Leadership Thinking

Reactivation of leadership

"2019 Global Human Capital Trends" and "GLOBAL TALENT TRENDS 2019" coincidentally point out that the human resource management of the 21st century is standing at the crossroads of the new and the old. Leaders in the new era face unique and new requirements. Leaders must master the changing external environment and possess key new capabilities (leading change, embracing uncertainty, understanding digitization and technology, and artificial intelligence-driven technologies), and adopt new methods to accomplish traditional business goals. Although many companies have digital leadership strategies and are also beginning to update their system architectures, they often fail to improve the "people" systematically. Only 30% of companies said that their organizations have trained capable leaders to respond to changing challenges.

01 Challenge

An USA Company “D” is a world-renowned human resources consulting company dedicated to providing leadership strategy, leader selection, leadership development and succession management consulting services for global companies. Currently, by combining rich case experience and a huge database, it provides companies with solutions for leadership and digital transformation in the digital age.

In the past, "product thinking" has always been the main approach for business development. The senior executives of company “D” found that they have encountered obstacles in promoting products. Because more and more customers required personalized solutions, they invited Working Image team to assist through systematic design thinking tools and methods to further dig into user needs, so that product development, marketing, and training instructors can transform into "user thinking". Through this project, the company's existing service system can be optimized, and thereby strengthen the emotional connection with customers, and ultimately bring more positive feedback to stakeholders in the value chain.

02 Solution

Innovation is a complex and difficult task. The basic requirement of design is to satisfy three dimensions at the same time:

• From the user's perspective, what benefits people?
• What do people actually need?
• From a technical point of view, what is feasible?
• From a business perspective, what is sustainable?

The core of this project lies in "empathy" and "insight." Through conscious observation, the participating partners understand what people are really doing and what they actually care about. After correct understanding of the problem, the participants are guided through visual tools to establish a user-centered thinking logic in the process, and then return to the company’s perspective to sort out the corresponding service system to support users. During the process, individuals release their creativity. On the other hand, a culture of collaboration and co-creation is encouraged to burst in the organization, and finally a solution to optimize the user experience is refined.

03 Result

Working Image team first comprehensively interviewed middle and high-level managers, training lecturers, R&D teams, marketing departments... and other stakeholders, and then proposed the design structure for the project goals. After that, we invited partners from different departments and consumers of digital products to conduct a two-day project workshop. Through the visual guidance of creative design thinking tools, a systematic collaboration was made in simulating users, sorting out key stakeholders, new product business models, and user experience. Finally, a feasible solution is proposed by using prototype.

Company “D” will import the project output into the annual development plan. This project's in-depth analysis of digital products helped company “D” lay a solid foundation for business development in the post-epidemic era.

04 Service

Desktop research

In-depth interviews

User research

Experience design workshop

Plan implementation

Business leaders will face more organizational changes and the challenges of emerging digital technology in the next 3-5 years. Leaders should actively engage in training future-oriented employee teams, which includes creating an internal innovative atmosphere, applying digital technology, redesigning work, cooperating with external parties, designing related courses, and cultivating employees' relevant abilities from the source of the talent supply chain.

The more successful and innovative enterprises pay more attention to peoples’ way of thinking, because only when they are willing to break the inertia thinking of the past, adopt new ways of thinking to face the challenges in the future, and through agile action, innovation is possible. Only then the enterprise transformation may be successful.