We need to have humility when designing for change....
What do I mean by humility?
As per the PositivePsychology.com site : "The Greek philosopher Socrates held that wisdom is, above all, knowing what we don’t know. He taught an intellectual form of humility that freely acknowledges the gaps in our knowledge and that humbly seeks to address our blind spots.
[In addition] We can understand humility not just as a virtue but also as a psychological trait...crucially, it also involves seeing ourselves accurately – not thinking of ourselves more highly (or, for that matter, lowly) than is appropriate."
This matters because as designers, innovators and change makers we are meant to be humble about the things we know and the things we don't know about people and behavior.
We need to be humble, so we can explore what the possible options are to deliver better outcomes.
This has to be done in a more scientific and systematic way, relying more on the evidence and the process to evaluate what we are creating than on our gut feelings or what we believe is best.
We need to have solid hypothesis that we can test and that can minimize risk and maximize resources and success.
We also need to recognize that we need to pull from many areas to be successful, looking at different models, theories and frameworks, and disciplines.
We need to also know that what we are trying to develop is a hypothesis, and not an absolute truth, as context needs to be accounted for.
We cannot simply state that our one way is the only way for things to work, we need to recognize we will have gaps, and we need to try as hard as we can to get others to help fill those gaps.
So next time you talk to your clients, your customers, your employees remember to apply humility!