Consultants who don’t want to be helped.

“How do I advise a designer who is stuck in their ways and not open to understanding the business problem we are trying to solve?” In a coaching session, I was recently asked this excellent question and the answer I provided may be of help to you as well.

For context, here was the full question: How can I advise /consult a designer who finds reading research output notes hard and doesn’t want to read them, thinks they are simplifying things and saving the world by jumping into their favourite UI design to solve this complex problem simply because they can’t understand the business problem and also are being resistant to read and listen to new methods?

This is an interesting problem that I have seen before. First my thoughts on this, then some related actions you can take.

My Thoughts:

1. To make things simple is to remove the rich flavour (that’s bad)

Oversimplification is a huge problem for individuals and clients alike. When simplifying, especially in regard to their understanding of the ‘problem’ space, or context, it can cause real trouble. To ensure we can solve things well, and for people in a way that maintains resilience, we should aim to maintain a complex and potentially contradictory understanding of the space.

You can get an idea of the risk of oversimplification here:

https://www.fastcompany.com/44844/5-habits-highly-reliable-organizations

You may also enjoy this longer interview transcript: https://hbr.org/2003/04/sense-and-reliability

Actions you can take:

• Share with them examples in your context where the lived experience is different to the understood process. There are always gaps.
• Lead a conversation about how they know which specific action to take when faced with a scenario they are very experienced with. You want to tease out the many subtleties they rely on, but may not be aware of.
• Discuss the judgements they made in a recent project and see if they think someone else could have come to the same decisions using only a checklist that they created?

2. They’re not interested in reading and learning. Now what?

That’s a problem generally, as they seem to assume that their own subjective account for things is enough in all situations. There is immense value in recognising and using the subjective lived experience as a guide to both understand the world, and to take action, but it cannot be the whole world. A designer should approach things from multiple perspectives including actively looking for different views including those that contradict his or her own. The bare minimum here is to act ‘objectively’ but ideally pushing the boundaries to find contradiction is even better, however this is for a longer discussion.

If we were to set out with the intention of being ‘objective’, in which direction should you go first? I would ask myself whether or not my proposed type of solution is addressing the real problem. Sounds pretty basic, but to do it can be a bit harder.

Actions you can take:

• First stop is Empathy. Show them what a day-in-the-life of their main client/stakeholder looks like (without resorting do doing a journey map, or empathy map about it). Go to the actual place where things happen. Think about what this person will be able to achieve with the thing that’s created for them?
• Next stop is to think about which risk you are managing for the client, for the customer, and for yourself as the professional services provider, or in-house design professional. Think about what would happen if this whole thing fails, for the product, for the client org, for the client individual? What fears are driving them the most?

“What if I were to shift the scope of the risk a little bit?” Does it sound more correct, or less correct?

Are you getting closer to the real risk or further away?

3. You can’t see what you can’t see

By now you are thinking yeah, yeah, that’s fine but this designer I am working with won’t do those things, because they don’t recognise the value of moving away from their current idea. Ah ha! The answer then is to expose them to more variance. More examples of different inputs, that lead to different outcomes. Building variance in the context / problem definition space ironically is achieved by exposing ourselves to variance in the solutions space. By knowing how to solve (in detail, and with confidence) for a particular setting we will better identify complex scenarios that may incorporate many phenomena. And if they are a consultant, we’re talking as much about their approach to design, as we are their approach to engagement management. Sometimes the real blocker for an individual is that they have mis-interpreted, or mis-labelled the relationship. So paradoxically, in order to get them to see, you need to teach them to see.

In my all time favourite book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the main character is working as a professor and the students are not able to write anything interesting at all. He then forces them to radically narrow the scope of what they must write about and the quality (and output) goes up dramatically. First it’s a streetscape, no, then a building, no, then just a coin, and they are able to write. What’s interesting is they are only capable of writing the things they see on the coin. Things they bring to the writing a-priori. If they know about scratches, and the queen’s head on the coin they write about that. If they know the history of how the animals came to be on the other side, they write about that. But they are not able to write about something they have not experienced. It just isn’t available to them. The moral here is that they will not know how to see unless they’ve seen it before. Your job is to find the smallest example, or metaphor that will help them see. Then when they return to the work, that idea cannot be unseen. It won’t be easy, you have to do it secretly given they are not interested in reading, they definitely wont want to feel like they are being lectured to.

Here is an excerpt from the book that talks about the coin exercise: https://drive.google.com/file/d/10ZE9mRVaYCRJp182f2BkzNFsV_f7kGNT/view?usp=sharing

Actions you can take:

• Sneakily have them do the coin exercise. Work it into a workshop, or consider doing it yourself and sharing the result with everyone.
• Create opportunities to ‘see’ varying phenomena in downtime. Think context, problems, solutions etc. Not when the pressure is on to deliver.
• Unpack some of their existing work and discuss what they thought was important before getting deep into the detail, then what they thought the key issues were afterward.

4. Maybe it really IS simple?

Of course, it’s possible that you are not solving a problem in a highly complex environment that requires understanding before action. Referring to the Cynefin framework, if you are in a simple or even complicated domain, it may be appropriate to proceed with known heuristics such as the UI patterns you mentioned (in the longer version of the original question), or to take solution advice from an expert in the field. An expert in this case would be someone who has experienced the problem space, and specific problems a number of times before in something of an apprenticeship model, and has validated solutions that repeatedly work. Doctors are a good example of this kind of professional.

Actions you can take:

• Explore your space through the lens of the Cynefin framework, and ask yourself whether you really are facing a complex problem with a complex solutions space.
• Overview of the Cynefin framework which helps you think about when you can rely on old solutions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epXqgrm2hs4&ab_channel=CultivatingLeadership

5. How do they frame success?

For example which of the following do they consider to be an appropriate way to measure and discuss a successful initiative?

• Harmony amongst team.
• Following ‘the’ process.
• Outcomes (irrespective of how you get there)
• Being right (technically right)

Actions you can take:

My hunch is that this person prioritises being right, and or Outcomes (based on their own current knowledge). So to help them along, you may like to nudge them toward the other two. They live on a little spectrum:

Being Right…..Outcomes……Process………Harmony

A draft visualisation of the ‘spectrum’.

Moving gradually to the right. A focus on ‘Process’ can be a way around blockers.

Over time, you will want to shift them to the right. So in your situation the next item is process. Ultimately the goal is to help them to become a little more self-aware in a way that doesn’t alienate them, not does it drive them to sterile objectivity, but should motivate them to find other (equally subjective) perspectives.

Process is a magic gateway between the two worlds of Right-ness, and Harmony. But must not become the goal.

Going back to my recommendation of finding examples that show how different inputs can lead to different outputs, if I am correct that this person is fixated on being right, and on outcomes, then they may be most open to showing them examples of the world, using ‘process’ to frame the content and discussion.

6. Final thoughts and recommendations

• Unpack or map the various processes (how the work happens, customer flow, client flow). It’s accessible and will help mindsets to move between different perspectives.
• Ensure your interactions focus on a positive feeling, without an obvious focus on changing how people think. Just fun things to do.
• Package some of your recommendations as a simplified 3 point list. Essentially leveraging their desire to simplify. But the content you give, must be clear steps that lead them to broader thinking, consider using some of the actions offered throughout this article.