Strategy Meets Reality Podcast

Designing Strategy: Leanne Sobel on Fusing Design Thinking with Strategic Practice

• Season 1 • Episode 12

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Design thinking isn’t just for product teams—it can reshape how we do strategy.

In this episode, Mike Jones is joined by Leanne Sobel—Director of Strategic Design at Snowmelt and author of a recent PhD on the intersection of design and strategy. Together, they explore what it means to bring design into strategic work: not just as a toolkit, but as an ethos of participation, reflection, and experimentation.

Leanne shares how traditional strategy often limits possibility through early assumptions—while design opens up space to sense, test, and adapt. From stakeholder engagement to making strategy usable in practice, this episode reframes how strategy can be done in complex environments.

🔍 In this episode:

  • How design challenges traditional strategy models
  • Building usable strategies—not just presentations
  • Why stakeholder inclusion is a risk-reducer, not a slowdown
  • The difference between design thinking and design practice
  • Why reflection is a core strategic act
  • Creating feedback loops to make strategy adaptive

📘 Learn more about Leanne: https://www.snowmelt.io/team-members/leanne-sobel
🎧 Full podcast + notes: https://www.lbiconsulting.com/strategymeetsreality
🎙 Listen on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube

Keywords: Strategic Design, Design Thinking, Organisational Strategy, Adaptive Strategy, Design-Led Change, Stakeholder Engagement, Strategic Practice, Leadership, Systems Thinking, Complexity

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🔗 Full episodes, show notes, and resources: https://www.lbiconsulting.com/strategymeetsreality-podcast

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💬 Connect with host Mike Jones → https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-h-jones/

Leanne (00:00)
Let's stress test our thinking. Let's not assume, let's like...

test our biases and assumptions around what's going on.

in these practices or processes that are seen as soft but that are super powerful. It's the sense making, it's the meaning generation, it's having a collective

Mike Jones (00:12)
Yeah, yeah.

Leanne (00:17)
a collective understanding of the direction

help you de-risk the strategy,

strategy needs to be usable. And how can we help build momentum and buy in as we're going through that? So bringing the people who will be living the strategy to be part of those conversations

Mike Jones (00:24)
Yes, yeah.

Welcome back to the Strategy Meets Reality podcast and today I'm delighted to have Leanne with me. It's a pleasure to have you on the show, Leanne. A great fan of the work you lot do at Snowmelt. So for the listeners, if you don't mind giving yourself introduction to background and a bit of context about what you've been up to lately, that'd be fantastic.

Leanne (01:23)
Yeah, yeah. So my name's Leanne Sobell and I am a strategic designer. I'm the director of strategic design at Snowmelt, which is a systemic design consultancy here in Sydney, Australia. And I have also just completed my PhD looking at the role of design and strategy.

which is very exciting. And so in my world and through my background, I've been very interested in exploring the ways that design practices, the ways of thinking and working through design challenges or any kind of challenge can be applied to business contexts. And that's really led me into the strategy world. So I have a background in visual communication design as an undergraduate.

degree and then over the years got really interested in management and business and did a master of business management to understand the language of business so could do more work ⁓ with managers to explore just that. And then found myself in various strategy roles, in design, in a design context. And then found myself working for Big Four Consultancy with the strategy team.

Mike Jones (02:24)
You

Leanne (02:40)
with the explicit role to help or work with the team to bring in design approaches to strategy. And that really cemented my interest in the work in the strategy world. And I was fortunate to work at the University of Technology Sydney Design Innovation Research Centre.

where we were working with clients on real challenges, but also writing about what we were doing. And in that role, I had a lot of opportunity to experiment with design practices and processes with organizations around all sorts of challenges, operational, it might be service design, might be to do with manufacturing, you name it, we kind of went there. But I was always working more into the strategy side of

Mike Jones (03:08)
you

Leanne (03:30)
the work. Yeah, then that segwayed me into the PhD actually in my role there. towards the end of my PhD, Snowmelt were looking for someone to come and work with them. the background that I have and my interest in strategic design, design and strategy really aligned very well with

their work and ethos looking at systems, systems thinking, the intersect with design and or design practices and strategy. So here I am. And we've been working with all sorts of clients, very much systems thinking, using design methods, mindsets, practices, material, artifacts to help navigate that complexity. So that is me and where I'm at now.

Mike Jones (03:53)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Nice.

Yeah, that's a great history straight there. There's a lot to go into. Initially straight away, that idea of design. So how does design help or support development of strategy in this sort of crazy world that in now?

