Two recent thoughts on designing decisions, one good semantic point from my partner John in the RSA Journal…

John Zapolski, a San Francisco-based principal of the Management Innovation Group, believes there is “increasing importance in using design as a framework for organising decisions that people make”, citing, alongside the work of his own company, that of innovation consulting group IDEO. He is keen to differentiate designers from design, implying that the people who use these methods may not be called designers.

And another general observation in BusinessWeek from Roger Martin of the Rotman School of Management…

If decision production is such a big deal, corporations should be paying very close attention to design of decisions — as much or more attention than they pay to product or service design. In my experience, they aren’t. Corporate decision factories feature extremely low-quality decision design.

Max recently asked, “I’m wondering how to apply these insights in practice: How can I, as a designer, go about changing a culture that does not promote innovation…?” So I’ve been trying to isolate concrete examples to share from the times I’ve been successful.

Earlier this year I taught a workshop to a department that wanted to improve their level of collaboration. A big reason they couldn’t be innovative was the lack of people working together. We formed teams and all worked to design something small and familiar enough to finish in two days: a better stapler. The collaboration, iteration, prototype making etc. we used were all new to them. At the end someone suggested coining a trigger word that would jolt them into this new way of working when they felt themselves falling into old habits.

I met my client for a coffee recently to see how they were doing. She told me the team decided to use the word “stapler” as their trigger word, and use it to spontaneously convene collaborative work sessions. Now when someone uses the trigger word, they pull themselves away from deep document writing, remember the lessons from the experiential workshop, and work in more collaborative ways.

Recently I wrote about those times when a company’s strategic plans are almost inseparable from their tactical execution. I know I keep gushing about Neeleman and JetBlue, but I’m constantly impressed with how he integrates strategy and delivery. The DirecTV onboard satellite television is a good example. At the beginning his executive team was against it: it was expensive, and (beyond Air Force One) an unproven technology. But Neeleman saw the connection to his strategy and pursued it. At both the strategic and tactical levels he pushed for lean, progressive use of technology that would not only reduce costs but improve the customer experience. In this case, the medium-haul flights were too brief for movies but a perfect fit for TV. JetBlue developed a close relationship with the manufacturer to get it working right, and later bought them out. They now license it to other airlines, creating a whole new revenue source for the airline.

And as you can imagine, there are as many examples where a company doesn’t create a good fit between strategy and the points of delivery that bring the strategy to life. I summarized my thoughts on my company’s recent experiences in these cases in a new essay, Strategic Delivery Points, also available in printer-friendly PDF format.

LukeW compares what’s being said about traditional business approaches vs. a design approach. It’s a handy reduction of the current writing.

And while this is certainly useful, I hope we can reach a point where business/design becomes a false dichotomy. Both columns of appoaches can simply be tools in one big business design toolbox for solving all sorts of business problems.

Google vs. Yahoo: Clash of Cultures helpfully contrasts the cultures of both companies and how culture influences future performance….

As the two giants tussle for domination of online advertising dollars, it’s increasingly clear that this tug-of-war is really a test of what kind of corporate culture an Internet company needs: Is it a by-the-numbers and increasingly Hollywood-savvy environment like Yahoo’s? Or can an intellectual playground like Google continue to grow and thrive even as it approaches $4 billion in annual revenue?

It’s hard to agree more with the usefulness of examining the situation through this lens (and express pleasant surprise this sentiment comes from a techie site). An organization’s outward displays of innovation and operations are only symptoms of their health; culture is their heart. My business partner John gave a presentation recently making this point, illustrating the back-and-forth change ripple effect between product, process, and culture: Design [is not a] Strategy (.pdf).

Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as hiring a chief design officer and declaring design as your top corporate priority. To generate meaningful benefits from design, corporations will have to change in fundamental ways before they can operate like the design consultancies who advise them on how to sharpen their design focus. To get the benefit of design, companies have to embed design into — not append it onto — their business.

from Creativity That Goes Deep by Roger L. Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management. It’s exactly the kind of thing we like to do.