How might you balance innovation and BAU?

Disruption has become a common place phenomena challenging us to work in new and novel ways. Its response requires agility, resilience and adaptability with operational delivery. How can you use human-centred design and innovation to adapt your ways of working?

Integrating innovation and human-centred design processes into an existing business model can pose challenges. Leaders need to grapple with overt failure and providing guidance to teams through states of high ambiguity - where the ‘right’ pathway forward might not be obvious. The adductive nature of design thinking and innovation methodologies enjoy ambiguity and often don’t sit comfortably within structured business processes.

How should you balance ambiguity, failure and meaningful progress toward results using these design processes?

The answer lies in rapid small-scale experiments conducted within design sprint formats (with unfocused teams). A well thought through design topic used inside a design sprint structure is an ideal scaffold to experiment and co-design with customers directly. Well facilitated design sprints should feel like participating inside a rapid experiment, unprepared for the next step ahead. These experiences are intense for participants, with the pace and activity making them more malleable to the thoughts and opinions of others.

Design sprints are an ideal method for experimenting with opportunities, while seeding innovation and creativity within organisational culture. Try using cross-functional (or unfocussed) teams made up from different organisational functions. Think where collaboration might ultimately be required for successful realisation of your sprint goal and bring these people together early to complete the sprint.

Low-cost and low-fidelity learning experiments bring a degree of agility into existing work practices. Operating within a sprint timeframe keeps the stakes sufficiently low as to not overwhelm participants and stall forward progress.

For leaders, sprint based experimentation allows you to keep tabs on innovation without inadvertently constraining team performance. The short cycles offer many moments for intervention and course corrections. Feedback should be designed to keep the team objective and unbiased towards their own designs.

What tactics can you employ to successfully accelerate innovation?

1. Tight timeframes

Always apply unreasonably short project time frames and seek constant deliverables from teams. Consider a deliverable as some form of tangible outcome you can experience for yourself. These two measures alone will help teams balance their abstract thinking with tangible and measurable activity.

2. Set boundaries

Always take the time to outline constraints and boundaries with your innovators in advance of any problem solving. Doing so will help ensure the project team accelerates core strategy rather than explore tangental opportunity that might struggle to unlock business value.

3. Debrief and integrate

Finally, conclude each experiment with a full debrief to expose valuable lessons-learned for the business. Its interesting how solving just one problem quickly reframes your perception and evaluation of other business challenges.

While the pace of conducting experiments might be initially challenging, the results and accelerated progress make it an ideal way of working within a thriving and resilient culture.