Resilient Design ManagementEmbracing Complexity in Teams, Products, and Organizations

Chris Avore

Nasdaq, Inc.

@erova

#mx16

How do leaders bounce back from uncertainty or adversity and succeed

under challenging circumstances?

New competitors New technologies Growth pressure Lower margins Globalization Talent/workforce challenges More data to “help” us

and it all happens faster than ever before

Situations emerge in the process of creative destruction in which many firms may have to perish that nevertheless would be able to live on vigorously and usefully if they could weather a particular storm

Joseph Schumpeter

Businesses that used to be separate are now interconnected and interdependent, which means these systems are now more complex.

Rita McGrath

Complex Adaptive Systems are diverse living elements made up of multiple interconnected agents that have the capacity to grow and change.

Sharon VanderKaay

This sounds complicated

We can determine complicated outcomes. We can only enable complex outcomes. We can specify complicated systems. We can only intervene in complex systems.

Irene Ng

Complicated systems Complex adaptive systems

Predictable Tightly structured Efficient Rebuildable Trainable Scarcity mindset

Unpredictable No centralized structure Emergent Uhh, not rebuildable Learnable Opportunities for abundance

The opposite of simple The opposite of independent

Complicated systems Complex adaptive systems

urban transportation

air tower

• Planning • Organizing • Command • Coordination • Control

Greater, denser interdependencies of partners, supply systems, customers, etc

If you manage a complex organization as if it were just a complicated one, you’ll make serious, expensive mistakes.

Our world is dominated by the extreme, the unknown, and the very improbable ... while we spend our time engaged in small talk, focusing on the known and the repeated.

Nassim N. Taleb

Business

ProductMe

Dev

When will this ship?How many designers

do you need?

How many releases will this take?

Cause &

Effect

Command &

Control

Prepare &

Embrace

Let’s expect surprises.

Let’s foster flexibility.

Let’s interpret our environment.

Let’s position our teams, products, and organizations to become resilient.

Resilience is the capacity of a complex adaptive system to absorb change and disturbances, and still retain its basic structure and function, it’s identity. 

What [the tsunami] did was show the vulnerability in the supply chain. It became clear automakers had no idea how far down the supply chain some of these third level

suppliers were. They now have a process in place to set up a war room to handle these situations,” says Michele Krebs, a senior

analyst with Edmunds.com.

I’m a design manager. I’m not responsible for e-coli outbreaks or

fraudulent emissions systems, or some rich dude wanting my Board of

Directors tossed.

or earthquakes or volcanoes.

• Funding gets cut • Change of boss, stakeholder • Acquisition of like-assets • Usability testing reveals failures • Change in process • Security attack

Resilient Design Management · Chris Avore · @erova #mxconf

Adaptive Cycle

• innovation • new opportunities

• maximum growth stage • exploit every possible resource or niche • weakly interconnected • internal systems weakly regulated

• established system • standardized, proven solutions • specialization

• Creative Destruction • state of chaotic collapse • often brief, rapid decline

α

Ωr

KConservation

ReleaseRapid growth

Reorganization

α

Ωr

K

α

Ωr

K• innovation • new opportunities

• maximum growth stage • exploit every possible resource or niche • weakly interconnected • internal systems weakly regulated

• established system • standardized, proven solutions • specialization

• Creative Destruction • state of chaotic collapse • often brief, rapid decline

Ω

KConservation

• increase in efficiency through reduced redundancy (one size fits all) • subsidies so people have an incentive to stay rather than change • more sunk costs into maintaining status quo • increased command and control (less and less flexibility) • preoccupation with process (more rules, more time devoted to sticking to procedures) • suppression of novelty, less experimentation • rising transaction costs to get stuff done

“Efficiency increases and the future seems ever more certain to be

determined.”

What can designers, and leaders of design teams, do to avoid this late K phase?

I have an have an idea!

Great idea!

Agree 100%

Let’s do it!

Diversify

Diversify

Hire people from different backgrounds

Don’t fall for domain knowledge or years of experience when hiring

Team Approach Business

Alternate prototyping methods, research techniques

Change up who presents to stakeholders, bosses, interview clients, etc

Continually monitor the industry as potential partners, not competitors

Highlight risk of only engaging with one content provider, no API, etc

Modularity

Modularity

• Build, Buy, or Partner? • Many (cough, diverse)

sources of content, audiences

• Establish autonomous teams with tools & training

Organizing your design team by function (collaboration,data visualization, etc) instead of business unit or product increases modularity.

“We’re in the very early stage of standardization and our strategy is that we don’t put all our eggs in one basket,” said Mr. Bussmann.

Instead, UBS is trying to team up with the most promising groups and technology providers so that it has a front-row seat when one develops critical mass.

“You prepare yourself for that change in the marketplace so you’re part of that change,” he said—WSJ

We’re gonna be rich!

The prototype is testing great

It’s amazing!

The prototype has serious problems

Let’s get to work.

Let’s look at the research

I’m ready to help

The first test went OK

Uh oh, the prototype has

serious problems

Close Feedback Loops

Close Feedback Loops

As a design manager, it may not be your responsibility to make sure all parties are talking to each other, but you can facilitate the conversations and recognize who is missing.

• Invite business & product execs to design studio

• Share design research with everyone

• Keep Support, Sales, Marketing included

Redundancy

Redundancy

• Cross-train designers so more people know research, visual design, etc

• Teach product managers, stakeholders, others how to apply design methods in their daily work

• Move people to different projects so others know what the projects are about

• Reduce specialization

Teams in which different individuals took turns leading the group were more creative than teams in which one person was consistently in charge

MIT Sloan Management Review

Summary

• Diverse teams, approaches, and products increase your ability to react to disruptive events or take on new opportunities

• Modular teams can sustain disruption without adversely affecting other parts of your organization

• Longer, looser feedback loops mean disruptions can go unnoticed

• Redundancy provides multiple sources of productivity, knowledge, and leadership

These recommendations will be difficult to implement in a business built for optimization, efficiency, and maximum returns based on minimum effort.

conclusion

Change the mindset

See your design team as a part of an interdependent system Appreciate and expect ambiguity Account for non-linear progress Replace scarcity-driven approaches with creating abundance Embrace grassroots/bottom-up ideas & projects Learn from experience, not just training Strive for influence, not control

Make changes from a position of strength, not desperation.

Thank you.Chris Avore @erova