Enabling systemic conversations: exploring the role of design in strategy implementation

This research set out to investigate how project teams can facilitate what I term Systemic Conversations where the implications and consequences of new ideas are surfaced for deliberation. Conversations that go beyond the design of new ideas to the messy space of implementation where a myriad of decisions are made to ensure the new idea is effectively designed and integrated into an organization’s chosen way of working and thinking. Conversations, which I found difficult to initiate in my 17 years in various business roles and where I found the tools, thinking and methods from my own business paradigm insufficient. <br><br>For this investigation I looked to the field of design for answers and worked as an embedded researcher within two design teams. Design is a field that in recent years has made inroads into both the business literature and its practices around innovation and ideation and I wanted to explore what it could offer in the field of implementation. I spent 18 months participating, observing and reflecting on the design team’s methods, tools and way of thinking; how they did or did not respond to the systemic issues that arose and what leverage if any this discipline could offer to this business challenge.<br><br>Through this investigation I learnt that design did have agency in this implementation space but this space was not an easy fit with all designers. Implementation challenged values and practices that make design so successful in the innovation arena. Importantly this research revealed that enabling systemic conversations required deeper fundamental changes to the way we work beyond merely defining steps and processes to facilitate these conversations. That in order to surface and work with systemic issues there had to be eight enabling conditions presents. These conditions could only be created through understanding and changing the way we think about task (doing), skill (knowing & thinking) and paradigm (valuing and believing). That in order to surface and work with systemic issues, both business and design needed to examine their existing practices and to develop new models with which to facilitate systemic conversations. These insights have implications for how we educate business and design students to not only see systemically but how to appreciate and capitalize on each other’s strengths.<br>