How to think like a visionary

Stunted Conceptualization

After working with hundreds of engineers and designers throughout my career, stunted conceptualization is one of the most common reasons why teams build inferior products. Product conceptualization is not a common component of engineering education, so it is no surprise that it can take some an entire career to figure out how to do it effectively. Consequently, the idea of “product visionaries” have a strange mythological status that seems to appeal to some people as a badge of status rather than having actual substance.

Fortunately, there is a simple technique you can use to rewire your solutioning process and start designing better products faster. You, too, can be a product visionary, so let’s take a closer look at how to do that.

Status Quo Conceptualization

I used to run product discovery workshops with my fellow engineers. We would start as a large group to establish customer needs from a hypothetical scenario, such as building a house. The needs would be something like, “black square chimney”, “red door”, and “blue garage.” Then, we would break into teams and I would distribute identical sets of colorful building blocks to each group. I would then place my big bag of blocks in the middle of the room and instruct everyone to start building a solution. After a few minutes we would stop to see what everyone came up with.

In almost every iteration of the workshop, the participants would struggle to find a solution that satisfied the customer’s needs. Not surprising, right? The teams utilized their resources to the best of their ability and got as close to the customer’s needs as possible. Figure 1 provides an example of what a team might come up with.

What I did not tell them is that I deliberately provided an incomplete set of blocks. So, the lesson is that we cannot satisfy the customer’s needs in every possible way? Yes, that could be part of it, but there is actually more to going on. Most people default to thinking of solutions in terms of immediately available resources. This default is additionally what I would consider as a potential symptom of management myopia, which can have serious implications for firm profitability [1].

I consider this myopia as a form of default-to-tactical thinking, which limits the types of innovation that a firm can practice. This is where “visionary” conceptualization comes in.

Visionary Conceptualization

What is the secret to succeeding at the block activity? Simple: I placed the bag of blocks in the middle of the room. Anyone could have got up to grab extra blocks or ask for more. Sure, call me out for being a trickster, but it demonstrates the point.

True visionary conceptualization flips the model that most people tend to use. Instead of thinking of problem solving as a task to “get from here to there,” we should be thinking of it as a task to “get from there to here.” In other words, we first conceptualize the ideal state of the solution then reverse engineer what is needed to achieve it. A visual representation of this notion is provided in Figure 2.

Conceptualizing a product does not necessarily take any longer from the visionary perspective versus the status quo. The major difference will be in how the concept is implemented. The deficient resources may be prohibitively expensive or impossible to materialize. In such cases, you would iterate upon the concept until the required resources fit within your strategic capacity. Hence, this is what it takes to craft a true visionary plan: A clearly defined optimal solution to a problem, an understanding of the deficient resources to achieve the solution, and an actionable approach to staging the development in a profitable and value creating manner. In other words, you can tier the release of your product to incrementally approach your vision.

Firm that seem to be stuck chasing their competition could benefit from a visionary product strategy. One approach is to initiate a leapfrog campaign and integrate it with a visionary strategy. While challenging, a well executed innovation strategy can keep a firm tracking with its customers, rather than being heavily influenced by competitors.

Extensions

Status quo conceptualization can be found outside of product development as well. You can apply the approach to career planning, for instance. I see other people planning their careers using the status quo approach all the time. As managers, we also have to be aware that people are transient and not static beings. When we lead, coach, or mentor people on our teams, we must understand that how we talk about the future will impact how they frame the future. If we think of people in terms of what they can become, we can be more strategic in helping them achieve their highest potential.

References

[1] Kardashian, K. (2013, November 20). Tracking managerial myopia. Retrieved August 13, 2022, from https://www.tuck.dartmouth.edu/news/articles/do-managers-cut-investment-when-they-plan-to-sell-stock