May 10, 2021 | by Budi Tanrim
Dancing with a stranger
Do you want to implement the human-centered practice in your team?
It will be easy if everyone understands the value of the practice. But that’s unlikely. You have to dance with the people who think differently than you. They probably don’t care about design thinking.
There are a couple of options:
The first one, you get frustrated because they don’t value the same thing. You get mad and keep arguing your opinion on how to work and solve a problem—this doesn’t sound promising. It’s also scary to push your thinking even when you are still learning about the practice.
The other way to handle it is to understand their intrinsic motivation. They might be very persistent in building features randomly due to the pressure. If so, how could you work together with them to release that pressure?
After all, when we dance with the stranger, we have to get to know them. Most importantly, we have dance with them.
Implementing human-centered practice takes years. Kaaren Hanson, who transformed Intuit to adopt design thinking, mentioned she spent five years to get the team to a good state. She also mentioned, “At another company, it might have taken fifteen years. But that doesn’t mean you’re not going to be making progress.”
It’s a long process. It might even be subtle. For example, when I lead the human-centered practice in my previous role, I started to notice the office filled with post-its everywhere. It’s subtle, but that shows a small change.
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