How do you get 400,000 employees at one of the world’s most storied blue chip tech companies to adopt design thinking as a tool to transform the culture of its workforce?
Speaking at Fortune Brainstorm Design in Macau on Tuesday, Gilbert noted ruefully that businesses typically enlist him “when some effort is failing”. IBM wanted him to replicate the secret sauce that made his Austin-based Lombardi so agile and its products so beloved by customers.
The reinvention required a radical approach. In 2012, appointed as the company’s general manager of design, Gilbert brought design thinking to IBM’s entire employee base. His first barrier? How to get “400,000 people to do something when none of them report to you,” he recalls.
And, breaking from corporate operational tradition, he also allowed employees to opt-in rather than be forced to participate. “It gives them agency and having agency makes all the difference,” he told the audience.
The “aha” moment for Bynum came with the idea about shifting away from outputs to outcomes. Using traditional methods was akin to the old fable of a group of blind men getting a different understanding of what an elephant was by touching different parts. “We’re all touching the same elephant and every person’s perspective has merit and value in reconstructing the elephant,” Bynum said.
Bynum, now the director of Chicago-based Institute for Design’s new ID Academy, argued that “dexterity” is the key attribute that leaders need to succeed amid ambiguity and complexity. He described this as “using design-led capabilities to become ambidextrous, meaning you can perform and transform”
A successful leader in a culture of change requires “humility, bar none”, as a critical attitude, Bynum said.
Gilbert concurred with Bynum that humility is the “new name” to use in driving culture change. “We need humility first with ourselves, and then with our users.”
