I don't want my designers to be taxi drivers

The “I am expert for everything” mindset

When I read the Design Brief by Peter Phillips, one very concise and easy relatable idea stuck into my head. The notion of “getting what you asked for might not be what you wanted.” I see it everyday in businesses, the customer has specific requirement and asks the vendor to deliver. Full stop, the relation is over when the destination is reached. Best case scenario would be that the client is narrow-minded and either doesn’t care too much about other possible solutions that would exist. Or that the client is stubborn enough to believe that he is the subject matter expert for this area and therefore the best and only one to consider in decision-making. Either way doesn’t sound too appealing to me, does it?

Decision-making, experience, opinion and intuition

This problem-solving-problem is not new to our world. In fact we experience it day-to-day be it at work, at home or with ourselves. Decision-making is fundamentally based on either experience, intuition, or other’s people’s opinions. We put all ideas into one trash can and pull out randomly whatever we believe fits best in the current situation.

But wouldn’t it be better to lay out all ideas in front of us, side by side to be able to evaluate them against each other instead of making decisions based on the idea most recently thrown into the bin? When I reach a new destination I am certainly not the expert in which hotel might fit best to my current needs. I simply take one based on recommendations or my travel agency. Then I take a taxi and tell the taxi driver to get me there. Whether it is the shortest, fastest or most economic friendly route is up to him but I usually will not be informed. All that matters is that I get from point A to point B. But what if the taxi driver would ask me whether he can give me suggestions where I should go, show me around the city if I wanted to or get me to a quiet place to work as fast as possible?

The sum is bigger than its parts

Maybe in fact I need something completely different than I thought in the beginning or I didn’t even know all my possibilities. Knowing all possibilities is a myth nowadays anyhow so it is most definitely the latter case that you will never be able to make any big and long reaching decision all by yourself. Therefor I don’t want my colleagues to be taxi drivers, taking me to the destination that I think is right based on either my own intuition, experience, or other’s opinions. I want them to be actively part of the decision-making process, ingrain different insights and opinions on the subject, discuss and brainstorm together. Even though this might usually take more time, effort and certainly energy, it is usually the most fruitful, valuable and sustainable solution to the problem at face.

change, change, change… what does it mean?

Even though I cannot hear these keywords anymore “the world is changing… globalisation… rapid movement…”, I still believe that many of us haven’t yet truly understood what this means to us, our behaviour and our future design of decision-making and problem solving. We need to be competency focused to be professional, curious to allow for experimentation and human enough to be able to balance between rationality and emotions that are connected to ideas and products.

Put them together in a shaker, mix them up and bake them into a nice new framework for decision-making and strategy execution and you will not just have satisfied and engaged employees, but also happy customers and valuable products. Sounds better than taxi drivers, doesn't it?