Tim Brown on design thinking

“It’s remarkable how often business strategy, the purpose of which is to direct action toward a desired outcome, leads to just the opposite: stasis and confusion. Strategy should bring clarity to an organization; it should be a signpost for showing people where you, as their leader, are taking them — and what they need to do to get there. But the tools executives traditionally use to communicate strategy — spreadsheets and PowerPoint decks — are woefully inadequate for the task. You have to be a supremely engaging storyteller if you rely only on words, and there aren’t enough of those people out there. What’s more, words are highly open to interpretation — words mean different things to different people, especially when they’re sitting in different parts of the organization. The result: In an effort to be relevant to a large, complicated company, strategy often gets mired in abstractions.” Tim Brown

You can download the presentation here