Here’s another posting made from a comment I made in response to a question on LinkedIn that got me going….
How would you apply Design Thinking to the process of “finding a job”?
My response: Design thinking is a mindset and point of view, with sets of tools to facilitate the process (after all, it’s usually done with other people at some point and we need to communicate). Be careful of premature closure on defining the problem, be sure you enlist the constraints and assets from your client (YOU) before tackling an approach to job finding.
This early stage can feel like panic (student loans), poverty (no clue abt $$), or parents (they worry) are the real drivers, despite it being your life path. As a result of deferring to expert advice through years of education, it can be hard to refocus on yourself and define your strengths, weaknesses, passions and discouragements, with trust in the result. And hard to find effective support for this effort.
It’s easier to conform to the stereotype of angst and ‘why me’. But – if you have not been doing this all along – take time to re-ignite and delve deeply into these things, or the ‘problem definition’ for will be far too narrow. This is often the end result of listening to established authorities, or to too many people who talk about ‘real jobs’ as if there are such things, and from having delayed the process for years by continuing to travel through the ‘sausage factory’ as Sir Ken Robinson calls it, delaying the inevitable with a sense of hope that there is a great job at the end of it all.
I’m not denying the serious constraints at all, but there are more ways to tackle these than “I have to find a job”. At least frame as questions:”How can I generate enough income in the next few months to gain traction on my future? What will I need to do to get started building the life I want to live”.
If design thinking is developed and deepened as part of your mindset and repertoire, you won’t be able to help but question everything along the way. If you have had the good luck to have had excellent educators or extracurricular programs (creative people and community-based alternatives) to build the innately creative part of your brain, along with some critical thinking, you will be ahead of the game, seeing chances for change all along the way.
But if you don’t resonate with design thinking, when you finally hear about it you have likely not enjoyed the discomfort of divergent thinking and ambiguous outcomes, with a necessary sprinkling of curiosity and risk. And will not have practiced the associated behaviours of creative, design, or systems thinking suppressed through your formative years. I believe these are innate and adaptive, but having worked with nearly 2000 artists in my life, I can see how these have been knocked back and discouraged in young people more often than not.
So. When you finally get to the ‘job finding’ stage, you are more likely going to look for methods and answers and tools to apply for a specific result. Getting to the comfort of convergent thinking too quickly, seems to work for many career counsellors, too. Seizing the challenge to design and sustain a life worth living means discovering and developing the sources of revenue (including jobs, at times) that will make it possible for you to deliver value where it is needed, but only when you know what you are striving for and who else needs your effort.
Given the nature of employment these days, and the many different ways economic activity is defined, resilience and opportunity are maximized by a balance of paying attention to an ecosystem of influences and assets, and a real examination of your foundational assumptions about work, earning, and success. If any of these no longer serve you, imagine what will.
DT as a state of mind is a powerful asset in a changing world.