Are you additive or subtractive

When there’s a problem to be solved, do you find yourself adding things to get to a solution ... or removing them? 

It turns out we are all more ‘additive’ than ‘subtractive’. 

And it’s impacting the quantities and kinds of ideas and solutions we can come up with. 

Researchers still don’t know why we’d rather keep adding things, features, stuff, to try and solve a problem ... rather than stripping them out, but knowing we do it is a good step to being able to compensate for this bias. 

‘The first question we ask ourselves is ‘what can I add?’ And ‘what can I subtract?’ is not [part of our first reaction]. Subtracting something isn’t a harder thing to think of “but you have to think harder to get to it”.

We’re missing the potential of a raft of ideas when we solve problems simply by throwing ‘more’ up as a solution. 


Read about it in this article by Katie MacBride in Inverse.  

It’s curious to wonder about how we think. If we can consciously subtract, remove, reduce or take things away to problem solve... we’ll be better thinkers and more productive problem solvers.

Having a Design Mindset

The skills we’ll need for 2020 and beyond are shaping up as a slick looking list!
 
The skill of having a design mindset is right up there. 

This doesn’t mean you need to know your way around design software, or know which colours go with what or even what an industrial designer does.

Rather it’s the frame of mind, the mindset that you adopt to think, solve and respond to what’s going on in your team, business, industry … the world. 

Beyond ho-hum
A same/same response to strategy, performance, capability, culture and our teams is too ho-hum now. We can’t do the same as we always have.

Businesses who need to adapt and thrive (that includes the solo operator right through to mega-global big name players) need to increasingly take a design approach to many parts of their business. 

A Design Mindset
I think a design mindset looks like this: 


 

• Involve: it starts with people, finding out what’s going on, what’s working, what’s not, what’s needed. This is about connecting to your customers, colleagues, users, stakeholders.  

• Ideate: you come up with ideas, possibilities; it's ingenuity at work. Here you use your creativity and problem solving smarts to think of possible solutions.   

• Implement: start something, do something. Don’t wait until it’s complete, test out a minimum viable product, process or service. Put stuff to work, try it out, experiment and take note of what happens. 'Have a crack,’ as we say in Australia. 

• Iterate: You improve and evolve and keep working on it. Release another version, go again, ‘Have another crack’. The refining, adapting and responding is what keeps you agile, current and relevant. 

Having a design mindset is vital for change leaders, strategic planners, product owners, business owners, team leaders and executives.

And when you adopt and apply a design mindset to the situations, projects and pieces of work that you're working on, you're better equipped to remain competitive and respond to uncertainty.   

Strategy is changing; leadership is changing; organisations are changing. 

We need to also change how we think about what we do if we want to get closer, go further and deliver better.

Give good empathy

"We apologise for any inconvenience caused."

It's such a bland, banal, cover-all statement. I'm just not feelin' it though. I'm not feeling that you've REALLY understood the lengths to which your stuff, has stuffed up my stuff.

Building deeper connections, trust and understanding with customers, clients, colleagues and users means you've got to give, first.

In a workshop I was facilitating with customers and users recently, I made a point of giving. Deeply.

While I'm listening - like all good leaders, managers, trainers, facilitators, coaches do - I really need to show I'm listening. I've got to 'give' good listening, to get good trust.

So in workshops, conversations, sessions, I give empathy. Big time.

Then when there's been 'an inconvenience' or 'any inconvenience', I'll take the time in a client, customer or user workshop to hear it.

"But it's not on topic," whispers a designer on the project. "And it will build trust," I say later, "you'll get more engagement, trust and truth, later."

It's called empathy. I think we need to show it more by naming what it is that might have 'inconvenienced' people in the past.

Often people want to tell you their 'story' about a situation or experience. I've seen too many people cut off in the prime of their story because it's not on topic, or we don't have time, or they're waffling on or I don't have an answer for it or I can't fix it or <insert another low empathy excuse.>

I'm sorry if this has totally stuffed up your calendar for the day. I'm sorry if this means you were expecting to do this, not that. I'm sorry if this has meant you've spent time doing this and feel like you've wasted that time. 

Wow that must have really been annoying. Gee that must have been frustrating and irritating. Ooooh that sounds like it was a difficult thing for you to have to do. 

Understand. Name the inconvenience. Go out on an empathy limb. Make them know you feel it. And don't be so quick to jump on to the next topic or story. Give.

More than Post-it Notes & Sharpies

Let us give thanks... let us give respect, thanks and acknowledgement to two awesome and life changing tools :

• The Post-it Note (Well, anything Post-it really, brilliant)
• The Sharpie (In fact any marker. They're super too).

Used together, they are life changing, team changing and world changing tools.

So now that we've given thanks to them, we must realise that they alone (or together) do not a 'workshop' make.

When you're getting the team, clients, users, customers, stakeholders - anyone! - together and you ask them to write their thoughts or some comments on a post-it note, it isn't a workshop.

It's ONE tool, one task, one process in that workshop.

What do you then do with those Post-its? Put them not a wall, whiteboard or flip chart and start categorising or sorting? That's another process or task.

I've got to say, I'm seeing patterns before my eyes! The write-it-and-post-it technique can be limiting, repetitive and very 'same-same'.

I'm not dissing the approach per se; it works, it's just... overworked.

Hands up if you've been in a workshop/meeting/conversation/session/thing where you wrote stuff on a Post-it and put it on a board/whiteboard/flipchart/wall/thing?

We can fall into tired patterns of what a workshop is, or what we can get a team or individuals to do in a workshop. When you want to engage with users, customers, stakeholders, sponsors, clients, you must think and plan what processes you'll use.

Don't wing it. If you're the facilitator or leader of the meeting or workshop, then it's up to you to plan, think, prepare and map out what processes you'll use - or at least have at hand - to help the team and group move, shift, achieve decide and do.

Break the Post-it pattern.

Continue to evolve, adapt and build up your toolkit of 'go-to' processes, tools and activities that you can use with a team.

Be ready to go where the team needs to go, do what needs to be done to respond to what's happening. (Oh, and it's not about playing 'icebreaker' games either! They're so 1980s.)

Participation, contribution, collaboration and engagement in workshops needs to be built, ramped up, encouraged and rewarded. That's how you go deep, that's how you get great stuff done.

So what are you planning? What are you doing and saying? How are you responding?

This is more powerful than 'Write your idea on a Post-it' x four times in the one workshop.