Using Design Thinking to Drive Business Results

Patti P. Phillips, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer ROI Institute, Inc.
Jack J. Phillips, Ph.D., Chairman, ROI Institute, Inc. 

When it comes to delivering results from learning and talent development programs, the key focus today is the business value of these programs. Unfortunately, not many organizations measure at this level. When measurements are taken, the evaluation team may face disappointing results. They discover that the process breaks down at various stages. In short, it wasn’t designed to drive business results. This is a persistent problem and it’s time to correct it with design thinking.

Design thinking is a relatively new concept for innovation. Design thinking empowers a team to tackle and solve complex problems using a systematic process with cost containment as a focus.¹ The design thinking approach represents a change in the steps of initiating, developing, and implementing talent development. Design thinking places the focus on value creation, instead of value capture, because the learning is built for business value.

The concept is very simple. At every stage in the process the program is designed with the end in mind, and the end is business results. All stakeholders complete their part of the process with the business results in mind. This transforms the classic learning and development cycle into a simple design thinking model for business results, with eight steps.

1. Start with Why: Align programs with the business. The why becomes the business need and the proposed program is aligned to the specific business measure.
2. Make It Feasible: Select the right solution. The right solution will drive the business measure.
3. Expect Success: Design for results. The success of learning is now defined as “Participants are using the learning, driving important business impact measures in their work units.” Objectives are set to push accountability to the business impact level. With reaction, learning, application, and impact objectives, designers, developers, facilitators, participants and managers of participants know what they must do to deliver results.
4. Make It Matter: Design for Input, Reaction, and Learning. This ensures that the right people are involved at the right time and that the content is important, meaningful, and actionable.
5. Make It Stick: Design for Application and Impact. This ensures that a participant is actually using the learning (Application) and that it has an impact. Results are measured at both Application and Impact Levels. Barriers must be removed or minimized and enablers are enhanced to drive results.
6. Make it Credible: Measure results and calculate ROI – With impact data in hand, the results must be credible. The first action is to isolate the effects of the program on the impact data. If ROI is planned, the next action is to convert data to money. Then the monetary benefits are compared to the cost of the program in an ROI calculation. This builds two sets of data that sponsors will appreciate: business impact connected directly to the program and the financial ROI, which is calculated the same way that a CFO would calculate a capital investment.
7. Tell the Story: Communicate results to key stakeholders – Reaction, learning, application, impact, and perhaps even ROI data form the basis for a powerful story. Storytelling is critical and it’s a much better story when you have business impact.
8. Optimize Results: Use black box thinking to increase funding. Designing for results usually drives the needed results, but there’s always an opportunity to make the results even better. This involves improving the program so that the ROI increases in the future. Increased ROI makes a great case for more funds. When funders (executives) see that the program has a positive return on investment, it will be repeated, retained, and supported.

So there you have it. A simple system to use design thinking to deliver results. It’s not a radical change, but it involves tweaking what we have been doing. It’s shifting the responsibility to drive the business results to all the stakeholders.  It also redefines the success of learning, not just absorbing the skills and knowledge, or even using them in your work.  Learning is now defined as driving impact in the organization.

If you would like to learn more about the design thinking process, please let us know.  We will be happy to send you a complimentary copy of our most recent book, The Business Case for Learning: Using Design Thinking to Drive Business Results and Increase the Investment in Talent Development.

References:

1. Mootee, Idris. Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation: What They Can’t Teach You at Business or Design School. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley, 2013.