"Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first."
—Italian proverb

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Insight comes from some strange places, often at unexpected moments. A whimsical message that glorifies instant culinary gratification may seem an unlikely source for hard-nosed business wisdom, but these six words point to an attitude that could transform virtually any bottom line.

Consider: Product designers (who are on intimate terms with daily uncertainty) don’t necessarily start their process by looking at where they are. Rather, they look at where they want to be and figure out a way to get there. This is the essence of what is called design thinking. Rather than simply focusing on fixing the past, it envisions the future and then designs the organizations, the processes and the products that will lead a company into manifesting that future.

The 8 Attributes of Design Thinking

Pie in the sky? Hardly. It’s simple design basics. In fact, this ability (and willingness) to view time holistically rather than linearly is one of eight essential attributes that characterize design thinking. The others include: imagination; 3D modeling; a facility with complex problems; the inclination to develop multiple solutions; making use of unstructured data to arrive at unexpected connections and potential breakthroughs; a consistent focus on the customer end use; and the recognition that emotion plays an important part in visioning, creative problem-solving and customer buy-in.

Of course, any one of these attributes—or a combination of them—can be and are used on a daily basis. But it’s only through the specific application of design leadership that all eight are integrated throughout the process. When this occurs, the power to adapt to and instigate change is transformative.

The 4 Keys of Design Leadership

So how does a leader adopt design leadership techniques? There are four key elements in design leadership: 1) An awareness of the attributes of design thinking and an appreciation of their value; 2) Building teams and leadership groups with the skills for design thinking; 3) Providing an environment that fosters and encourages design thinking and the application of its principles; and 4) Inspiring teams to practice design thinking on a regular basis.

Historically, design thinking and design leadership have been associated with architects, product developers and graphic designers. Partly for this reason, there’s a tendency to think that it has to do with making things look nice. Certainly that has its place, but design thinking goes far beyond mere visual appeal in making profound connections and stimulating substantive change.

Let’s look more closely at holistic time since this is one of the attributes that most clearly differentiate design thinking. Holistic time allows design thinkers to begin anywhere along the continuum and work their way backward or forward. As with product developers, the design process frequently starts from the future and works its way back to the present. It envisions what could be and designs a way to make it so.

What can we imagine? What will it look like? How do we get there? What are the roadblocks? Who are the stakeholders?

This fundamentally different orientation approaches time not as a strictly linear progression but as a holistic process of unfolding potential. It recognizes that sometimes the most effective way of influencing that unfolding is to break out of the mentality that a meal begins with appetizers, proceeds to the entrée and ends with dessert. Sometimes the best way to inspire, motivate and manifest the desired outcome is to start with the dessert.

Traditionally, most business leaders have used judgment thinking. It’s logical, sequential, grounded in the facts at hand, and focused primarily on fixing present problems based on past experience and anticipation of future needs. And it works. In fact, for businesses that are process driven, that rely on analysis of stable data and that do a lot of number crunching, judgment thinking remains a highly effective approach.

However, in our complex and rapidly changing marketplace, that logical, sequential thinking can be too slow on its own. It needs to be supported by a new agility, adaptability and creativity—exactly the qualities that design thinking brings to the table and to the boardroom.

Designers, with their visual orientation, are adept at visioning and thinking “outside the box,” outside the linear chronological sequence, and coming up with a startling solution—sometimes many of them—to a problem that has resisted all previous attempts to make sense of its unclear boundaries, multiple stakeholders and mind-boggling vagaries.

If You Can See It, You Can Solve It

The power of visual tools is often overlooked. Yet their importance both in solution developing and in mission-critical problem finding cannot be overstated. Typically, revelatory “ah-ha” moments come when we see things differently. Visual methods and 3D models are invaluable for their ability to show multiple pieces of information and their relationships all at one time. The lessons, the warnings, and the breakthroughs that such a view can reveal—quickly—are a huge value added in the savings of time and resources. This visual approach is a hallmark of design thinking and design leadership.

The applications (and implications) for visual tools are virtually limitless. For example, in an article for The Associated Press about data-mining software, Brian Bergstein explains how this software uses unstructured data analysis to find patterns that might not otherwise be accessible or even apparent without extraordinary expenditures of time and resources: “Often by diagramming sentences as a grammar school student would, text-analysis programs can tell the difference between a blog that says a motorcycle is so fast ‘it smokes’ and one that says the bike’s engine emits smoke.” [The Seattle Times, 8/8/05]

Eliminating Us vs. Them

Another advantage to taking a design approach is that it’s multidisciplinary. Design leadership recognizes that the next breakthrough might come from any area of the organization. So it takes a collaborative rather than a territorial stance. It invites cross-disciplinary participation and creates an environment that fosters innovation. That fundamental stance sets the stage for creative solutions to problems and scenarios that haven’t even registered on the most forward-thinking radar yet.

In his book, Why So Stupid? How the Human Race Has Never Really Learned to Think, Edward de Bono says, “What now matters is the design and delivery of value. That needs design thinking. That needs creative thinking. Judgment thinking alone is not going to be enough.”

Adopting a design leadership model is all about adding value. Applying the principles of design thinking to business can have a profound impact on outcomes by re-envisioning business practices, deepening and broadening strategy sessions, improving communication and, with design thinking’s refined problem-finding capability, reducing risk and improving product cycle times.

For example, by implementing the design practice of rapid prototyping, companies can realize a huge upside. Quick, “rough-draft” prototypes can give form to a new corporate vision and strategy, while dramatically accelerating innovation and problem solving. This rapid prototyping replaces the more traditional process of defining and refining a vision, concept or product until it’s perfected before it’s rolled out - even to the corporate campus. Frequently, this long, laborious process dulls team and customer enthusiasm and fails to manifest elusive perfection to boot.

Another lesson of design leadership with immediate ROI value is the practice of carefully studying the marketplace. This doesn’t mean compiling heady spreadsheet analyses and pouring over stock market trends. It means going out into the field for in-depth, real-world observation. The insights gained from this face-to-face research are invaluable—critical—in defining the customer experience, understanding user needs and creating brands. At the same time, it can raise employee emotional buy-in by increasing their sense of involvement and contribution, and by stimulating their own innovative, associational thinking.

The challenges facing business leaders today are not insignificant. Life may be uncertain, but leaders still have to produce results. In a tight market, they have to be able to deliver value better than the competition. In order to engineer solutions to problems, leaders have to be able to define those problems, even when their complexity defies definition. To retain and grow their customer base, leaders have to consistently meet and exceed their customers’ expectations. In order to do all that, they have to be skilled at motivating, inspiring and retaining their employees. And in their spare time, leaders need to determine where the next big opportunity lies.

How to accomplish it? That’s the multi-billion dollar question. One of the fundamental strengths of design thinking is that it isn’t flummoxed by staggering complexity. Design thinking thrives on complexity, because it’s associational—it’s able to make rapid and unexpected connections where only disjointed and apparently unrelated elements were before. The ability to make this associational leap has been the mark of every breakthrough in the arts, in science and in business.

Best-selling author Richard Farson raises the stakes further. “We should not under-estimate the crucial importance of leadership and design joining forces,” he writes. “…We cannot assume that, following our present path, we will simply evolve toward a better world. But we can design that better world.”

Design leadership is not a magic bullet. It still involves work, lots of it. But what the visual, collaborative, innovative and nonlinear approach of design does offer is a real opportunity to survive the uncertainty and to get to the good stuff, the future, the dessert intact, healthy and whole.

CereCore^®Institute, Bellevue Washington, provides consulting and innovative programs in applied thinking processes for leaders, teams and individuals.