Problem solving using design thinking to build a strong company culture

‍Design thinking has been present in the workplace for some time. But, it remains an unknown term for many. It's not easy to understand how design thinking can be used as a problem-solving strategy for workplace conflicts. Design thinking can be used in various situations and has led to positive results. This article will give you an overview of design thinking in general and explain how you can use it to solving problems in your workplace.
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‍What is design thinking?

‍Design thinking is a problem-solving methodology that helps organizations innovate and evolve to survive the competition. Design thinking is an iterative process, just like a product design cycle. A new trend in workplace psychology has emerged in which companies like Apple, IBM, Nike and Google are using design thinking as their competitive weapon. 

It can be used to unlock cultural change within an organization. As the name suggests, this method of work innovation encourages employees to be more adaptable, responsive to customers and ultimately make the organization successful. 
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‍Problem solving using design thinking

‍Design thinking is an approach to solve problems by systematically applying design-related ways of thinking, such as creative and critical thinking. This problem-solving method can help organizations find innovative solutions to their challenges using a human-centered approach.

‍It involves identifying and solving problems by breaking them down into separate stages.
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‍Design thinking as a problem solving strategy and how it can help organizations build a solid culture.

‍Design thinking has been popularized in the corporate world as a philosophy that lays a strong emphasis on business and human values. Using this approach as a problem-solving strategy, organizations can build a healthy culture that enhances creativity and relationships between the employees. 

‍Advantages of using design thinking to build a strong culture at workplaces

‍1. Teams perform at their best

‍Design thinking is essential to unlocking the true potential of any organization's workforce. Organizations must integrate it into their core philosophy, leading to more engaged employees, happier customers, and better profits. It's no wonder Intuit grew its revenue by $10 million the first year that it enabled its teams to use design thinking.

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‍2. Collaboration in teams gets better

‍Design thinking is a method for collaborative innovation that focuses on co-creation, co-learning, and co-production. One of the most critical areas of any organization where design thinking can be applied is collaboration. Using design thinking process, organizations can provide a better way for teams to work together and create innovative products and services.

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‍3. With a user-focused approach, teams develop empathy

‍Design thinking is more than just a process. It is a mindset that helps organizations understand, build and deliver products that solve their user problems instead of creating solutions for selling more products. It fosters empathy by encouraging teams to think about their actions from human point of view. It can be as simple as questioning why we need a new project or product or going straight to the users themselves to ask them what they really want and what problem they are facing. Only then can we start building solutions that work instead of trying to fit in solutions to sell a product the market may not need in the first place.

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‍4. Employee morale is boosted

‍Organizations can sometimes face challenging times, inflicting chaos in the workforce. But restructuring and changing with the times are even more stressful and difficult to adapt for employees. Design thinkers mindset can help individuals and businesses find unique solutions and help them solve challenging problems. It can act like a positive and supportive thing for a business.

It can also be liberating and allows businesses to create new innovative and creative ideas that they may not have thought of before. Design thinking helps elevate employee morale, reduces turnover, and increases productivity.

Tools such as visualizations and journey mapping, storytelling and rapid prototyping can help your workforce reach their fullest potential and move forward.

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‍5. Trust-Based Team Culture

‍Organizations can sometimes come back to the same issues and problems repeatedly. Using design thinking helps teams by enabling each participant's contribution to be balanced so that all ideas can be weighed equally and support divergent thinking in teams. Instead of being influenced or persuaded by others' ideas, team members listen to each other's proposals using design thinking tools.

For example, participants can place stickers next to the ideas that resonate most with them using these tools to gather feedback collectively. Each member of the team casts the same amount of votes. The wall is now a heat map that everyone can see. Only the most popular solutions move forward. It makes the decision-making process open and transparent, and the majority vote rather than individual opinions determines the outcome. The wall is also a tangible record of the team's history and processes for everyone to see and thereby increasing trust among teammates.

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‍6. Improved communication

‍Many team problems stem from inefficient communication. Due to their diverse backgrounds and experiences, individuals may have different interpretations of the same concept or idea. The shift to virtual and hybrid workplaces increased it even further. Team members with different industry knowledge, practices, and expectations may have clashing interpretations. These can lead to frustration and animosity among team members.

Teams can only move faster when they can communicate effectively. Design thinking's collaborative nature eliminates friction by including all team members from the beginning. The common ground is formed as the team works together through key exercises, thereby increasing a sense of bonding.

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‍7. Teams get innovative and solve multi-dimensional problems at ease

‍The challenge is that most organizations' approaches tend to kill creativity with an overly conformist notion of things.

Design thinking is a way of tackling problems or identifying issues before teams consider them a problem. It's a multi-dimensional approach that focuses on the issue itself and views it from various perspectives. It is said to be an innovative problem-solving strategy that can help teams eliminate biases and prejudices, innovate towards better solutions for problems and develop rich insights about the real issue. It helps in making workplaces more inclusive, be it virtual, hybrid or in-office.

Design Thinking develops more open, collaborative, and explorative cultures and mindsets, which combine logic and imagination to create new innovative solutions.

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‍Conclusion

‍In the end, if you need to get the most out of your people, focus on their needs. Truly understanding your team members, what they care about, and what motivates them will help you motivate them. In other words, remember to ask yourself what is in it for them when you change how you operate or solve business problems. Your team will be more likely to buy into your ideas and execute with conviction if you do that. And that's the true power of design thinking.

In today's landscape, where organizational growth is dependent on the ability of interdisciplinary teams to work together and for departmental leaders to collaborate across silos, there is nothing more beneficial to companies than to implement Design Thinking.

Upskill your team today to solve everyday challenges using Design Thinking with fun and engaging simulations. You will start noticing the benefits of design thinking in your organization immediately with better reframing of problems, increased diversity and collaboration within teams.