The Case for Human Centered change
It sounds simple enough but organizations struggle with delivering on the the cultural forces that enable broad organizational or systems change. The expression is well known, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” the famous quote by management consultant Peter Drucker.
Why do so many organizations stop and driving organizational change with engineering and financial methods?
Organizations often struggle with driving organizational change using just engineering and financial methods for several reasons:
Lacking Adaptability: Engineering and financial disciplines can approach solutions with a single-path approach that might not work well with the dynamic nature of business and change. Change of any type requires flexibility and the ability to pivot quickly.
Not investing in the partnership: Financial-driven change models often emphasize short-term financial performance and seek compliance over the long-term commitment required for true organizational change.
Not putting humans first: Humans are the vehicles of change. Organizational change can falter when processes and numbers are overemphasized of the people who will own the change. it’s about people. Resistance to change, lack of engagement, and insufficient communication can derail change efforts.
Cultural Barriers: Organizational culture and legacy will play a significant role in the success of change initiatives. Methods that don’t embrace the commitment to the cultural aspects fail to activate communities and stagger.
Human Centered Design at its most impactful is about change. Behavioral, cultural, and experiential change. Transformative change. While UX can fall under different control measures by either those with an engineering or financial mindset do not forget the transformative power of design.
Given the high rate of failure of organizational transformation, embracing a diversity of methodology including the disciplines at the center of HCD, including behavioral research and co-creation.
Organizations leadership might be attracted to the consultant-favored “doctor-patient model”; where they diagnose the situation and prescribe solutions from their playbook. This is a highly profitable model that is based on like-object modeling and stakeholder alignment.
Human Centered Design engages with humans/users/customers and begins the transformation process through partnership and co-creation.
This forces accountability with all actors that the patient-doctor model skips while allowing the diffusion of responsibility. This results in a cascade of cognitive bias and solutioning that reinforces existing power brokers.
The biggest risk is that there is no true engagement and trust is not built. As a result your most important agents of change - the practitioners who embody the change become commodified and disempowered by top-down change.