives to understand each other’s views.

Again using the scenario of a company with several manufacturing facilities, we built a series of three-dimensional diagrams of each factory to capture the various assembly-line

tablets are detachable so that people who are interested in a deeper con-versation can essentially peel one or more off the wall and move to a more comfortable spot without leaving the content behind.

With this prototype, we wanted to explore the balance between breadth and depth of information. We also looked at supporting a group discussion and allowing for indi-vidual reflection. We wanted to find a solution that embraced information persistence without becoming too cumbersome to maintain, one that provides a stable orientation that also allows users to interact and modify the content as needed.

We learned that a mix of physical and digital information helps to keep the tool approachable and easily mod-ified while also keeping the details fresh and up to date. A world map is an obvious way to provide a skeleton for information to hang on, but other models could work equally well—a product development pipeline, for example. And being able to stand back and take it all in, then to physically ap-proach it for more detail, is a natural behavior. From this exploration, the ability to easily annotate and layer comments on the information pre-sented is essential. The combination of physical, digital, prepared, and on-the-fly information supports a wealth

Figure 4. These three-dimensional diagrams capture assembly-line technologies, types of products, supply, and operator flow without getting caught up in the details often found in traditional 3-D architectural models.


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the impact of political instability on import tariffs and how that may affect short- and long-term supply-chain options). Efficiently distributing and aggregating these discussions al-lows the leadership team to be more informed about the nuances of larger trends and the teams under them to be more aligned around what the business is facing.

A digital version of this approach is most likely more efficient to man-age; but what matters is the structure of the observations and responses, and being sure to effectively capture the discussions they prompt.

Separating options from solutions: Problem nooks

Problem-solving is most often a non-linear act. It leverages the con-nections thinkers make among issues, options, and constraints. A problem nook (Figure 6 on next page) can be thought of as a portable mini war room—a container of sorts that a small team can gather around and ag-gregate relevant information in what-ever way is useful for the discussion. The panels are covered in a film that the user can write on with dry-erase markers, making it essentially a mov-able whiteboard. The flip-out bins at the bottom hold other physical items. When needed, additional panels pull out as writable or posting surfaces,

trained in the formal method.We built a physical binder of

structured forms that guided senior management to articulate the trends and external factors they thought most influential to their business (in some businesses, this is consid-ered a fact pack). We then designed response forms that could be distrib-uted to teams as a way to guide and aggregate reactions and implications for the business.

Important to this exploration was capturing responses. A simple but thoughtful template can educate teams on how to think about external factors in a productive way, along with encouraging them to think through the strategic level to the tactical levels of their observations (for example,

The tangibility of a physical model is less abstract and easier for a team to gather around; the object itself remains the center of the discussion, and team members can interact with it rather than be forced to remember it or reference it tangentially.

Reducing blind spots: Reflection in a box

Continuing our manufacturing example, we wanted to explore how a leadership team could get a fresh view of its business. Leaning heavily on scenario-based planning method-ology, we created a kit of templates and discussion guides (Figure 5) that a team could use as a way to make scenario-based planning more ac-cessible and actionable for those not

Figure 5. A kit of templates and discussion guides to make scenario-based planning more accessible and actionable for those not trained in the formal method.


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increasing insightfulness. Nonethe-less, they have limitations and, in our exploration of new concepts, we attempted to learn from these limita-tions. In doing so, we identified a gen-eral model to help manage complexity, along with some ideas on how these activities could manifest themselves in an organization.

Adopting this model will increase an organization’s ability to reach beyond data crunching toward more-meaningful interpretation. When harnessed by an effective organization, the model can lead a team to develop specific ways to identify what matters and with that manage the complexity they are facing. It is scalable to any size of organization and, when used well, can help even the most over-burdened to effectively confront the complexities of its business. n Reprint #12232MAY18

and an integrated projector helps share digital information alongside the physical notes. When not in use, the box can easily be collapsed and stored away.

This prototype was developed to leverage the way physical space can help us focus without losing periph-eral views of information. Keeping the information ever-present in a physical space avoids creating yet another filing cabinet; instead, we gain a work zone that keeps informa-tion in front of our faces, as well as a space in which to capture the creative sparks. And when an organization uses multiple nooks, it becomes easier for others to “drop in” on a problem and see progress or contribute.

Conclusion

Dealing with complexity in a busi-ness context requires more than just better data. Discussion, conjecture, and reflection all contribute to deeper insights into current and potential situations. Having this foundation of understanding allows a team to focus on what matters, and therefore to be more confident and creative in han-dling complex problems in ways that provide competitive advantage.

Well-established methods, like balanced scorecards and scenario planning, succeed largely because they help us manage our natural limitations. They have provided good frameworks to help us understand what is important in a tool aimed at

Figure 6. The problem nook is where a small team can gather around and aggregate relevant informa-tion to facilitate discussions.

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