Transformation Design: Redux
A while back, I hastily slapped up a sloppy post about transformation design. If you only read my post and not the RED document that described it, I’m sorry. I have no doubt I left you confused. Maybe even annoyed. I’ve continued to refine my description of TD since then in hopes of carving the elevator version explaining why it is important in the marketing and business space. What follows doesn’t feel perfect yet as it's not "bite-size" (so please lob your revisions and/or points of confusion at me), but it does fit on one 8.5”x11” in size 12 font:
WHAT IS TRANSFORMATION DESIGN?
Marketers shape fact. Traditional designers shape form. Transformation designers shape behavior - of people, employees, systems and organizations.
TD’s offering is not the tools, components, systems or experiences it creates to elicit the new behavior; the offering is the changed organization and/or individual.
This is critical because the right answer to a business challenge is not always a new product, market offer or brand idea. The right solution may be a new process, service offering, interactive platform, retail experience, product use, system approach or an entirely new business. In short, the solution may be a new and sustainable behavior – a.k.a, a transformation.
OUTSOURCING V. CO-SOURCING
Rather than acting as master designers who emerge from their black boxes to unveil their elegant solutions, transformation designers mediate diverse points of view and facilitate collaboration in defining the problem and prototyping the solutions. They create a neutral space where a range of people, whose expertise may have bearing on the problem, can work together.
This is called “co-sourcing.” Outsourcing is something done for you. Co-sourcing is something done with you.
BENEFITS
Applications abound:
Behavior has no boundaries; neither does transformation design. Its application ranges wide: marketing programs, social services, supply chains, product experiences, etc.
Co-sourcing builds capacity, not dependency:
Because individuals and organizations operate in an environment of constant change, the challenge is not how to design a rigid, end solution, but how to design a means of continually responding, adapting and innovating. Transformation design’s co-sourcing approach leaves behind (in organizations and individuals) not only the shape of a new system of behavior, but the tools, skills and organizational capacity for ongoing change.
More time spent solving, less time spent selling:
Participation in the process gives all stakeholders ownership of a vision and helps champion the chosen direction.
Less risk, less time, less cost:
TDs prototype ideas before committing all resources to the agreed upon solution. Doing so means they commit a little to learn a lot so they fail earlier to succeed sooner.
Deep change, not cosmetic change:
TD solutions are designed to create sustained change of behavior over time in our clients and/or their customers.
Labels: Business Thinking, Design, Marketing Heresy, Transformation Desgin
posted by Leland at 8:25 PM
9 Comments:
As a designer, sound like a good idea/definition.
I like this. It's very IDEO and their 10 Faces Of Innovation.
Co-sourcing is a great way to describe the process.
What concerns me is, isn't this just 'good business'? Business being just a particular type of design.
Another, which I am not qualified to comment on, only question. How does the client team feel about this 'occupation'? I mean that in the hostile sense.
Client teams are human. They get defensive. They defend their turf/jobs. An entrepreneur would love to have their business 'occupied' and transformed - at the right price. But employees? Of course, they could be transformed. But that would be a tricky power-relation. It's not self-motivated unless employees can just dial up their transformation agency when THEY feel they need it.
There's an element of Plato's 'Republic' about all this. Naturally that's always the case when defining perfect systems. Pointing it out is not a criticism, but could be a warning.
My gut tells me, inside out always wins.
If a design agency can provide all these things then all they need is a product/market/incentive and do it for themselves. *Show*, don't *tell*.
Fiddling with other people's business, however good you might be, there's something of the bully about it. Something of the coward. Nanny-ish. Anti-entrepreneurial. Anti-risk. Weak. Suspicious. Which might be why the businesses that need help most, refuse it. "If you can do it better, come and take us on as a competitor. Else, bugger off!"
Hey Adam,
As always great points.
A couple counter points to consider:
#1 On this issue of "Occupation," consider the company Fahrenheit 212. Those guys are essentially an outsourced R&D department - albeit hyper and motley. They come back not with campaigns, but new, ready-to-execute products each with its own market research backing up its validity. They have so many clients knocking on the ir door they can't catch their breath.
#2 On the comment, "If you can do it better, come and take us on as a competitor. Else, bugger off!" Maybe I've misled myself, but I believe there are two kinds of business people in the world: those who are great at exploring and those who are great at exploiting.
As you know, it's all very McKenzie Wark: Hackers (explorers) vs Vectoralists (exploitists). The hackers bring to life the multiplicity of all possible schemas and vectoralists make it available to all people.
It's very rare for a company (and an individual) to be great, let alone good, at both. (P&G is one of those rarities that come to mind.) Companies are usually very good at one or the other. These two types of companies need each other. Which is why, we notice Fahrenheit 212 doing so damn well, and, in my experience, I have had clients run to me/my team for ideas. I this most business people would agree that a competitive edge is gained when top performing, but different, companies join forces in a common goal - rather than developing that skillset in house.
In the end, I think the thing that causes animosity and territorialism on the client side is when their agency "stiff arms" them for wanting to get involved and help in the process. In other words, when an agency operates like a black box. If the client and agency are working together, the way co-sourcing idealizes, then both share a common vision and participate in a "hands-on" approach to developing the solution.
