Design Is The New Management Consultancy

This is something I've been thinking about for a while. I've been discussing it with a few people including Russell, who deserves equal credit for spotting this trend and for helping me formulate this post.

I think I first mentioned Design Is The New Management Consultancy in my post about The Future Of Graphic Design. It seemed to strike a chord with most of you and was picked up by Michael Bierut on Design Observer.

(By the way Design Observer has got a lot, lot better since that redesign).

I keep reading things that elude to this theory, but nothing that's explicitly concentrated on it. So here goes. Deep breath.

Why is Design Is The New Management Consultancy?

Because true design thinking means that design is a verb and not a noun. It's a better way of thinking and not a production process that's applied at the end of a project.

Design is so much more valuable when it's brought in at the start of a project or the start of a problem. As Clive Grinyer (director of Orange's Design & Usability Innovation team) says in his current RSA Journal article, "Design is habitually brought in too late, used simply to paint and decorate products for which the major decisions have already been made. Thus we have products that are easy to build, designed by technically minded people, but that are not desirable or usable."

How is Design The New Management Consultancy?

Think back to the 50's. If you were bright, intelligent, had a slight eye for the unusual and wanted to earn decent money you went to work for an ad agency. The CDP's of this world. Nowadays you work for one of the big consulting companies, PwC, KPMG, Deloitte or Accenture. Discard your prejudice management consultants and what this means that these places are full of bright, entrepreneurial thinkers. Think about it. When Tony Blair wants to "reform" something his first thought is to call in one of the big four. It's the same with most of the PLC's in Britain. I'm not proposing that Tony Blair rings Interbrand and asks them how to reform the NHS, but what I am saying is that designers are natural problem solvers and a new type of design (and designer) is emerging from the dark days of DTP.

Post DTP and post Brand (as Trade Marked by Wolff Olins) designers have turned to innovation and strategy as a new revenue stream. Some design firms are brilliant at this, IDEO and Imagination spring to mind, whereas some are bad like Interbrand and pretty much every packaging design firm.

A good designer / client relationship will already have an element of Design Is The New Management Consultancy, they just won't know call it that. I'm talking about those moments when a design company suggests things that don't involve a specific below the line outcome. For example we were recently asked how to increase attendance at some employee feedback events. We suggested holding them at 4pm instead of 5.30pm so that employees felt they were getting some extra 'time off'. Really simple and it worked well. This is a small example of what I'm talking about.

Here's another, much more brilliant, one. I posted this a while ago but it's worth revisiting.

John Sorrell (who founded Newell & Sorrell) runs a thing called the Sorrell Foundation. They worked on a project called Joined Up Design For Schools and now they're working on one called Joined Up Design For Health. Take a look at some of their initial research.

An ambulance driver said, "One of the biggest problems is space to turn. We get obstructed by other vehicles dropping patients off, or by police vehicles." So a designer in his role as management consultant could design a bigger turning area, the ambulances wouldn't get obstructed and lives might be saved. Sure, anyone could have made that suggestion after talking to that driver, but what I'm saying is that a designer is much more likely to think like that than an Accenture employee.

It's really hard to write this post as I see so many examples of this but they're all really hard to collate. I'll start a new category and try and add them as I go along. Here's another one.

I stayed in this hotel last week, here's a picture of the lift.

The button on the far right is actually the 'emergency alarm' button, although in real life it looks very much like the 'call lift' button. I almost set the alarm off every time I went in the lift and I'm sure it must have been set off loads of times before. This kind of stuff will be affecting their business and yet good design and good usability could solve the problem.

Here's another slightly obscure example. We worked on a project once with a massive catering firm. The managing director of this firm was a dynamic, inspiring lady whose proudest moment was that she'd changed the recipe for sausages in the Little Chef and managed to shave 1p off the cost of the sausage. This saved Little Chef millions and millions of pounds every year, and she reckoned the sasuages tasted better too. That's not design related, but can you see how designers could contribute in a similar way? By changing the way customers move around a supermarket or by changing the way the door of the AA van opens or by making more space for the ambulances to turn around.

Here's another example. Wayne Hemingway famously acted as design consultant for the Straiths South Bank housing development in Gateshead. A bold move by the developers. If you every hear Wayne talk (and boy he can talk) he gets really animated about this project. One of the things  they wanted to do was to bring back the idea of communities, neighbours that actually know each other. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you'll be thinking, every house builder says that. Wayne (a designer by the way) identified that one of the big problems was that parents were afraid to let their kids play outside because they couldn't see them from their lounge windows. The reason they couldn't see them from their lounge windows was because their cars were packed right outside their house. The reason their cars were parked outside their houses was because they were worried about them getting nicked.

George Wimpey had discovered that if they built homes where you couldn't see the car from the window people were less inclined to buy. Really. All subliminal stuff that people would never mention in a focus group, but true none the less. So, driveways in front of houses meant no gardens and therefore nowhere for kids to play where parents could easily keep an eye on them, therefore kids played inside or in the back garden, which meant less social interaction (if you've got kids you'll know what a brilliant conversation opener they are) and no community.

Solution? They designed homes with a garden right outside the front windows. Cars were put in a secure underground car park under the estate, so parents could stop worrying about their cars and keep an eye on the kids. I might be a little bit wrong on this bit because I'm trying to remember a talk from a few years ago, but you get the point.

That sounds so simple, doesn't it?

