Can ideas be designed? Can we craft, connect and articulate ideas to be more useful, simple and inspirational?
Yes.
Strategy is design. It’s the design of ideas.
Here’s why.
Ideas are the fulcrum of strategy
"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world."
In review meetings, one question designers knew to expect from renowned Creative Director Glenn Tutssel was: “What’s the idea?” He wanted to know the reason why. Why the design had to be that way and not another. The idea, Glenn knew, could transform work from the expected to the extraordinary.
It sounds obvious, but strategy needs ideas too. So much supposed strategy is just pure analysis, observation or fact. When, really, strategy should use ideas to make logical leaps from what ‘is’ to what ‘could be’.
Strategy makes ideas feel right
As well as serving a purpose, design should be aesthetically satisfying. A perfectly designed chair not only supports the body and stacks well, but it also has the right ‘feel’ and ‘look’. Balance, proportion, elegance – a je ne sais quoi that creates desire and delight by connecting emotionally.
Strategy needs to touch the emotions too. To inspire and entertain, to feel right. For the team, and for the culture. To tell a story – one with character, choices, challenges and consequences. Not objectively right or wrong, but a story that moves us.
Strategy makes ideas simple
"Strategy is about taking everything away, until there's only one thing left. One single powerful thought."
A design maximises its utility when it achieves its purpose in the simplest possible way. Strategy also needs to be as simple as possible. The ‘as possible’ being the crucial part of this equation – that judgment must be based on a complete understanding of the needs of the user.
Too often, strategy is the source of complexity, not of the simple clarity, the single-minded idea that is going to unite stakeholders behind a decisive course of action. Maybe sometimes a strategist’s ego gets in the way: complexity is the result of the effort to prove cleverness, to create a mystique, to justify the seriousness of the ‘Strategy’ title. Let’s drop the pretense and have ‘As simple as possible’ as the goal.
Strategy is fluid and collaborative
Like design. Which starts with a hunch. That moves to sharing a doodle, before becoming a sketch, a prototype, and then a blueprint. The first model. Then the upgrade. With improvements that consider emerging needs in a changing environment.
It’s a fluid process, at times fast and intuitive, but at others considered and careful. It’s a process that embraces diverse voices and recognises that we all have a genius, that deserves to be heard. The same goes for strategy. It’s not the work of a solitary brain in a box: the best strategic ideas are borne out perspectives colliding around a table.
Great strategists ask the questions that will encourage others to speak up. They fill the team around them with confidence and conviction. And they are always thirsty for change: excited by the prospect of a new challenge, incessantly curious as they explore in the sunlight of possibilities.
Written by Hugh and Jamie.
