What steps are taken to ensure that 400,000 staff members at a globally renowned, established technology corporation embrace design thinking as a method for reshaping their organizational culture?
TL;DR
- Phil Gilbert introduced design thinking to 400,000 IBM staff by treating the change as a product.
- IBM prioritized user results, allowing voluntary participation and hiring over 1,000 designers.
- Northwestern Mutual established a Design Thinking Center of Excellence to unify methods and tools.
- Executives need "dexterity" and "humility" to lead successfully through uncertainty and change.
When businessman Phil Gilbert was brought intoIBM, who in 2010 had purchased his Lombardi Software, he was certain his time was limited. Assigned the duty of instructing Big Blue on how to expand as rapidly as his business software processing firm did, he felt ill-suited: “I pretty much knew that I was a square peg in a round hole,” he states.
During a talk at Coins2Day Brainstorm Design in Macau on Tuesday, Gilbert remarked with regret that companies usually bring him in “when some effort is failing”. IBM sought his expertise to reproduce the unique formula that contributed to his Austin-based company, Lombardi, being so nimble and its offerings so cherished by consumers.
The transformation necessitated a bold strategy. In 2012, when appointed as the firm's general manager of design, Gilbert introduced design thinking across all of IBM's personnel. His initial obstacle? Figuring out how to get “400,000 people to do something when none of them report to you,”, he remembers.
His response wasn't to adhere to typical organizational directive strategies, but to view the change program as a product, IBM as a commercial hub, and its various groups as clients. Rather than adopting a technology-centric methodology, he prioritized understanding and user results.
In a departure from typical corporate practices, he also permitted staff to voluntarily join instead of mandating their involvement. “It gives them agency and having agency makes all the difference,” he informed the attendees.
Design thinking became an organizing principle at IBM, putting the customer at the center. The company went on to hire over 1,000 designers to embed into cross-functional teams with engineers and developers. Results included faster product launches, better alignments of project teams and accelerated product development cycles.
Northwestern Mutual
Fellow panelist Tony Bynum saw at his employer Northwestern Mutual the need for a center of excellence to represent a “single source of truth”. He founded the company’s Design Thinking Center of Excellence in 2020, after realizing that his small team that was interacting with other groups was using different languages, methods, and tools.
The “aha” moment for Bynum came with the idea about shifting away from outputs to outcomes. Using traditional methods was akin to the old fable of a group of blind men getting a different understanding of what an elephant was by touching different parts. “We’re all touching the same elephant and every person’s perspective has merit and value in reconstructing the elephant,” Bynum said.
Bynum, who currently heads the new ID Academy at Chicago's Institute for Design, contended that “dexterity” represents the crucial characteristic required for executives to thrive when faced with uncertainty and intricacy. He characterized this as “using design-led capabilities to become ambidextrous, meaning you can perform and transform”
A successful leader in a culture of change requires “humility, bar none”, as a critical attitude, Bynum said.
Gilbert agreed with Bynum that modesty is the “new name” to employ when leading cultural shifts. “We need humility first with ourselves, and then with our users.”