Leanne (04:30)
Yeah, I guess taking a step back, like what is design? often joke with people, it's the million dollar question when you're at a barbecue or dinner with friends and they're like, what do you do? And you say, well, I'm a strategic designer. And then it's like, what's that? Is that like fashion design or is that graphic design? Usually people kind of orientate their understanding of design to a specific discipline.

Mike Jones (04:35)
Yeah, yeah, that, yeah.

Leanne (04:57)
⁓ So when I talk about design, I'm talking about the way in which people develop new ideas to solve problems in the very highest level. It's the thinking through, it's the experimentation, it's the coming up with and devising a new product, service, idea, solution that has, there's some sort of need for it to be designed in the first instance.

Mike Jones (04:57)
Yeah.

Leanne (05:23)
So when I talk about design, I'm talking about design in the broad sense of designing something new, but really drawing from the disciplines of design. So the how people design things. So it's using the practices, the ways that people take actions and steps through the creative process. ⁓ And that's kind of where I orientate myself when I talk about design. It's at that level of the doing things, the way of thinking.

Mike Jones (05:42)
Yeah.

Leanne (05:51)
and working through challenges. So when I think about that in relation to strategy, it's then looking at how strategy processes are undertaken or the way that strategists do strategy, then looking at the way that designers do their work and see where there's opportunities to bring in different approaches that kind of open up strategy practice in new exploratory different ways.

So that's kind of the intersect between those two concepts.

Mike Jones (06:23)
Yeah, I like that. I laughed a bit when you say how, you know, strategists do strategy because the whole point of this podcast is because I'm very cynical on how they do it. But yeah, it's definitely, well, I've got the systems thinking background. I see the relations between design thinking and system thinking. With that design, though, what challenges do you find with

Leanne (06:31)
Yeah.

Mike Jones (06:45)
working with leaders when you say, you know what, let's forget about this traditional way that you've always done it. And how about try some of this?

Leanne (06:50)
Mm.

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting actually, because you just mentioned design thinking and I think it's useful to cover some ground with design, this idea of design thinking and then management, because I think both of those things actually play into how strategists and managers are starting to understand the opportunities for designing in strategy work. So, so I've already explained design more generally, sort of around the 2000 beyond March.

Mike Jones (07:11)
Mm.

Leanne (07:22)
design thinking became a really popular approach in management for products and service development, for innovation and growth. So in that movement, there was a lot of talk about the ways that design practices and approaches, models, methods could be used to help with innovation and giving managers different tools and approaches to open up their thinking in more creative ways to explore new types of opportunities that had not yet been

Mike Jones (07:29)
Yes.

Leanne (07:49)
been explored. very much like empathy led, like looking at the humans, the people who are experiencing the problems that they're trying to design new solutions for, looking at experimentation as the driver towards coming up with new approaches, but testing real time with those people who would actually end up using it at the end of the day, and other iterative approaches like that.

Design thinking as a concept then became like a process or model or tool that managers could then start to understand and start to apply into their own work. So slightly different from design practices, which come from design schools and designers who learn in studio cultures to managers starting to extrapolate those ideas of design thinking, like thinking like a designer, right? In the work that I do every day.

Mike Jones (08:34)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Leanne (08:36)
to do it differently, to be more innovative and creative. So it's like extrapolated into methods and tools versus a practice and an approach and an experience to designing. So because of the developments of design thinking, so many more managers now have an understanding of design, which is great. And so we often see that that gets coupled in with human-centered design or customer centricity or

Mike Jones (08:44)
Yes, okay, yeah.

Leanne (09:02)
being more innovative or creative thinking, things like that. And so where it's more commonly known, particularly in strategy, it's about, how can we do more research to understand the needs of customers more specifically? When it comes to explaining design as a process, that's been a much harder or black box to kind of unpack. And actually partly what I was doing in my PhD.

Mike Jones (09:22)
Hehehe.

Leanne (09:26)
But I would say because people have a better understanding of design thinking in the management context and because roles have been appearing there are now teams that are doing this sort of work. You now see chief design officers in some organisations who are there to kind of develop product value or value propositions for organisations explicitly through design and design capabilities. Then you just have this

Mike Jones (09:37)
Yeah, yeah.

Leanne (09:52)
more generally a greater awareness of what it means to design and what it means to work with designers. Not always, but on the whole, I think the nuance there is it's not necessarily so well understood in relation to strategy. yeah, the implications of that work actually can be, so the work that designers do often have some sort of strategic implication, which I might talk about in a bit.

