Design Mindsets, Ministry Mindsets

I’ve been gradually working through the design thinking literature (of which seminal/theoretical sources are few, and derivative/applied sources are growing and evolving rapidly). The goal, eventually, is an integrated theoretical and practical approach to “ministry design,” for church leaders, missions leaders, and others.

Today I worked through a few sources on what are commonly called “design mindsets.” There isn’t an authoritative list out there (although IDEO and the Stanford d.School probably “own” the conversation in some sense), but there are a number of patterns that can be synthesized about what drives good design. This is basically my initial synthesis, with some comments on how I anticipate they will eventually overlap with “ministry” mindsets:

Adaptability and Market Fit — The promise of design thinking is that it delivers on quickly identifying “product and market fit,” but with a wider lens — meaning, it helps navigate the solution to a complex problem, while integrating the desires and requirements of the beneficiaries or customers, within the context of resource, technological, and organizational constraints. It therefore delivers “agility” and “responsiveness” for an organization, because ongoing sensitivity to feedback from real people and environmental conditions is the primary input. This often leads to unanticipated insights, and therefore, innovations.

(Ministry mindset: The ministry model is not the goal. Serving people well is the goal, and people exist in communities and cultures that need to be interpreted and understood well, and they change quickly. Ministry and mission should be as diverse and customized as the people it serves...and agile too).

An Exploratory Process — Design thinking is fundamentally non-linear and inquiry-based. When done well, it will inevitably yield new insights that point in unexpected directions. Testing the seed-form of a new idea with those whom it is designed for should, for example, yield some critical early insights about its usefulness or about your governing assumptions, and those insights are fed back into the design process.

(Ministry mindset: Room for surprise, for the work of God in his wisdom to create something you wouldn’t expect)

Embracing Constraints — While the design process is exploratory, it is shaped by the right constraints. To quote Brown, “The willing and even enthusiastic acceptance of competing constraints is the foundation of design thinking. The first stage of the design process is often about discovering which constraints are important and establishing a framework for evaluating them. Constraints can best be visualized in terms of three overlapping criteria for successful ideas: feasibility…viability…and desirability.” While the embrace of design constraints in a ministry context will likely be different than in a commercial enterprise, the pattern is the same — discovering the appropriate design constraints helps create the right “design space,” which then creates focus and orientation, rather than disorientation.

(Ministry mindset: Our ministry design seeks to be guided by sensitivity to cultural and community realities, but always has a “prophetic” element, in that we find one of our essential design constraints anchored in the ethical/social vision of the Kingdom of God and our participation in the narrative of Scripture).

Focus on Real Humans — Good design, in an organizational context, always has a specific person or group of people in mind. Almost always, the design process is unlocked most effectively when the person with a need (the beneficiary) is clearly in view, and any solutions-oriented movement is clearly in reference to a particular subset of people. Brown quotes Peter Drucker, who famously said, “the job of the designer is converting need into demand,” or said differently, serving people’s real needs by creating something that meets their needs on their terms. However, there is an important caveat here — traditional methods for discovering “what people want” are often ineffective, because people are generally good adapting to undesirable situations. Good design thinkers “help people articulate the latent needs they may not even know they have.” (Brown) How is this done well?

(Ministry mindset: Everything starts with loving your neighbor — not just generally, but in the particular and concrete. Your actual neighbor, with a name and a face, that you can go learn something about, and help in practical ways).

Getting Close to the Action — One of the essential tools of design thinking is its reliance on embodied, real-world observation for insight. It is, in a sense, built upon the tools and methods of the social sciences. To be a great design thinker is first to be a great anthropologist, because insight about latent human needs is the key to unlocking better ways of serving them. This “anthropological research,” of course, is also the key starting point for the missionary pattern, which I will get to later. Embodied, qualitative data gathering is inescapably important — you have to talk to the people you want to design for. This can yield insights that a survey or a focus group never could. Brown emphasizes “watching what people do and don’t do, listening to what they say and don’t say.” Tom Kelley, one of the principles of IDEO, says, “Whether it’s art, science, technology, or business, inspiration often comes from being close to the action.” This is also what is sometimes referred to as the “founder’s mentality” — staying so close to market conditions that you can see changes and opportunities sooner than everyone else, and remaining committed to integrating new observations about the world. Discovering how people practically navigate their many social and personal worlds, can yield tremendous insight. Simple in concept, but a step that is often difficult to put into practice.

(Ministry mindset: Incarnation is the essential missional step. There is no mission or ministry without getting into life and community with real people, as an active participant).

Looking through Empathy Glasses — Observation, however, often isn’t sufficient. An essential value of design thinking is empathy, or sometimes called “intellectual humility” or “a beginners mind.” Since the aim is practical insight, observation and analysis isn’t always sufficient. One has to “begin by recognizing that their seemingly inexplicable behaviors represent different strategies for coping with the confusing, complex, and contradictory world in which they live.” Everyone is trying to solve problems in their lives a certain way — empathy expands the field of vision, so that potential ways of seeing this are not missed. To enter into the emotional world of another, and to experience their pains, desires, opportunities, and motivations, is a rich source of insight. This is helpful in improving anything from the flow of a grocery store to the experience of a doctor’s office to the process of church membership.

