This presentation by Nick Gall sums up everything about business design for me.

In some ways, I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s the IBM way to Business Design. A sustainable approach that has been rolled out to 100,000+ IBMers and shows a way to look at the world.

It shows where you may want to focus as you develop and deliver services and products – as you cross your fingers and hope for growth.

What messages did this reinforce for me?

1. Growth comes from better experiences.

We know that, we’ve always known that, but have we truly put experiences at the centre of our product development life cycle – or have we put functionality at the centre of our development life cycle.

Nick provides a great story of the mindset when you look to improve the functionality of a bike vs the mindset of when you look to improve the experience of someone using the bike. (It’s different right)

It’s about the experience and focusing o the things that matter to get the best experience.

2. It’s all about user outcomes, multidisciplinary teams and restless innovation.

I’m sure start ups and businesses operating in fast paced markets know this and and have cracked how to organise, align, and regularly deliver.

But there are many businesses out there who are

* still not driven by a deep understanding of user outcomes;

* who are still not working across analysis, design, build and operate as a team;

* who are still not able to frequently improve the product and offer – “as a cupcake rather than a wedding cake” (watch the clip)

3. Close team work wins (forget where you sit organisationally)

The webinar provides more evidence to justify

* co-locating (physically/virtually) your product owners, UX analysts, BAs and Devops together.

* working as a team and aligning “releases” to what matters to the customer

4. It’s about The Who, What and Wow

Of course it is – it’s about being clear on

* who your customers are,

* what they are doing when they have the need for your product or service

* and knowing what would make that moment WOW.

At your next major milestone are you clear on The Who, what and wow! And more importantly is your whole team aligned.

5. Its not about over analysis of capabilities

We all are drowning in capability diagrams – they have a part to play – but dial down the detailed analysis of the capabilities and turn up the dial on the processes.

This point made me think that many businesses, have “outsourced” the processing to the end user as they drive the infamous “self service” model and maybe, just maybe they have dialed down the focus on workflow and process, as the businesss is no longer doing it.

Well here’s the thing, if your user is now self serving then we must dial up understanding of the customer journeys, the user workflow, and the user processes that our customers experiences and be sophisticated on how to get their feedback (rather than internal SMEs) on how to make the experiences wow.

We need more experience mapping and to get the balance right between understanding capabilities and the changes needed in the processing of experiences.

Come on – let’s all get on the “design” band wagon

* some have never had it,

* some have lost it and need to bring it back.

* most of us are doing some of it but could get so much better at it

Come on let’s focus on design – the more that we do the more we, our teams, our products and our businesses will grow.

What are your thoughts?