#3 (this isn't really a counterpoint) The thing that bothers me with my current elevator speech is it sounds to business focused. It's not customer focused enough.
There is a fundamental difference in the way TDs look at businesses and they way the rest of the world does. The rest of the world defines the economic function of businesses as "
making and/or deliver goods and service." A TD defines the economic function of a business as "guiding."
When a consumer buys a product, a the prevailing business attitude interprets that act as the customer affirming, "I like this product." A TD would interpret it as the customer requesting, "Please, change my life (in a big way or small way)." People hold aspirations. They seek them. Some pursuits stall. Some get derailed. Some persist. Either way, people consider other people, organizations and companies as potential allies in that journey. (This is why TV self-help shows about relationships, finances, etc are popular. People are looking for helpful allies who can give them the tools to attain their aspiration.)
So "transformation" is less about changing the client company, and more about helping that company extend their relationship, expand their function and increase their value to their customers.
Does that make sense?
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That comment just above is very pretty!
Yes it makes complete sense to me.
I'm trying to articulate what question a customer wants to answer when considering a purchase:
'How can I use this brand/product/service to tell the world something about myself?'
Of course, it assumes a certain accommodation with the 'inter-networked self'.
Branding (as a big droning, echoing story) is getting in the way of creating new types of networked products that enable this customer-storytelling. I'm calling these interactions, Product Narratives. Basically, that people can tell stories through their use of products and that these stories when 'streamed/networked/told' ARE the marketing of the product. (I should write that down somewhere.)
I am aware of Fahrenheit 212. Thanks for reminding me of them. They certainly raise my spirits. I'll spend more time reading up on their work.
That was a great point about two "top performing, but different, companies join forces". I forget that and I'm liable to think people would be better to go it alone. I'm impatient and that clouds my perspective.
Adam: "I'm trying to articulate what question a customer wants to answer when considering a purchase: 'How can I use this brand/product/service to tell the world something about myself?'"
Very interesting!
Though, I’d articulate it a bit differently: 'How can I use this brand/product/service to affect my self/my life/my activities in a positive way?'
The difference is your person is concerned about TELLING his story and my person is concerned about LIVING his story. It’s true, people do want to tell their stories, but they first and foremost want to live them.
Here’s why I think this:
Carl Jung said, "There is no truth, only stories." In other words, as we live, we create stories, not truth. We create stories of what we've done in the past, stories of what we're doing in the present and stories of what we'd like to do/be in the future. And, I believe, 'aspirations' are the stories of our future - ones we desperately want and try to live into with varying degrees of success.
That's why, I believe, given the above, a person does not look at a product/service/brand as a platform to TELL his aspirational story. Instead, he's looking at it as a tool that can help him LIVE into the aspirational story he's written in his head.
'How can I use this brand/product/service to affect my self/my life/my activities in a positive way?'
Even more very interesting!
I agree with your reasoning completely, and I think that telling the world is simply part of confirming to themselves that their aspiration has been achieved.
In that way, telling it, IS living it.
Or, 'fake it until you make it'.
Which is exactly the type of behaviours we see with social media. This projection as an anticipation of truth. Simulations. Roleplay.
There is another aspect of Product Narratives. The product in question *tells* stories automatically. It watches its owner. And somewhat like a pet, it is imbued with human characteristics and so acts as an extended self.
(My iPod does this in its connection with iLike. He's my record shop assistant recommending stuff and telling people what great taste I've got. He's my music bot.)
In this sense, a product frees its user for yet more aspirations to tell/live out stories or merely script them.
I wouldn't say the product is the only platform for telling stories. 'Product Narratives' is more of an engineering term.
I've had to split all possible platforms into three parts: Narrative Objects, Narrative Environments, and Narrative Acts. These are the intersections of People, Things, and Stories.
Working on it:
http://www.adamcrowe.com/2007/12/06/performance-venn-narratives/
"I agree with your reasoning completely, and I think that telling the world is simply part of confirming to themselves that their aspiration has been achieved.
"In that way, telling it, IS living it.
"Which is exactly the type of behaviours we see with social media. This projection as an anticipation of truth. Simulations. Roleplay."
Cool. Got it. Makes total sense.
"it [the product] is imbued with human characteristics and so acts as an extended self."
Schulze and Webb have a ppt presentation all about this on their site (http://schulzeandwebb.com/blog/). It's called "Products are People Too." If you haven't seen it, find. You'd love it. If you can't find it, let me know and I'll email to you.
There is also something interesting about the "extended self" aspect of using a product. In the book _Where the Action Is_, authoer Pal Dourish talks about this product-becoming-part-of-the-person moment. Take a hammer. When you are staring at a hammer deiciding if it's strong enough or the right tool, it is considered "present at hand." It is just an object of my attention.
But we don't always stare at objects; we act through them as well. So when you're hitting something with the hammer, the hammer becomes part of your body. It becomes "ready at hand" as it disappears from your immediate concerns. It's not the hammer hitting the object, it's you.
Which, in a way, is what this whole transformation design thing (when applied to marketing) is about: turning marketing objects from "present-at-hand" (an object of your attention) to "ready-to-hand" (an object you abosrb to help you act).
Ooh. I should remember that.
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