Have you ever thought about how processes are developed in organizations?
Me neither.
Have you ever developed processes or been on a team that did? Aside from some processes to manually enter and maintain employees in the HRIS system at a job I worked at 15 years ago, I don’t think I can say that I have.
I have, however, been an “end-user” of many a horribly conceived process, primarily devised and implemented by people who were never part of the process from a user standpoint. I know myself well enough to know that I no doubt complained constantly about the inefficiency and lack of thought put into whatever process was holding me back, and probably thought I could devise a better process. At that time I may have been able to, but I can say confidently that now, today, I absolutely can.
I can say so because I just spent the last seven weeks this semester in a class that quite frankly, on day one, I had no idea what the class was about.
The thing is, I had never heard of Design Thinking before, and I quickly learned that it is basically a human-centered way to innovate by understanding people’s needs, brainstorming solutions, building prototypes, testing them, and tweaking based on feedback. Sounds cool, right? It also sounds like complete common sense.
Design thinking is focused on the importance of empathy in understanding user needs by conducting interviews and creating empathy maps. It allows you to be creative – literally – by utilizing brainstorming techniques like mind mapping to generate a range of ideas for user experience. The other great thing about Design Thinking is that it has an iterative component that is continuous process improvement by way of user feedback. By learning these concepts, I can now see why so many processes fail, and why so few people seem to know why, or how to fix it.
But implementing this inventive approach to process design is not as easy as it sounds. If you work in an organization or an industry that does not think this way about internal processes (or isn’t open to it), it’s a culture change, and not an easy one at that. It can be a long and arduous endeavor, but for good reason. Often times, processes in HR are conceived on the fly, or in reaction to a change that requires quick action. And we all know how that goes. So having a well thought out plan where you are being proactive rather than reactive, and forward thinking rather than hyper-reactive can only mean better, more efficient processes. And probably most importantly – happy employees.
On a final note, this has not been the easiest of semesters for me personally. School wise it was “fine”, but personally it was a bit of a challenge. BUT, taking from a concept discussed often in class, I am re-framing my thinking. While life was particularly challenging during this time (some of it self-inflicted, but its starting to turn around), the amount of knowledge I gained in this class, both about Design Thinking as well as a few things about myself and my current situation, made it all balance out, if even just a little.
🙂
Wisdom from the Watercooler 
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