Don’t break things with a bias towards action
Part two of five in a series co-written with DiMitri Higginbotham.
Words create perceptions, elicit emotions, and they can hurt far worse than any stick or stone. With that being said, many practitioners of design thinking consider the term ‘Bias toward Action’ a key tenet of design thinking. We would like to question the sentiment behind this phrase.
Why think about what you are doing when you can just learn by doing? Get ideas out of your head and into the real world!
This is part of what makes design thinking fun. When we are told to “Move Fast and Break Things” and to have a “Bias Towards Action” we are given agency to live outside of day-to-day pressure and expectations. This is both true and not true as either mantra when applied incorrectly has significant consequences:
Case in point, here are some high-profile examples of things that could have gone better, none of which took place in a vacuum, but unfortunately organizations moved too fast and broke too many things.
Example
Facebook and Cambridge Analytics
Outcome
A 5bn fine and reputational damage for Facebook, Cambridge Analytics went bankrupt, and overall damage to election integrity.
Alternative Actions
By moving too quickly they did not consider ethical considerations, as well as the following: Implementing and enforcing stricter data privacy and security, providing clearer user consent, improving oversight and internal standards, and restricting third-party access.
Example
Theranos and Blood Tests
Outcome
Hundreds of people lost their jobs, Theranos went from a valuation of 9bn to zero and shut down. The founder and the CEO each earned over 10 years in federal prison.
Alternative Actions
Theranos broke a lot of things in their rise and fall. They could have benefitted from higher ethical rigor and: aligned with regulatory compliance, undergone peer review and independent testing, curated different board members, and been more transparent about technology and business practices.
Example
Juul and ‘Joe Camel v.2.0.’
Outcome
Juul actively targets children with marketing and flavor selection. Is successful in getting a generation of youth addicted to harmful products.
Alternative Actions
Juul did ethically wrong things, regardless of what the competition may have been doing, to achieve success in the market. The health and well-being of domestic youth would have benefitted from the following items: Earlier FDA oversight on emerging products, omnichannel age verification, research funding, and risk transparency. And maybe not targeting children when advertising nicotine. Juul would likely have established a dominant position due to being an early mover but could have done so with less risk to public health.
When empowering people with the ability to ‘move fast and break things’ you run the risk of moral and ethical lapses. Sometimes the things that break are there for a reason.
One might argue that technology outpaces regulation, fueling many of the examples above. We also recognize analysis paralysis when we see it and are advocating for a more balanced proposition of thinking and making. First, let’s dig into these two popular phrases.
Moving fast & breaking things comes with risk.
The idiom at hand, ‘Move Fast & Break Things,’ has become problematic for multiple reasons:
It assumes that ‘something’ needs to be broken to address it.
It assumes you can fix something as easily as you broke it.
There is an implication that things are not currently moving fast enough.
The whole statement when taken together seems somewhat aggressive.
We should never have to choose between doing the fast thing vs. doing the right thing.
The spirit of the statement
To inspect the matter further, let’s begin with a question: “What are you breaking and why?” If the answer is clear, that’s great, you are ahead of most organizations. If you don’t have a clear answer to the ‘what and why’ above, then Moving Fast and Breaking Things is subjective, and can cause more harm than good (at any scale).
Without alignment or guidance, it’s easy to see where redundant work takes place or redundant failures, for that matter.
It’s not all negative association
Moving fast and breaking things signals to everyone that it’s ok to fail, which isn’t a bad thing. Fail fast is an often misunderstood mantra used and abused when it comes to Design Thinking. When we move fast and fail fast there is less of a stigma associated with experimenting without an outcome, aside from learning what not to do again.
Action at dual speed
Let’s look at the opposite of the statement at hand. You don’t want people “moving slow and fixing things”—Or do you? Some scenarios call for a yield sign or yellow light. We should never have to choose between doing the fast thing vs. doing the right thing. Moving slowly is not the same as not taking action, yet moving quickly without purpose or intention wastes resources.
Bias to action is conditional
Encouraging a 'bias towards action' isn’t entirely bad or good, but rather something that should be applied purposefully. This phrase is a dangerous operating philosophy when applied without context.
Pros and cons
This is good if you are stuck and over-thinking, potentially not seeing the big picture. Don’t get us wrong; we value those who don’t hesitate to act. Every organization or team needs a person or two like that. But we recommend slow, deep thinking and action to make big things happen.
Imagine if someone told you “When someone says jump I don't even ask how high, I just jump.” That is an example of bias toward action without consideration. Instead of encouraging critical thinking, a bias towards action can reward activity over outcomes. Action is bad if you are simply going through the motions; it’s frustrating. We believe in purpose and intent to guide action.
Activity for the sake of activity will never drive as much value as activity with clear intent.
Action with intention
is key
“Just trust the process” isn’t an acceptable answer to questioning the meaning of an artifact or the goal of an activity. Clarity of purpose (continuity of intention) creates the scaffolding necessary for practitioners and facilitators of design thinking to make the best choices. Activities and artifacts should be designed with intent, and should not take long to unpack.
Slow down to go fast
You can only learn so much by doing without understanding. Biasing people to act can be interpreted as encouraging individuals to take initiative when inspired, asking forgiveness and not permission. Activity for the sake of activity will never drive as much value as activity with clear intent. Sometimes we don’t know what the goal is—in that case, the purpose is to achieve clarity, not action.
In Closing
Words matter, and the lack of intent in the idioms we discussed are a shortcoming. We feel it is important to analyze and question some of the “undeniable truths” that have come with learning, practicing, and facilitating design thinking. Stay tuned because in the next post of this series, we will be digging into empathy and design thinking, and why it might be the most harmful of buzzwords.