JUST THINK

I think we are suffering from degrees of inertia, intolerance and insensitivity in every day life.

We see this in all its glory in business and politics. Crazy decisions, bizarre explanations for failure and toxic disdain aimed at the traditional institutions. This is now the mainstream. Business in particular could possibly even be viewed as an open laboratory for a failure of 21st Century thinking but it is by no means alone. Systems are at breaking point all over the world. Political and other major systems are also struggling with coming to terms with more current/relevant thinking to reduce the anger of an increasingly frustrating and hostile public.

Take the insensitivity of the services we receive from most automated customer services, the inept experiences in many high street stores, disbelief with the actions of major brands and government services. The dreadful similarity between city streets that are being overtaken by sameness from one city to another. I find it quite distasteful to travel across continents and witness similar trading patterns, experiences and their ‘typical’ attendant issues. On the other hand I find it wonderful to find an entirely innovative, different and charming experience that is heartfelt meaningful and rich in human values. More interestingly this is more often found in the least expected, less westernized parts of the world and the furthest away from the highly streamlined and supposedly sophisticated enterprise.

This lack of human or local sensitivity is bought about by the deeply ingrained preference business has for risk aversion, reliability, consistency and repeatability. And it is these tradition approaches that have brought around a palpable inertia – a seeming difficulty thing for the enterprise to do much about it. But why? And believe me I am optimistic.

For me it is important to bring different forms of thinking to bear and at the heart of this lies the idea of heuristics. A heuristic is really a rule of thumb, a general ‘truth’ that holds up in more cases than not. It is a more fluid, natural and pragmatic idea than for example an algorithm, something that has the absolutes coded into it. I think this coding is what has caused us as humans to question the services and stupidity we see all around us. It is this hard wiring that takes little or no account of how life actually goes on and why I like the idea behind Gregory Bateson’s wonderful epithet – “The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between the way nature works and the way man thinks.” – Gregory Bateson

Roger Martin, Dean of Rotman Business School puts all of this best. He describes the process of human innovation in three steps, something he calls the ‘knowledge funnel:

Mystery – At the top of the funnel he sees humans as staring into a mystery – which contains the random and chaotic ‘situation’ in which we find ourselves much of the time – and is of course where opportunity lies.
Heuristic – In the middle of the narrowing funnel he sees human endeavor as coming up with a heuristic, or rule of thumb, that allows us, especially an enterprise, to address the mystery and manage it in some way
Algorithm – And at the thinnest point of the funnel – the most codified part of the continuum – systematizing and automating the solution – The Algorithm. And in Roger Martin’s words our preoccupation is with turning the heuristic into an algorithm.

“The title “Vice President of Marketing” denotes a permanent position with a set of ongoing tasks. As well suited as that construct is for running known heuristics and algorithms, it is not an effective way to move along the knowledge funnel. That activity is by definition a project; it is a finite effort to move something from mystery to heuristic or from heuristic to algorithm.” – Roger Martin

NB: Worth noting also that this process according to Roger Martin is also the way to define Design Thinking.

It is worth noting that there are lots of mysteries that don’t lend themselves to heuristics, and lots of heuristics that can’t turn into algorithms. There are lots of failures on the way to the next great business algorithm. Not only that, there are lots of successful businesses built on heuristics alone – example, the world of music and theatre, the arts, your favorite restaurant – (if it’s not part of a chain) Roger Martin alludes – in the book ‘The Design Of Business’ – that you can’t build large businesses without this transition to algorithms. You can’t have McDonald’s without a cooking and serving system. You couldn’t have Wal-Mart without its distribution model.

Introducing the Heuristic Framework

The other important framework against which to understand what is actually going on is the lack of balance in our lives and in the world as it has become. It is the preoccupation the west has with purely analytical (left brain thinking). But optimistically what follows is the basis of the way out – the way and in our view the means of Thinking Differently. 21st Century Thinking.

Analytical Thinking: This is an extreme. It has arisen as a result of many years of us as a humanity just measuring what we can – the tangible assets. A further definition could be written like this – Analytical Thinking is to prove a proposition through inductive or reductive knowledge. This means we rely on existing knowledge, repress further judgment and refine ‘what is’ from the position of our Current Reality. In this realm the goal is reliability and getting a consistent and repeatable outcome. To my mind this leads to an extreme reduction of opportunity and agility. Our traditional analytical thinking often leads businesses to seek proof before making any changes. That generally means no changes, as the data required for the proof is historical and can’t provide the certainty about the future analytical thinkers crave. The dogma that drives us all crazy in any change procedure.

Intuitive Thinking: If we went to the other extreme then we would be purely working with Intuitive Thinking which is to know things internally/innately without explicit reasoning. We could easily describe this as right brain thinking. This approach could be defined as to explore the new by always casting off the past, suppress too much or any analysis, and invent what ‘will be’. The ultimate goal here is simple validity and that provides an outcome that meets the objective.

Design Thinking: Design Thinking is the term now in common use to balance the two extremes by utilizing abductive logic. Abduction in this context is a method of logical inference introduced by Charles Sanders Peirce which comes prior to induction and deduction for which the colloquial name is to have a ‘hunch’. Abductive reasoning starts when an inquirer considers of a set of seemingly unrelated facts, armed with an intuition that they are somehow connected. The term abduction is commonly presumed to mean the same thing as hypothesis; however, an abduction is actually the process of inference that produces a hypothesis as its end result. It is used in both philosophy and computing. Its approach is respect for exploitation and exploration, the design of what should be, integration of future with past, combination of judgment with analysis. Its goal is a productive balance of reliability and validity.

4D™ & Structured Visual Thinking™: A set of ‘heuristic’ frameworks that narrow down the business mystery to a manageable size and shape, by working through logic models based on proven areas of business – leaving nothing out and leaving nothing in – and offering a solution. These are conversation based activities with the people in the direct line of attack on the opportunity or issue. They are allowed and encouraged to test their hunches against rules of thumb that will guide action. From these rules of thumb, they can develop more reasoned, shared and believable answers. This is a simplified approach, based on 24 meaningful conversations. The reward is alignment, coherence, engagement together with practical – communicable outcomes – that are owned by those who have to deliver together with a massive gain in efficiency.



“Without the logic of what may be, a corporation can only refine its current heuristic or algorithm, leaving it at the mercy of competitors that look upstream to find a more powerful way out of the mystery or a clever new way to drive the prevailing heuristic to algorithm.”

“Organizations worship at the altar of reliability.” They want systems to work efficiently. They want to be able to predict sales next year. They want consistent, predictable outcomes.”

“Without validity, an organization has little chance of moving knowledge across the funnel. Without reliability, an organization will struggle to exploit the rewards of its own advances.”

“Think of Design Thinking being systems to define what could be. This is really all about a systemic, holistic approach to finding something new. It uses inductive and abductive reasoning which many people are not comfortable using. Our educational systems take the creativity out of people over time. Many classes teach deductive reasoning and analysis and how to break things down. They want students to get the “right” answer. This process creates conformity and regulation, and students that break away from that conformity are criticized. Most 5-year-olds are creative geniuses when they enter school, and 20 years later have had that squeezed out of them.” – Roy Luebke