srls-1 how to become a better manager

8/7/2019 SRLS-1 How to Become a Better Manager

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DESIGN THINKING: PROBLEM SOLVING

ow to Become a Betteranager ... By Thinkingike a Designer

esentation experts Nancy Duarte and Garr Reynolds help world-renownedecutives, politicians and thought leaders deliver stronger presentations.ere they reveal how to influence and persuade in a different way,regardlesswhether you ever have to communicate via PowerPoint.ERVIEW BY JIMMY GUTERMAN

W PEOPLE ARE more dedicatedmaking sure your presentations arer and persuasive than Nancy DuarteGarr Reynolds. Duarte, as CEO of

arte Design Inc., has helped shapee of the best-known recent presenons, among them Al Gore'snvenient Truth talk. Reynolds, anociate professor of management atnsai Gaidai University in Japan, isauthor of a popular and influentialg on presentation design and usedwork at Apple Inc. MIT Sloan Man-ment Review met Duarte andynolds at the most recent TED connce, where we started a conversationabout how to make better presentans - Duarte's slide:ology: The ArtScience of Creating Great Presenta-

(O'Reilly) and Reynolds'ssentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Pre-tation Design and Delivery (Newers) do that expertly - but ratherut how managers without any den responsibilities can do a better jobey understand how designers think.mment on this article or contact thehor at [email protected].

Lose the gimmicks and getto the point. AsNancy Duartewrites of neuroanatomistJill Bolte-Taylor's talk abouther own stroke at TED2008,"you don't need aton ofslides to create amemorablepresentation." What you doneed, more than anythingelse, isa story worth sharing.

With Presentation Zen, the title of his book andhis blog, it's not surprising that Garr Reynoldsadvocates large, striking images - and plenty of empty space.As Reynolds says, "Sometimes we're presented with so muchvisual and auditory stimulation in such ashort t ime that we endup understanding very l ittle and remembering even less."

THE LEADINGQUESTIONWhat canmanagerslearn fromdesigners?FINDINGS~Managers anddesigners have todo the samethings:Embrace restraints,take risks, questioneverything andmake sure thattools don't get inthe way of ideas.~Design conceptssuch as hierarchy,balance, contrast,clear space andharmony are justas relevant tomanagers.

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DESIGN THINKING: PROBLEM SOLVING

ON THE WEBNANCY DUARTEonwhy designingpresentations isa"dirty job."GARR REYNOLDScelebrates Shai Agassi'stalk at TED2009.Forthese links and more,go to sloanreview.mit.edu/linksl

What can managers learn from designers abouthow to attack a problem?Reynolds: Solving problems iswhat designers do.They solve problems or otherwise take the currentsituation and try to make it a better one. There arefour waysmanagers can learn from designers:

Embrace restraints. Designers are all about working with restraints (time, budget, location, materials).Identify your limitations and then create not the perfectsolution, but the best solution giventhe restraints.Ifyou can do itwith less,whyadd more?

Takea risk. Change does not happen without taking some chances. Designers are comfortable withthe notion that they might bewrong, but still they experiment and try new approaches.

Question everything. Answers are important, ofcourse, but first come the questions. Designers areused to asking myriad questions that may lead to theright question - which willlead to the right answer.

It's not about tools, it's about ideas. Designersfrom various fields spend a lot of time away fromnew technology tools, using pencil and paper tosketch out their ideas.

Duarte: The primary principles of design are eminently transferable to management. They aren'tjust visual guides but guides to a state of being thatmakes sense for institutions of all types.

Hierarchy brings order and meaning to messagesand organizations alike. Just as employees need toidentify who isleading, audiences need to come awayfrom your communications with a clear understanding of what's most important. If there's confusionabout who isin charge or the order ofsteps that mustbe taken, it can increase the chance of failure.

Balance isthe deliberate arrangement orweighting of elements on the page, stage, screen or in anorganization. That does not mean all things mustbe in balance all the time. It is often effective to jarpeople and thereby effect a change in behavior orthought. Be aware, though, that once somethinghas been thrown out of balance, it is the nature ofthe universe to find a new state of equilibrium.

Contrast focuses attention or highlights differences. Contrast requires context: We can presenta new vision ofthe future and contrast itwith the status quo, but wemust adequately explain the benefits,challenges and opportunities inherent in the change.

The value of contrast lies neither in the black nor thewhite, but in the tension between them.Clear space, oft maligned, isone of the most im

portant elements of design. We want to utilize allour resources, not "waste" space, time or talent byleaving them unused. But what happens when weuse things to 100% oftheir capacity? When a desk is100% covered with papers, it is no longer a usefulspace. When people are kept busy 100% of the time,no time isavailable for generating new ideas.

