Think Like A Designer to reduce the risk of the unknown
The initial process of engaging clients as a coach, consultant or facilitator involves many unknowns, especially when working with organisations.
Some of them are known unknowns (we don’t yet know what they want, what their pain points are, what their budget is etc.)
Others are unknown unknowns – things that we might not learn until we start working with them.
Designers work in the unknown all the time, so what can we learn from them?
One thing I learnt from working with designers is they see almost everything as an experiment.
An experiment involves a hypothesis, some testing, and some learning as a result.
Experiments can be as small as “It sounds like a good solution might be to unpack your purpose. Does that sound helpful”, and to carefully listen to the client’s words and body as they respond.
Or an experiment may involve more commitment, like a diagnosis or discovery session.
Thinking in experiments helps us in two ways:
1
An experiment means we learn something quickly rather than being paralysed by perfection.
An experiment means we hold our hypotheses lightly, and answer them by testing.
2
Experiments keep us curious.
You might think that creating experiments leads to work that's of low quality. But the opposite is actually true.
The more drafts you can create, the more experiments you can run, the better the final version.
Because the alternative is to not run any experiments, then leap to a conclusion that's not quite right.
So how does this help us when working with new clients? It helps in two ways:
You can start by taking the pressure off yourself: don’t try and find a solution in the first conversation.
Tell your client that it's a process, that it's likely to take multiple conversations. then both of you will be at ease.
Offer hypotheses and test them using tiny conversational experiments, by asking questions.
For example – you might hear your client talking about wanting to have a better team culture where people take responsibility, and, having asked some questions to understand what's missing, you could run a little experiment with them – something like: so if we were able to have everyone be clear on what was theirs, and have a way to regularly check-in on progress, would that be helpful?
Think like a designer. Stay curious and run experiments without attachment to it being right. As you do so, you'll take the pressure off to come up with a final answer, all the while making improvements.
The final solution will come, but not before you've done enough experiments to know that the final solution is something your client really wants.
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