To help clients make creative change, designers have always used two quite different kind of thinking â Strategy and Design. We also now need a third â Learning.
Strategy is the most famous way of creating change in the world â initially by soldiers, then by business leaders. Itâs primarily intellectual, a process of analysis, of weighing things up, and making rational decisions on the best course of action.Â
You do strategy primarily by thinking â about goals and about how to reach them.Â
Critical intelligence is essential: the best strategists ask plenty of searching âwhy?â questions.Â
The test of a strategy is whether itâs logical, whether itâs feasible, whether itâs ârightâ and strategy consultants tend to tell (or âadviseâ) their clients on what to do
Design belongs to a different world â the domain of artists, craftspeople, inventors, engineers.Â
Design is less intellectual, more intuitive, and its mode is imagining and making things, often through a long process of trial and error.Â
Designers often feel their way forward, rather than aiming at a destination.Â
Designers are often less constrained by critical thinking â their instinct is to ask âwhy not?. The lifeblood of design are ideas â wonderful, fragile, usually unprovable.Â
And the test of design is not whether something is ârightâ, but whether it looks good and works well. Designers tend not to advise their clients, but to make and show them things.
The two ways of thinking seem complementary.Â
Design appeals to our intuitive âSystem 1â thinking, and strategy to our more conscious and deliberative âSystem 2â thinking.Â
So why is it that the combination doesnât always create the intended transformation?Â
Why do great strategies and great ideas often not work?
Because they need people to change.Â
A new business strategy, exemplified by new products, services, stores, apps and branding â they all need employees to work in new ways.Â
The most innovative also need customers to do things differently too. And people donât like to change.Â
Itâs human nature to resist change.
Due to Covid we need to change.
But most people do like to learn.Â
Human beings are curious, and mostly enjoy acquiring new knowledge and skills.Â
So perhaps learning is the essential third way of thinking â the third muscle.
Learning means that creative agencies shouldnât just advise their clients on strategy and show their clients design, but also help their clients learn.Â
You could call this âteachingâ, but itâs more than that. Itâs a way of working in which both client and consultant discover new things, try them out and reflect on them.Â
Teaching, after all, is just one (rather good) way of learning.
So this is less about thinking or imagining, more about discovering.Â
Itâs partly intellectual, partly intuitive, but also hugely empathetic.Â
Itâs not so much about strategies or ideas, more about people and how to help them go further.Â
A lot of it is about coaching clients, and their employees, and their customers.Â
The aim would be not just a one-off learning exercise (a workshop, a class, a course) but a constant drive to learn (a culture) in both the client and the agency.
And perhaps that kind of culture is the outcome that matters most.Â
Strategy and design are vital muscles, but only the third muscle â the learning muscle, exercised daily â opens up long-lasting innovation and growth.Â
At Waterhouse Wade we work with our clients to develop a hybrid of design, strategists and learning and fuse all three together to discover new solutions and ideas as a collaborative partnership.Â
Now we all need to go further, push the boundaries and fuse all three elements together to provide relevant but meaningful and sustainable solutions that are relevant to the new normal.Â