Different Paths
by edavis on 26/08/09 at 10:39 pm
I have the privilege to manage a multi-year, multi-million engagement that supports one of the offices within the Department of Health and Human Services. My team makes a number of things happen such as web design and development, IT support, database development, call center operations, plain language web writing, print design, social media marketing, e-mail campaigns, search engine optimization, and web analytics. 
Needless to say, I work with a very diverse, but strong team.
As the project director, some of my main functions, as duly noted by Scott Berkun in his book Making Things Happen, are to answer the questions “What do we need to do?” and “How will we do it?” and then find the way to “Do it.”
One of the things that fascinates me is working with this diverse team to answer those questions. What I am finding out is that no one thinks the same way or follows the same process to arrive at their decisions.
In particular, I’m amazed at how designers answer these questions. The ways they approach solving a problem are vastly different from the business-school problem solving approach I take. Some of their ideas, which are oftentimes amazing, seem to come from nowhere. Although I will never abandon my approach to problem solving, I’m always looking to expand my thinking and discovering different ways to view problems and develop solutions.
Luckily, Garr Reynolds recently published a post titled “10 tips on how to think like a designer“. These tips are:
- Embrace constraints.
- Practice restraint.
- Adopt the beginner’s mind.
- Check your ego at the door.
- Focus on the experience of the design.
- Become a master storyteller.
- Think communication not decoration.
- Obsess about ideas not tools.
- Clarify your intention.
- Sharpen your vision & curiosity and learn from the lessons around you.
- Learn all the “rules” and know when and why to break them.
If you are looking to expand your approach to problem solving, I highly encourage you to check out Garr’s post. Finding new ways to uncover and tackle problems is never a bad thing.
