Lessons from the d school

Stanford's design school brings together students from an array of disciplines to address critical social needs with special emphasis on end-user relevance, maximum affordability and rapid deployment. I had the great fortune of spending a couple of days there with my colleagues in the June 2010 Executive Program in Social Entrepreneurship last week.  The d school has developed a process for innovating solutions based on deep, empathic listening and their unique design process; it flows like this:

1. Gain an initial understanding of the problem through research and direct observation
2. Develop a point of view that links the user and the user's need in an inspiring statement
3. Begin to visualize solutions, bringing your POV and all of your data to a design lab environment (posted on walls, etc.): start sketching, writing and shaping
4. Engage in rapid prototyping with handmade models (of products and/or services), which are remarkably effective for engaging people in the work of refining concepts and designs
5. Test your designs with end-users; multiple iterations will yield a stronger product
6. Move quickly to production 

This process can help all of us engaged in designing social services and enterprises to enrich our planning and accelerate the delivery of innovation.  To learn more about the d school's philosophy and remarkable solutions, visit http://dschoolserver.stanford.edu/projects/social_entrepreneur.php

A Few Thoughts on Leadership

Greetings from Boston!  I'm midway through a weeklong exec-ed program on leadership at Harvard Business School; I'm one of 96 participants from 33 countries, all of us in business or nonprofit management.  The faculty (Linda Hill, John Kotter, et al) are masterful, and I'm delighted by the ideas we're discussing.  Here's a top 10 list:

1. Democratize leadership:  the leader's job is to develop leadership in as many people as possible, because the world's in desperate need of them.
2. Great leaders sway hearts, then minds; they lead with authenticity, humility, deep humanity and transparent values.
3. Visionary leaders create vision and strategy; communicate it and gain buy-in; motivate action; create the systems that managers manage; and transform systems when needed for growth, evolution, new opportunities and hazards.
4. Have big, idealistic ideas:  big enough to overcome the world's challenges, and idealistic enough to stir the heart.
5. The need for power can be egocentric or socialized; socialized power is, at core, the need to have impact.
6. Challenges help you identify your learning frontier and grow.
7. Lifelong learning ensures youthful vigor; be open minded, humble, curious and ambitious.
8. Be present in the moment:  change is accelerating exponentially, and new challenges will force you to respond with creativity and innovation.
9. "Do the right thing, don't seek to do all things right." (Jack Welch)
10. Failure is invaluable experience, so take risks; the liability of (too much) success is real.