1ZM140: Summary Quiz Week 1
Article 1: Managing as Designing (Boland & Collopy, 2004)
Design attitude: unique mind-set and approach to problem solving. This goes beyond default solutions
in creating new possibilities for the future. Managers should adopt this attitude to approach problems
with a sensibility to shape inspiring and energizing designs for products, services and processes that
are both profitable and humanly satisfying.
Gehry’s approach: A desire to do something differently and better and to experiment with
technologies, materials and methods in his quest. By this, both management practice and education
have allowed a limited and narrow vocabulary of decision making to drive an expansive and embracing
vocabulary of design out of circulation. It is about strengthening design skills for shaping new
alternatives. Now is the time to incorporate a better balance of the two approaches to problem solving
in management practice and education. The premise of this book is that managers are designers as
well as decision makers and that although the two are inextricably linked in management action, we
have for too long emphasized the decision face of management over the design face.
This attitude assumes that it is difficult to design a good alternative, but once you have developed a
truly great one, the decision about which alternative to select becomes trivial. The design attitude
appreciates that the cost of not conceiving of a better course of action than those that are already
being considered is often much higher than making the “wrong” choice among them. Concerned with
finding the best answer possible, given the skills, time, and resources of the team, and takes for granted
that it will require the invention of new alternatives.
While working with the architect Matt on the project for floor plans. Many times during the two days,
we would reach a roadblock where things were just not working out, so we would start with a clean
sheet of onionskin and try a different approach. We proved we could do it, now we can think about
how we want to do it (Matt tore pages apart). A perfectly good solution had been worked out. It
responded to all of our requirements and fulfilled the needs of the program. And it was difficult to
accomplish. Why tear it up? A very different mind-set for approaching problems was evident here.
Bringing at least the flavor of his design thinking and design attitude to managers. Like the plans that
Matt tore up that day: they just show that we can do it—we can rethink managing as designing. The
question is, how do we as managers want to do our designing?
Decision attitude: portrays the manager as facing a set of alternative courses of action from which a
choice must be made. The decision attitude assumes it is easy to come up with alternatives to consider,
but difficult to choose among them. It solves problems by making rational choices among alternatives
and uses tools such as economic analysis, risk assessment, multiple criteria decision making,
simulation, and the time value of money. Weakness: it starts with an assumption that the alternative
courses of action are ready at hand—that there is a good set of options already available, or at least
readily obtainable. This is a decidedly passive view of the decision maker as a problem solver, and one
that makes the untenable assumption that the alternatives that are on the table, or the first ones we
will think of, include the best ones. In the unrealistic position of assuming that good design work has
already taken place, even though that is not usually the case. It is, therefore, doomed to mediocrity in
its organizational outcomes.
Article 1: Managing as Designing (Boland & Collopy, 2004)
Design attitude: unique mind-set and approach to problem solving. This goes beyond default solutions
in creating new possibilities for the future. Managers should adopt this attitude to approach problems
with a sensibility to shape inspiring and energizing designs for products, services and processes that
are both profitable and humanly satisfying.
Gehry’s approach: A desire to do something differently and better and to experiment with
technologies, materials and methods in his quest. By this, both management practice and education
have allowed a limited and narrow vocabulary of decision making to drive an expansive and embracing
vocabulary of design out of circulation. It is about strengthening design skills for shaping new
alternatives. Now is the time to incorporate a better balance of the two approaches to problem solving
in management practice and education. The premise of this book is that managers are designers as
well as decision makers and that although the two are inextricably linked in management action, we
have for too long emphasized the decision face of management over the design face.
This attitude assumes that it is difficult to design a good alternative, but once you have developed a
truly great one, the decision about which alternative to select becomes trivial. The design attitude
appreciates that the cost of not conceiving of a better course of action than those that are already
being considered is often much higher than making the “wrong” choice among them. Concerned with
finding the best answer possible, given the skills, time, and resources of the team, and takes for granted
that it will require the invention of new alternatives.
While working with the architect Matt on the project for floor plans. Many times during the two days,
we would reach a roadblock where things were just not working out, so we would start with a clean
sheet of onionskin and try a different approach. We proved we could do it, now we can think about
how we want to do it (Matt tore pages apart). A perfectly good solution had been worked out. It
responded to all of our requirements and fulfilled the needs of the program. And it was difficult to
accomplish. Why tear it up? A very different mind-set for approaching problems was evident here.
Bringing at least the flavor of his design thinking and design attitude to managers. Like the plans that
Matt tore up that day: they just show that we can do it—we can rethink managing as designing. The
question is, how do we as managers want to do our designing?
Decision attitude: portrays the manager as facing a set of alternative courses of action from which a
choice must be made. The decision attitude assumes it is easy to come up with alternatives to consider,
but difficult to choose among them. It solves problems by making rational choices among alternatives
and uses tools such as economic analysis, risk assessment, multiple criteria decision making,
simulation, and the time value of money. Weakness: it starts with an assumption that the alternative
courses of action are ready at hand—that there is a good set of options already available, or at least
readily obtainable. This is a decidedly passive view of the decision maker as a problem solver, and one
that makes the untenable assumption that the alternatives that are on the table, or the first ones we
will think of, include the best ones. In the unrealistic position of assuming that good design work has
already taken place, even though that is not usually the case. It is, therefore, doomed to mediocrity in
its organizational outcomes.
