Bernard Roth, the academic director of the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, believes that the same engineering and design principles that guide innovation can help increase achievement in the workplace. In his book The Achievement Habit, Roth encourages people to rethink the way they talk about their goals.
Roth explains the root of this design thinking in the first chapter of his book:
“Design thinking is an amorphous concept that was given its name by David Kelley, another Stanford professor and cofounder of IDEO, when he was trying to explain that successful designers have a different mind-set and approach than most people…suddenly everyone was talking about this new concept, design thinking, something I’d been practicing for half a century without having a proper name for it. “
Instead of wishing for a big change — a personal goal or a breakthrough at work — and stopping when faced with external limitations, people can follow the design process to distill their best ideas into achievable, action-oriented goals. According to Business Insider, these five steps from Roth can transform your approach to any challenge:
- Empathize: Learn what the issues are.
- Define the problem: Which question are you going to answer?
- Ideate: Generate possible solutions.
- Prototype: Abandon perfection and either build your project or develop a plan.
- Test and get feedback from others.
These five steps give employees a succinct and powerful to work smarter every day. As more companies hope to spur innovation on the micro and enterprise level, design thinking is an incredible asset for teams in every industry.