Perry
responded to my last post with the comment below, which I thought was worthy of
“raising” to a post as all of us at the d.school see Perry as one of the best
at turning design thinking into action. He has done it in the “real world” at
Atlas Snowshoes (which he founded), Patagonia (where he was COO), and now
Timbuk2 (where he is CEO). And Perry has taught and coached dozens of design
classes in the Stanford Product Design
Program and the d.school. Here is
what Perry observed:
“Having taught at the d.school with Bob in the past, and having
been through a few kick off sessions for these kinds of sessions. I found this exercise was very successful in
two dimensions:
1. A
hands on experience in design thinking – the exercise drove home a few
points very clearly -‘ speed wins, ‘teams that iterated the most did the
best, ‘thinking through doing’ the second
the teams got their hands dirty they sorted it out (trust me, many teams tried
to talk it through first), and finally
this exercise taught that teams that failed early did better (teams that made
the most mistakes at the start had the fastest times at the end)
2. This
exercise was a terrific one at forming a design team. No one
was an expert, no one can look good moving a 65 lbs tire around, and there was
no room for a manager (by design teams were small) – it was a hands on effort.
The teams were forced to work with no status, and a shared leadership model. It
was terrific in this respect as a teaching exercise, but in principle applies
to management training as well.
I also must compliment Andy and his team as they brought a lot of energy to this and at the
close of the exercise demo’d a NASCAR pit crew tire change (they were quite a
bit faster then any of us could imagine was possible).”
I
especially like Perry’s comment that “there was no room for a manager.” That
reminds me of Perry so much because, even when he is in a management position,
he always is doing work – moving stuff around, throwing away garbage, and especially
keeping an eye out for the person or team that is having the most trouble at
the moment and jumping into lend a hand. I live in a world – academics – where we talk and talk and talk and the
idea of actually doing something can seem strange to us– working with Perry is
always a breath of fresh air because his first reaction when he notices that
something is wrong is to stand up and fix it himself!
P.S.
As one more sign of Perry’s action orientation, here is a recent INC Magazine story about the team
building exercise that Perry did with his Timbuk2 team called Into the Wild.
The above picture is Perry and his team hiking along.
P.P.S.
The Timbuk2 bag above is made from all
recycled material. Check out this Wired story about
it– former d.school student and now entrepreneur Brian Witlin invented the
lamitron , a gizmo that melts plastic bags and turns them into usable
material.
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