Mike Jones (10:07)
Yes, yeah, yeah, I can imagine. And this big z-

Leanne (10:18)
often when designers go out and do research for new products and service innovation, let's say, they'll find out some insights that have strategic implications on how the organisation needs to coordinate itself or its people. So it has related to strategy, but not explicitly at the end of like how designers might work on strategy itself or strategy making itself. And sorry, I interrupted you there.

Mike Jones (10:40)
No, no, no, it's

good, yeah, and hopefully we can pull that apart. It's just that, from what you were saying around the design in strategy is very much about, understanding the situation, understanding different perspectives. You talk about empathy. The challenge I normally have is that when you see traditional strategy, they come in and go, well, what's our aspiration? Our aspiration is to do this. And they haven't done any of that thinking upfront.

So they've got very internally and how does design help them get a more external perspective, more of an understanding of the context before then they think about creating their next maneuver or what they need to do in strategy.

Leanne (11:06)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that's interesting because designers often talked about as a different way of thinking through problems in the sense that it's much more based on synthesis versus, you know, looking abductively at the problem rather than taking a more linear approach and doing analysis in more inductive and deductive ways. And I think how that shows up in strategy is that often strategists will

Mike Jones (11:29)
Mm.

Leanne (11:45)
come in with a particular point of view of what the strategy might look like. Now that's still informed by research and there's always a sort of a parcel of work that goes into that. I mean, also from a consultancy perspective, know, strategists are employed because of their knowledge and expertise in certain areas, you know. So that becomes the kind of setting, the hypothesis

stage of strategy setting and more traditional strategy approaches. that is the walking in with a point of view and therefore how we're going to run this project over the next 12 weeks or however it's defined. And from that outset, there are already predefined types of analysis that are going to happen. They already know kind of there's a bit of economic modelling as part of that. And that's all kind of based on those early

points of view or hypotheses that are set out. At the extreme end, and when I talk about these, I kind of talk about them as polarities of practice. They should be seen as like more extremes, but of course, there's gray in between. not one or the other. There's like variation in all kinds of ways that strategy is done, but by and large, those polarities show the difference. And so, yeah, so when designers approach strategy, it's much more exploratory.

Mike Jones (12:56)
Yeah.

Leanne (13:04)
So in the beginning, it's fed around, what is our initial problem? Let's go and do a bit more research to understand it in a more nuanced way. Like how is it experienced by who? Like what are the challenges that the customers are having? Who are all the stakeholders that are involved in delivering on this particular product or service or the organisation that they're working for?

Mike Jones (13:17)
Hmm.

Leanne (13:27)
What about the stakeholders who are involved in the work internally? Let's understand their expertise in a really deep way. And so the problem frame isn't actually set or the parameters of the strategy isn't set until that broader exploration is done. So the processes between traditional strategists, strategy practitioners and say design practitioners or strategic design practitioners tends to be at odds with each other. Like when

Mike Jones (13:41)
Yeah, it's fine.

Leanne (13:53)
particularly when they've been working together, those tensions arise between where we are in the process. It's like, yes, but we started with this particular view of what's going on. Why are you doing extra work to explore the problem in this way? Can we just agree on where we're going? But anyway, the point is that when strategic designers do that work, it's much more of a test and iterate. Let's stress test our thinking. Let's not assume, let's like...

Mike Jones (14:07)
Yeah, yeah.

Leanne (14:19)
test our biases and assumptions around what's going on.

But also really importantly, it's about understanding exactly what's going on in the moment of time, rather than relying on the past data, like last year's results and things like that. There is still a need to look at all of that analysis, but it's also bringing it into those broader perspectives and what's going on and how the organisation might need to change. It's much more about what's possible rather than what we know. ⁓

Mike Jones (14:46)
Yes.

Leanne (14:47)
And so yes, if that answered your question.

Mike Jones (14:50)
Yeah. No, no, that's

yeah, that's perfectly. And you bring out some really good things there around, past data. Yes. never say it's not useful to have a look at the past data, but that can't be your sole input of information. And I really like the idea you're talking about. we be sit a lot in OODA Loop which is, our orientation, we test our orientation. So we, we look for mismatches differences between what I believe to be true.

Leanne (15:06)
Mm.

Mm.

Mike Jones (15:18)
and what's actually happening in reality and listening to different people's perspectives. And think that really opens up options, really opens up difference that can unlock some really complex challenges that the organization faces.