Harmony brings together hierarchy, balance,contrast and clear space in a meaningful way. Harmony happens when a vision is agreed upon,communicated well and acted on with conviction.

What are the most common problems a nondesigner manager is likely to stumble into whenhe or she is trying to think like a designer?Duarte: Often managers don't think of themselvesas designers, visual thinkers or storytellers. Theydon't know how to go about incorporating thesetools into their approach. They rely heavily on data

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Duarte calls AI Gore "the poster child for the transformativepowers of a great presentation." His Inconvenient Truth pre-sentation on climate change, which earned him anAcademyAward and aNobel Prize,turned him from stodgy to celebrity.Surrounding himself with powerful images and compellingdata freed him to share his passion and knowledge withoutthe stiffness for which he had been long ridiculed.

and information to tell the story and miss the op-portunity to create context and meaning. This canbe particularly inefficient because data on its ownleaves a lot of room for interpretation, which canspawn multiple cyclesand limit advancement. Thatcan mean discouragement, frustration and lack ofcreative inspiration for managers and their teams.

There are some methods managers can take fromdesigners to remove these mental barriers. Look formetaphors in your daily lives that you can apply to-ward illustrating and clarifying ideas. Personal storiescan also be incredibly effective in helping to createcontext and meaning. Personal stories are often tied topersonal values,and using these to frame aproblem orgoal can givethe team a sense of the values associatedwith a project and how to prioritize them.COURTESY OF DUARTE DESIGN INC.

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Reynolds: Managers may be afraid to embracesimplicity. In business we are all scared of beingcalled "too simple." People confuse simplicity,which is hard to achieve, with simplistic, which iseasy and usually lacking value. When in doubt, amanager may add a layer of complexity where it isnot needed just to be safe. It takes courage to besimple. And don't throwaway "good" in pursuit of"perfect." The simplest solution is often the best(though not always), yet the first idea you have isnot always the simplest. Be careful of going withthe first idea. Designers often create three to fivesolutions to the same problem. This is why it is

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IGN THINKING: PROBLEM SOLVING

nolds preaches restraint, simplicity, and naturalness. Present the important information,r it ina way that willcapture people's interest, and trust them to take away your mostrtant points. That way you can avoid what he calls "the scourge ofthe deck."

important not to develop one solution and godown that road only. If time and budget allow (bigifs), then try to create a few solutions independently and then come back together to share andcollaborate. Small teams are best. I'd rather havefive teams of four people than one team of 20.

Reprint 50410. Forordering information, seepage 8.Copyright Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009.All rights reserved.

Duarte: When conversations and meetings arehappening, pictures and structures are forming inmy head. During conversations, it's powerful toquickly sketch out what I "see" to confirm that Iunderstand the objective and ensure that the communication has been clear. By using this approach,I can communicate with people on multiple levelssimultaneously. This makes for more efficient andeffective meetings and helps to avoid deliveringsomething that doesn't meet the client's needs.When you use pictures, metaphors or stories, theideas start to move toward tangibility. They become clearer.We've come to realize over the past few years

that design-focused organizations do better financially than their less design-conscious competitors.It's not just because they "look" better. The word"design" is used to convey many ideas, and so itsuse evokes different thoughts in different people.Design is, of course, visual expression: logosand billboards and product form and function.But design is also crafting communications to answer audience needs in the most effective way.Thistype of "design thinking" - the adoption of a design methodology into an organization'scommunications platform - can motivate employees to pull together in times of difficulty, turnsupporters of a cause into evangelists or influenceconsumers to remain loyal to a brand even if there'sa less costly option.

customer's point of view. Designers learn prettyquickly that it is not about Me, it's about You.Good design is about seeing and communicat

ing clearly. But managers deal with human beings.Managers have to get the "hard" stuff right (the logical, the rational, the quantitative), but managerslead people, so the "soft" stuff is just as important.That's where empathy comes in.Another thing that design thinking has taught me

is to look for patterns. Good problem solvers becomeproficient at identifying patterns. Seeingand listeningcarefully are key aptitudes that are developed furtherwhen one begins to "think likea designer:'

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What have you learned from helping peopleperfect presentations that has made you a better manager?Reynolds: Design thinking has taught me to bemore empathetic, or at least to realize that empathyis not just a nice-to-have. It's an essential talent, underappreciated in business. Design thinking hastaught me to see things from the other's point ofview. Designers are good at seeing things from theclient's point of view, or more accurately, the

- Dizzy-Gil lespie

It's taken me all myIife to learn whatnot to play."

MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW SUMMER 2009 COURTESY OF GARR REYNOLDS


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srls-1 how to become a better manager

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