How Doblin use design thinking to reduce ambiguity

As discussed in my previous post, a primary role of designers is to reduce ambiguity and increase clarity, so that clients can construct meaning about the actions and purpose of their organisation.

Doblin is an innovation strategy firm based in America. Their CEO Larry Keely has been advocating the need for a comprehensive, reliable, and repeatable approach to innovation. Now part of influential management consultants Monitor Group, they are acknowledged as industry pioneers and thought leaders.

As part of my research into innovation I interviewed Jeff Tull, Program Leader at Doblin Group. I was fascinated that they had formulated a number of tools and processes that give clients an insight into the “innovation condition” of their organisation, which helps reduce ambiguity and foster innovation.

Jeff Tull commented, “one of the specific things that we think is a helpful starting point … is to diagnose the innovation condition of either your company, or the industry, or perhaps adjacent industries that you operate within in.”

Tull also commented on tools used later in a project, “we do a lot of internal analysis of the company. We do it in different ways, we do it through interviews, we have a couple of specific diagnostic tools that we use at the company level, and also at the industry level. You’ve probably seen some of the innovation landscapes … that gives you a somewhat objective view into that playing field.”

Tull demonstrated how the particular tools are used to support a conceptual framework. “[W]e do a lot of work to understand patterns of behaviour – articulated or unarticulated, and the next level up where companies exist and they send things out into the world to different people. The next level is our industry, Innovation Landscapes are kind of a picture into that level. Then there’s a very broad level and it’s really just kind of the world. It’s our job to always navigate up and down between these spaces. Clients commonly know these two spaces pretty well …. We can provide a somewhat objective look into this side of the industry, a third-party view into the industry, or we can provide some third-party relatively objective or subjective interpreted comments into the company level. We identify with the orthodoxies, really what some of their abilities are, help them consider new options not bounded by the internal bonuses and who I don’t like working with down the hall, and what I’m afraid to say to someone.”

This points to a key role played by consultants is the mandate to challenge traditional views. Consultants can state the obvious, ask dumb questions and question the status quo, enabling clients to see the situation from a new perspective. It also demonstrates how consultants can enable rapid change in organizations because they are bound to a lesser extent by hierarchical or bureaucratic structures which frustrate us all.

— Excerpt from my research into the value of design thinking