Here's yet another one. I was in a van the other day. A Volkswagen van. In the top corner of the windscreen, drivers side, they had a little sticker that told you what oil the van took.

Isn't that a brilliant idea? They ought to put more useful info on there, like tyre pressures (I always forget tyre pressures) and service intervals and stuff.

Am I making sense? There are already designers doing all this and there are already people talking about this kind of thing. I think this is going to be huge in the coming years and the good designers, the successful designers will have to start thinking like this.

What does everyone else think?

Comments

[Patrick Syms]

You're making total sense.

But to be slightly smartarse about it, didn't each of your bad examples have a designer involved? The lift with the inappropriate emergency button; but the hospital with the poor turning circle; the housing which hindered social interaction; the cars without useful info posted on the windscreen. All of them would have been the work of an architect or designer (I'm using the two interchangebly, hope you don't mind).

I think that this sort of empathetic, putting-yourself-in-the-place-of-those-using-it approach is often present in designers. But clearly isn't in all designers, as your examples prove. But it's also present in many other individuals in many other roles and agency/consultancy types.

But you are right about this trend, just as there has been a trend for clients to get top level advice from management consultants, and before them ad agencies.

I guess this is a longwinded way of saying that yes, it appears to be happening. But time will tell whether it is an evolution in the way that clients seek advice or just another fad.

Best to make the most of it while you can. Just in case.

[Camiel]

Design's secret weapon is its ability to make huge differences through small interventions. Your examples prove it.

To say design is the new management consultancy might be a little harsh. Maybe it's better to say it would be wise to consult a designer for small and simple solutions before you ask a management consultancy to attack the problem with a huge turnaround operation - and 32 kilos of reports.

[Drew]

I think you're over hyping what is basically a requirement for common sense and imagination, cababilities that are probably sorely lacking amongst the general populace but not necessarily confined to 'designers'.

I'm reminded of a news article I read a couple of years back which said the US military had approached Hollywood scriptwriters for novel ideas to track down Bin Ladin. Obviously this didn't work very well but I was impressed by the US army's thought process... 'We're not very good at thinking so lets go ask some guys who are'.

One possible outcome of this idea of yours (and perhaps in defence of your post) is going to be a chef inventing a new, more efficient way to peel a potato and calling himself a culinary designer... but he's still a chef.

[Ben]

The big problem with this is that’s hard to find crystal clear examples of it happening. As you’ve all mentioned, the boundaries get blurred and the decent ones are doing it anyway. There was a good example in the Economist before I went on holiday but for the life of me I can’t find I now!

I will try and find better, clearer examples.

[MarcusBrown]

I think your observations are spot on. I think that Patrick’s comments are a little harsh. Of course there was a designer involved in the projects mentioned but at what point were they involved in the project? And that’s fundamental to this post.

Generally I think everybody who has, traditionally, been involved at the latter stages of a project wants to get involved up-front. Because they deal with the doing and they see where things went wrong. They are also bored with taking the brunt of “why doesn’t it work” when it’s kind of too late (or too expense) to change anything.

There are dangers however. In my business we already have management consultancies; Print Managers. I think the initial drive behind PM’s (apart from making money) was to get involved early and optimise (they even used the term “design for print”). This effort, has proven to muddy the waters even further though by adding an added layer of administration and reporting. When PM’s do work, they work well and can offer value, but this is largely dependant on the quality of the account people.

[A Graphic Designer In London]

I agree with all your points, but like one of the other commenters - I also think that your examples are those of bad designers, which highlight the cause for good designers - especially in places like hospitals.

I would suggest that its something that should be tackled at source; art colleges.

Admittedly I left some time ago but I still go to the graduate exhibitions and I think there is far too much focus on contemporary looking work and quick avertising solutions rather than practical solutions for problems not necessarily in the sphere of your work. Getting design students to look at and solve problems like you have highlighted more often would embed some critical thought processes into their work at an early stage in their professions.

[karthikeyan]

nice

[Bhav Chohan]

Hi,
Great article, and interesting observation into possible future application of designers in business type roles. I do however have a few questions on the topic of what IDEO call Design Thinking - for anyone qualified to answer:

1.What exactly is design thinking? Isn’t it just a creative behaviour?

2.What impact does design thinking potentially have on the way businesses coan operate?

3.How can corporations take advantage of design thinking in a practical sense?

4.Is there any framework/model/process which can be followed?

5.How does it empower designers?

[Juno888]

I would suggest that its something that should be tackled at source; art colleges

[Michal Migurski]

I'm with Patrick here - all the examples, good and bad, involved a designer. Design may be the new management consultancy, but I don't think that makes it a cure-all by any stretch. The consultancies you mention (Accenture, PWC, etc.) and the ad agencies before them have a reputation for overspecification and mild corruption, no doubt due to the kinds of money that can be made in business therapy. If design ends up filling this niche, you're going to see the IDEOs and Interbrands of the world staff up rapidly to meet to demand, and hire the same kind of second-string blockheads who currently work hard to give management consultancy a bad name.

In response to Juno888, art college is not the source. Plain old high school / secondary school is the source - effective problem solving and sensible thinking should be the domain of an entire society, designers and non-designers alike.

[See-ming Lee]

Good design is good business.
-- Thomas Watson, CEO of IBM, 1950s

[Henriettaf]

Good design is definitely important but if it doesn't stand for anything isn't it just more noise?
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