Is, Will and Should by Bryan
November 20, 2008 in Design Strategy with 3 Comments
Peter Drucker was a master in the field of business thinking. Earlier this year I stumbled upon his Paradigm of Change Model and I started thinking about how this applied to design.
Drucker's concept is composed of IS, WILL and SHOULD and describes the constant fluctuations of a business. These three states map to operations, tactics and strategy. In this Venn diagram the intersection of IS/WILL and WILL/SHOULD is where interaction design and design strategy emerge as critical to a business' success.
Over the course of many design strategy sessions, we've tweaked the Venn diagram to apply it to the field of interaction design to help clients build great products. I'm going to highlight a few insights from the model above:
- Most businesses get stuck in the IS circle because a solid operation plan keeps the lights on in a business. The problem with staying focused on operations is that you forget to innovate and create new opportunities (the world market can pass you by)!
- Most businesses do not use tactics (WILL circle) enough to test the strategy (SHOULD). Instead, businesses try to confirm the strategy with analytics (thus moving back and forth between IS and SHOULD). While this is a great opportunity, businesses miss the chance to innovate with tactics. Tactics allow a business to innovate much faster.
- Entrepreneurs often have great vision and understand the SHOULD in start-ups, but get lost in the WILL because it takes too much detailed iteration and thinking.
- The intersection between IS and WILL is the sweet spot for interaction design. Coincidentally, it's also the place that most businesses struggle to understand and get done.
- WILL is usually owned by product management, but finding talented product managers to balance the business strategy with stuff that needs to get done is tough. Businesses need to allow product managers the flexibility to create value with tactics (instead of balancing the IS and SHOULD). Innovation can't happen very effectively without tactics.
- Design strategy is the intersection of WILL and SHOULD. In our experience, if a business struggles with interaction design (the intersection of IS and WILL) then it almost always has trouble understanding the value of design strategy.
- Design management requires a solid grasp of all the states of the business and plays a key role in making sure that IS, WILL and SHOULD are all happening in harmony.
We believe this is a great mental framework for understanding how to use interaction design and strategy to manage change in an organization.
3 Comments
Jeremy (ZURB) says:
If we were going to redraw this diagram to show the 'unhealthy' set of states that often exists in companies, we could separate the circles so they don't quite overlap and then shrink WILL to be an anemic little circle.
This state of affairs would represent the way project management teams often try to leap from IS into SHOULD with minimal team or user input and almost no design tactics involved. This would be the tiny WILL circle where unimaginative OmniGraffle slides and thick PRDs spring from, straight into the hands of engineers who are supposed to just implement them.
Jason Spencer says:
Wow. This is something that I've heard bits and pieces of in the past, but I never really saw it put together like this. I agree with Jeremy on the leap from IS to SHOULD. It reminds me of a company that I've been an employee of since it began ten years ago. While they are usually good about getting input from senior staff, or even outside sources, there are many times when they make the jump only to find that it backfires 2-4 months down the road. Like the time I went on vacation for a week and returned to find that we had jumped into a new contract system without even testing it side-by-side with our prior system.
Now if I can only figure out how to get my resume past Amanda, I'll be set! ;-D
Bryan (ZURB) says:
Jeremy- Yes, agree.
Jason- Well, it's unfortunate that iteration was not done on the contract system... but look at it like this: If your team can implement things quickly then at least you're halfway to mastering WILL!
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