(Ministry mindset — Humility is the key to the universe. We should be the quickest to listen and learn, to discover things that challenge our assumptions, and believe that reality is our friend — because God is the author of reality.)

Framing the Right Problem — Sharpening the focus of a brainstorming meeting or design “session” is important. Similar to embracing constraints, it is important to have “the end in mind,” or at least a hypothesis about what the desired future might look like for the people you’re aiming to serve. A well-articulated question is one of the simplest, but most important design tools, because it can unlock a conversation in a helpful or an unhelpful direction. Thus, one of the essential skills of a good design facilitator is knowing precisely how to frame the right question. Ensuring a broad enough scope, with room to “explore,” is important. For example, asking “how do we get more people into our Thursday night small groups” might already be too narrow, while asking “how do we ensure everyone in our wider church or ministry is connected to deeper community around them?” It doesn’t already presume the answer, but envisions a desired state worth exploring.

(Ministry mindset — learn to ask good questions, the way a doctor or a counselor would do, to uncover hidden layers of problems to solve, or hidden layers of opportunities to serve. Invite open-ended contribution from diverse people who have different gifts).

Divergent Thinking + Convergent thinking — The dominant approach to decision making is “convergent thinking” — taking available data, analyzing it, eliminating alternatives, and making a final choice. Convergent thinking is an essential problem solving step, to help assess the relative value of a set of options, and move forward. However, convergent thinking is not helpful at “creating choices,” or multiplying options in order to identify additional solution pathways. In design thinking, divergent “space” always comes before convergent “space,” in order to ensure that the full scope of relevant option sets have been taken into account in the design process. Diverging into wider and longer lists of a wider set of salient insights means a higher probability of converging onto the best one. This is, of course, counter-intuitive, because it can (for a time) increase complexity and be inefficient in the short run. The two “phases” of exploration need each other — this is sometimes described as “zooming in and out,” or “switching from analysis to synthesis,” and is describing a core pattern — design thinking is the ability to switch back and forth between creative and analytical thinking. According to Brown, “there is a good reason why design education draws in equal measure upon art and engineering. The process of the design thinker, rather, looks like a rhythmic exchange between the divergent and convergent phases, with each subsequent iteration less broad and more detailed than the previous ones. In the divergent phase, new options emerge. In the convergent phase it is just the reverse: now it’s time to eliminate options and make choices.” The process of opening the design, then closing it, over and over again towards optimization, is one of the essential skills of a good design thinker.

(Ministry mindset — Sometimes you need to zoom out, sometimes you need to zoom in. This is the cycle of Scripture and Theology, and the cycle of caring for individual and community. Sometimes people need questions, sometimes answers. Sometimes choices, sometimes commitments. Learn that rhythm).

Essentialism — If divergent thinking is the process of creating complexity, convergent thinking is the process of taking the complex and making it simple. The “final” solution (although no solution is every really final in a design mindset) from a design session should go through a real pruning process, to take away everything that is unclear or inessential, to make the solution as clear and effective as possible. One of the seven “mindsets” of the Design School at Stanford University is to “craft clarity” — to take all of the data and insights from the discovery process, and to bring them into a coherent whole with the right level of specificity for the audience. Nothing kills a good design solution like too much complexity — sort of like Michelangelo, who talked about the process of sculpting his famous David status as “chipping away everything that was not David.”

(Ministry Mindset — focus on the essentials, both in communication and strategy and structure. Learn to communicate the important things clearly).

Collaborative Design — In design, there are rarely “lone geniuses.” The power of design thinking is the integration of insights from a wide variety of specialists, who each have a perspective that is relevant towards exploring and designing the best approach to problem solving. Thus, often the role of the design thinker is as facilitator, able to navigate a collaborative conversation among people with different interests, motivations, and expertise, and to create synthesis among all of their constraints and requirements as stakeholders. Increasing the diversity of a design team is a good thing. In ministry, then, the design of a structure, strategy, program, initiative, experience, or product shouldn’t just be designed in reference to someone’s theology, but with a room full of professionals of all kinds, bringing their insights about how to make the idea better.

(Ministry Mindset — the body of Christ, the church, the community all bring unique gifts. Diversity is the goal, and full empowerment and shared contribution of gifts will lead to better, more participatory ministries).

Constructive Quick Failures — Design thinking depends on constructive failure. The emphasis on discovery, testing, and rediscovery based on progressively deeper insight requires a certain level of missing the mark. Discovering misalignment, integrating those discoveries into the design process, and re-developing the solution requires a tolerance for failure. This is what is often referred to as the “lean startup” mindset. It can, of course, take substantial time, energy, and resources to develop an idea all the way to public launch, and if there haven’t been any iterative steps of feedback along the way, that public launch can be a huge disaster, costing real time and money and good will. The real benefit of constructive and quick failures is risk mitigation — even though your idea might be messy, it is better to learn if you are on the right track early, with a prototype or a presentation or some other artifact, by testing your assumptions with the real people you have designed for. Embracing the discomfort of potential misalignment in the short run can save larger failures in the long run, and creating a culture of “freedom to fail” is essential to developing real insight and better solutions.

(Ministry mindset: Grace gives us freedom to fail. We, of all people, should be quickest to try, quickest to repent, quickest to learn, and quickest to risk again).