Leanne (15:19)
Mm. Mm.

Yeah, it's interesting also thinking back to traditions in design practice and cultures of studio learning and origins of design. a big part of design and hence the idea of synthesis is that to navigate a design process is to reflect on what's actually turning out in the process itself.

Mike Jones (15:51)
Hmm.

Leanne (15:52)
And so one thing I found in my research is that when strategy projects are already predefined and planned to a certain degree, a lot of what needs to happen is already outlined as in what types of analysis, in who needs to be spoken to, as in how long are we going to spend on this particular part of our analysis. Everything's kind of chunked up to a degree.

Whereas design process very intentionally senses for what it needs to progress. So in strategy work, means also, well, what are we hearing from our stakeholders? Where does that tell us we should then investigate or interrogate the positioning or the framing of this problem or the choices that we can see landing, the strategic choices that we can see in front of us? Let's keep stress testing those or,

bring some of those ideas to life and let's actually go and road test them real time and then see if they land or not. it's the steps within the process that also push the strategy process forward rather than sort of going through this set program of work based on that initial hypothesis. And it's going back to Sean's work on the reflective practitioner. It's like reflecting in and on action. And that reflecting in and on action is all about

Mike Jones (17:00)
Yeah.

Leanne (17:08)
you know, taking stock of what we've learned from what we see, what we've heard and informing what choices we make in the process to then help us analyse and work through the directions that are set. And it very much centres the people involved in that as well. So it's not just about the strategist doing that work. It's also inviting those who will then be living the strategy, breathing the strategy to be part of that.

and something I've been talking about a lot lately. It's the same ethos as with product or service design. Like you want the thing, you know, the ear pods that I've got in my ears right now, you want them to work at the end of the day. So the design process has to be a usable thing that people are going to bring into their lives and use in whichever ways that suit them, right? So it's the same when design meets strategy is to say that

Mike Jones (17:47)
Yes.

Leanne (18:00)
the way that strategic designers tend to think about it is this strategy needs to be usable. And how can we help build momentum and buy in as we're going through that? So bringing the people who will be living the strategy to be part of those conversations

Mike Jones (18:07)
Yes, yeah.

Leanne (18:15)
in shaping the strategy in a much deeper, richer way so that when the strategy is set and formed, it can be lived and known and people will walk out of that process knowing which direction to go in.

Yeah.

Mike Jones (18:26)
Yeah,

I like that a lot. Definitely when you're thinking around closing that gap between strategy and execution, having those people involved is going to help with that. And I really like your reflections on reflection in and on the practice. That takes the organization to slow down in a bit to actually be more mindful about the process of strategy so that, like you said, so it's usable or I like to see when it

Leanne (18:33)
Yes.

Mmm. Yeah.

Mike Jones (18:56)
when it meets reality actually is going to have an effect or an outcome that we're trying to achieve. What do you say to people, listeners or organizations where they think, well, this just sounds like it's chaos to me or it just sounds like it's slow in practice?

Leanne (19:03)
Mm.

Yeah, look, I would reflect on the amount of strategy processes that you've been through and reflect on the times where it's really landed and taken off and when maybe it hasn't as much and to suggest that there is something in these practices or processes that are seen as soft but that are super powerful. It's the sense making, it's the meaning generation, it's having a collective

Mike Jones (19:18)
Mmm.

Yeah, yeah.

Leanne (19:40)
taking the time to build a collective understanding of the direction that we're all going on. It's about giving people time and space to imagine a future direction. One that might actually be quite radical and bold, but also requires people to be committed to that particular change. And it's not only that, it's to say, you can't just come, you don't want to come up with a strategy that is so foreign to the existing organisation that it hits like a jolt.

by taking the time to really build the strategy and the thinking about strategic directions with people from the organisation, you then leverage the tacit knowledge. You've got people who know the ins and outs, they're so aware of what's going on, they're at the coalface all the time. So the point is that they will be able to weed out and help you de-risk the strategy, even still, obviously keeping that future view.

Mike Jones (20:23)
Hmm.

Leanne (20:34)
It can be a tension in mind, sometimes people like to stay where they are. But if you do that carefully and navigate that through the process, the point is people will have a much richer understanding of what ways they will then take the strategy for what it means for them ⁓ in reality to take from your podcast title and take it forward.

Mike Jones (20:37)
Yeah, yeah.

Mm.

