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Design thinking during times of recession
By Pattie LaCroix
December 17, 2009

We use the word "recession" to describe a severe, ongoing retraction of economic growth indicators - fewer jobs, fewer people spending, less investment, and so on. But what this means in the lives of people is a struggle to keep their homes, feed their families, pay their winter heating bills, pay for tuition, never mind saving for retirement. This retraction of spending ends up lodging itself in many of our lives as a retraction of imagination, a retraction of the possible, and a retraction of our own expertise.
While the need to create new solutions is never greater than during a recession, our appetite to do anything new is severely taxed by the retraction in our thinking. Recession thinking goes something like this:
“I know we need to think outside of the box but I have got to keep the lights on here, pay my staff, fund my programs and not make waves with my funders. I know we have ideas to address some of our challenges, but it just feels like the wrong time and too risky to try anything new. The cost of failing seems too high; later when things improve we can look at those new ideas.”

This fear to try something new is not an uncommon human reaction, however, it is a surefire recipe for the loss of resilience. The authors in the renowned book Getting to Maybe: How the World is Changed see the presence of resilience as the lifeblood of our potential.
“Resilience is the capacity to experience massive change and yet still maintain the integrity of the original. Resilience isn’t about balancing change and stability. It isn’t about reaching an equilibrium state. Rather it is about massive change and stability paradoxically working together…Without those new perspectives, and the continuous infusion of novelty and innovation in our lives, our organizations and our systems, there is a slow but definite loss of resilience, and an increase in rigidity.”

Igniting new ideas
There are some in the social sector during this time of recession that are looking toward design thinking or iterations of it to ignite new thinking to long-standing and complex issues such as accessible health care, education, clean water, even leadership, sustainability, and capacity building.
The origin of design thinking goes back to the formation of IDEO in 1991, under the leadership of its founder David Kelley. When it began, IDEO was asked to tackle consumer design problems, but soon was being asked to apply its design thinking to complex social issues as well. The authors of the article "Design Thinking for Social Innovation" in the latest issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review elaborate:
“Design thinking - inherently optimistic, constructive, and experiential - addresses the needs of the people who will consume a product or service and the infrastructure that enables it...As an approach, design thinking taps into capacities we all have but that are overlooked by more conventional problem-solving practices...Design thinking relies on our ability to be intuitive, to recognize patterns, to construct ideas that have emotional meaning as well as being functional.”

Where the rubber hits the road for the social sector is that design thinking thrives in a culture that is open to experimenting. The biggest impediment to design thinking is the fear of failure.
It is particularly challenging for leaders in the social sector to move forward with new ideas in a time of retraction. Equally, it is most critical that leaders look to investing in new ways of thinking that will lead to yet untapped expertise to create new solutions.
Anthropologist and president of New York’s Institute of Intercultural Studies, Mary Catherine Bateson, once observed, "We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn."
The question remains: to what degree are social sector leaders willing to embrace expanded thinking during a time so profoundly framed for us as a time of contraction?
Pattie LaCroix has provided strategic engagement services to support leadership that ignites innovation in the social sector. As CEO of Catapult Media she provides strategic planning and professional coaching services to a wide range of organizations. You can reach Pattie at www.catapultmedia.ca.