Michael Na

Assignment „Design Thinking “, Tool „Mind Mapping “

Preamble

I have to say that I had - up to now - no contact with the concept of Design Thinking. Thus I cannot  report about an example which explicitly stems from a long history of my doing Design Thinking  projects. But, it turns out that unknowingly I have been using Design Thinking Tools already for quite  a time. So the application I am going to describe did not take place under the terms Mind Mapping or  Design Thinking, but I think it should fit the bill anyway.

1. Challenge

As a management consultant I did a project for a well-known auditor. The client had been well- positioned in his regional market and could look back on a long history of market leadership in the  region. But over the past 2 years the development of the client was – from the top management´s  viewpoint – dissatisfying. The core product (auditing) had turned into a commodity and aggressive  competitors exerted immense price pressure in the market. Clients demands were rising but the  willingness to pay for added value services was on the decrease. All in all, growth declined, new  clients were needed and top management had (correctly) the assumption, that the organisation  as such was weak in terms of sales. So we were mandated with a project to improve the sales  power of the organisation.

2. Tool selection

The organisational setup consists of auditing teams (normally 6-10 auditors with different levels of  professional experience) led by a team led. Managing Partners are usually in charge of one or  several teams which are organised along an industry-specific dimension (e.g. teams for energy &  utility, teams for automotive, and so on.). We decided early on together with top management,  that the whole organisation needed a more sales-centric setup. Therefore it was essential to  integrate the whole organisation into the project. Thus, we opted for a very collaborative  approach, namely a workshop-method combined with a deep analytical prophase, which together  turned out to fit roughly the tool description of Mind Mapping.

3. Application – what we did (the following structure is based on the corresponding chapter in

Mohamed book)

a. Data Analysis:

We analysed two different subjects. First the revenue development for the past four years  along several dimension (client size, client type, industry segment, managing partner etc.)  with special emphasis on revenues from existing clients and new clients. And secondly we  analysed the sales process as it was.

b. Set-up of a “Yard Sale”

In the next phase, we selected a group of about 20 people (mostly managing partners but  also the heads of HR and Marketing), sent them the revenue analysis in form of a fact book  and invited them to a workshop.

In the Workshop Space, we mapped the sales process on a brown paper (with coloured  cards etc. and provided on a second brown paper a generic set of categories for causes  why people within an organization do not live up the expected sales level (these categories  were then and still are: (1) Lack of motivation, (2) lack of capabilities, (3) lack of guidance  (4) Lack of enablement).

c. Offered Tour

As a first step of our workshop we presented the sales process as is and a summary of key  findings out of the fact book. The participants had never before received such  comprehensive insights into the revenue components and their respective development  and by outlining the conspicuous low number of new clients over the last 2 years and the  comparison with renowned competitors we created a sense of urgency regarding our  project which was essential to stir the willingness for entering the required transformation  path.

d. “Pick out/cluster good stuff”.

We then split the group into 4 teams of 5 participants each and asked them to work (first  each participant for himself) on two questions: (1) what were causes for the lack of sales  success, and (2) how/with what actions could the sales success of the whole organisation  get better. The generic cause cluster we mapped out on the brown paper (see b) served  as trigger for their individual thinking process. After about 20 minutes of individual  work/thoughts we asked them to cluster their thoughts related to the causes of (which  each were written on coloured cards) within their teams.

e. Identify insights and translate insights into design criteria

We then asked the teams to cluster their ideas as to improving the sales success and to  generate logical connections between the identified cause clusters and the “ideas for  improvement”-clusters.

After that we instructed the teams to deduce – based on the identified clusters - lists of  design criteria (within the teams) of how the optimal organisation should look like if we  were aiming at gaining new business amounting to 10 Mio. Euro within the next 12 month,  and 20 Mio. in the subsequent period.

f. Create common criteria list

We then drew all teams together and in the following session each team presented its  results. We as a group then merged and clustered the team lists. Together we prioritized  the criteria and we checked the list for inconsistencies and conflicting criteria. E.g. we  agreed very quickly on the fact that it is not reasonable to simply expand the scope of  duties for a manager without creating additional capacities by any means. The result was  a commonly agreed upon and prioritized list of high level design criteria for the new  organization.

Based on this result we worked then on a transformation map for the organisation,  breaking down the path to the desired organisational setup into manageable steps.

4. Insights – What we learned

a. In terms of design thinking

At the time of the workshop I was not aware of the Design Thinking concept. Therefore,  the workshop as such gave me not additional insight into Design Thinking. But it confirms  the statement I read in Mohamed book, that many people apply components of the  Design Thinking concept without being aware of it.

b. In terms of our mandate

As to our project we generated many insights. The group of participants came up with lot  of ideas that were later part of the new organisational designs. It contained the setup of

additional and dedicated Business Development positions, the adaption of remuneration  schemes, the implementation of sales reporting tools, the implementation of sales  trainings, the leverage of networks of former employees for sales purposes and so on.  Many items that we as consultants had come across frequently when conducting similar  projects in other organisations, but were unfamiliar – at least as part of a comprehensive  and consistent transformational concept - to the managing partners of the Audit Company.

5. Change of approach next time?

In terms of changing the chosen approach facing such a challenge again, I say: I would choose the  same approach again because it ensures the alignment of the key managers at an early stage along  a transformational change process of an organisation. And the transformational path is developed  by the managers (facilitated through us as consultants), which leads to the effect that the results  are accepted and supported by the very people who have to carry out and to live the necessary  organisational changes.

But I would change some aspects of the workshop design and execution. For instance, I would now  not send a voluminous fact book in advance but print the key analysis on A0-plots and arrange  them in a real poster session so that a poster walk would be really possible and the term “Yard  Sales” or exhibition truly can come to life. And I would support the specific applicability of our  generic cause categories through the raise of empirical date from the organisation which would  reflect the current “as is”-status of the organisation. An appropriate tool to generate such data  would be an employee survey which I would conduct prior to such a workshop. I applied this  approach afterwards in a different challenge and the experience and results were quite  satisfactory.

