The right design considers purpose, structure, and emergent properties. Getting desired outcomes to emerge in this chaotic web requires a careful approach, initiated through meaningful human-to-human communication. We and everything around us is part of a complex, interwoven, living system. We are human beings we’re alive and constantly feeling, thinking, and changing. Don Norman, User Experience (UX) design pioneer “Design is really an act of communication, which means having a deep understanding of the person with whom the designer is communicating.” Bolstering your design by understanding the human condition Getting people in your camp requires a look at what makes humans tick. Not always in some malign or even conscious way, but because their instincts (feeling brains) tell them to. When people don’t emotionally connect with your intended purpose, they’ll choose to be disruptive forces. Linchpin move for leaders: ensure people in your organization are driven by a clear and compelling purpose. Customers, business partners, employees, and everyone in between need to feel inspired so that they participate in alignment with your design. Great design without people believing in the purpose won’t amount to much. We all know that people need to feel this driving purpose, but the reason it’s so critical is because only then can your desired outcomes truly emerge. That meaning equates to your why - the purpose your business has in this world. These desired properties emerge when (a) you have the right design and, most importantly, (b) key people - both inside and outside of your organization - fall in love with the meaning of the organization. And when those parts combine together, they have different - often greater - properties. The concept of emergence says that individual parts have properties. Examples: customer relationships develop, market share creeps upward, brand identity crystalizes, good culture forms, and the innovation engine chugs forward.Įmergence : the process of properties coming into being, driven by the interactions of the collective parts. And when we orchestrate all the relevant levers available to us (people, data, infrastructure), properties emerge in our system (business). The design of a product, service, or entire business model is born of concepts held in our minds. We have a unique advantage over most living creatures in this world: we can hold abstract concepts in our head, analyze those thoughts, and then act on them. We need to take it one step further and embrace the concept of emergence. You can design all day, and project-manage the heck out of an implementation, but we’ll fall short there. We need to aggressively account for this. Emotions can drive dumb actions: we ignore a potentially valuable customer segment, our focus devolves to multiple “priorities”, or a healthy obsession over user experience is overtaken by a bandwagon feature mentality.Ĭome to grips: the best-laid business designs in the world will continue to pit against the most barbaric and mysterious adversary ever known: homo sapien.

Our feelings (which influence “rational” thought) end up disrupting our grand plans, and then all hell breaks loose. As much as emotion rears its ugly head in our personal lives, so too in the business world.Įven with the best business designs, we - those pesky humans - interfere. We learn how unrelenting and powerful our “feeling brain” is, and despite our best efforts, how it’s always dominating our “thinking brain”. We know the world is challenging, but why do our plans fail so often?Īuthor Mark Manson sheds light on this in his latest book, Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope. These factors are seemingly conspiring against you, scheming to destroy your vision. As cliché as it sounds, the world is “more dynamic and complicated than ever”, and your plans for business success will run smack into a chaotic web of interdependencies, competing agendas, and - most importantly - humans.

Thrive meaning in business