Leanne (20:55)
But it's also interesting because the other thing that strikes me, and this has come up through the work that we do here at Snowmelt, but also my study, there is the consulting engagement, right? So there's the people who come in and do the strategy work and then leave. And then there's the whole scenario of the internal strategy teams who are experimenting with strategy in different ways. I would say that, you know, strategy consulting limits

Mike Jones (21:07)
Yes.

Leanne (21:25)
the level of engagement and the ways in which the process can continue to sense and fine tune strategy. It's just the construct that that is such. And I know we're certainly mindful of bringing people in to counter that so that there's this empowerment through the process. That's why we do our work in that way. But what's really interesting

Mike Jones (21:32)
Yes.

Leanne (21:49)
in coming through my research, and what I'm quite excited about is that there are lots of strategy, internal strategy teams now who have been experimenting with design. A group of diverse experts, so you've got your traditional analysts or more traditional strategists working with designers. And in this fusion of design tech even, and traditional strategy decision making,

Teams have actually been able to build in this sense-making approach to strategy where they know that they can do all this work in leading up to the strategy, so experimentation, testing, considering future directions. But when they reveal the strategy, there's an opportunity that an internal team can be afforded that a strategy consults you can't in that the teams can then see what's actually working. And often what happens is when a strategy

Mike Jones (22:32)
Yes.

Leanne (22:37)
does start and starts to be implemented, there's like things that aren't behaving in the ways that they anticipated. So building in sensing mechanisms with the teams and designers are really useful at that, customer or, you know, organisational kind of sensing to then go right, well, that's not landing where it needs to, we might want to make a tweak here and there. So what I'm really excited about in that scenario is the role of designers in supporting that sensing and

Mike Jones (22:44)
Yes.

Leanne (23:03)
continual refinement of strategy as the strategies unfold. And I think, you know, you know, we're often talking about complexity at the moment, know, organisations are living in these existences that kind of escape complexity. There's so much change happening. You just have to look at the global like scenario right now with tariffs throwing up all sorts of things for organisations to adapt to. This is

Mike Jones (23:06)
Yeah, yeah.

Leanne (23:30)
and mass digital disruption, organisations are having to constantly change really quickly. So how do they build in some sort of capacity to then be able to adapt in a more timely way without asking for a complete strategy kind of reset every three or four years? So how can those practices be refined?

Mike Jones (23:37)
Yes.

Yeah.

Well, yes, yes, exactly. know, there's, there's a lot in that, that I loved, one, thinking about the external strategy, consultants, there is a place for them, and I think we're quite similar in, in a sense of snow melt. We, tend to work with rather than, work on our own and then come in, like, cause I've seen some horrible things where, some consultants have come in, big consultancies.

gave a strategy that they've worked out themselves and just sort of just thrown it over and go, there you go, execute that. the difference is huge between what's actually capable of and what that strategy says. Secondly is around these feedback loops and the fact that we know we're gonna develop strategy and we can do, we can say there's no perfect strategy but we could build a pretty good strategy.

Leanne (24:33)
Mm.

Mike Jones (24:45)
we can execute it, but we never know how that's going to land. We don't know what's going to change on the way. And I like your idea of directionality. So we talk about intent. So it's more about not a fixed position. It's directionality and those feedback loops that, we've, has now happened. What does that mean to the strategy? How do we need to reformulate or adapt rather than, like you said, every soon as something, something goes wrong, we have to get everyone in and

Leanne (24:55)
and

and

Mike Jones (25:13)
redesign a whole new strategy, which isn't the point. Actually, it's just about how do we sense and understand what's happening and how do we then create, adaptions to the strategy. I think there's a lot in there. I think it makes it more usable in this uncertain world.

Leanne (25:18)
Mmm.

Mm, yeah.

and

Yeah, I would say the same. And it's interesting too, because, you know, through my research and also what we're doing here at Snowmelt, had lots of reflective conversations about the way that strategy is changing and because of the rise of design thinking in management and also by that I mean at business schools like the University of Technology Sydney, design thinking has become core.

Mike Jones (25:48)
Mm.

Leanne (25:57)
to business management courses. So there's whole cohorts of business graduates now who understand the ideas of design in relation to management and being more empathetic and understanding stakeholders and customers and what synthesis means and looks like. And also that also means that, and it's shown up in my research too, that there are strategists who are adopting design thinking methods and processes already in their strategy practice.

So with that and also designers becoming closer to strategy because of the developments in design and economies, bringing designers into greater work in management, it's kind of, it is actually changing the way that strategy practices operate. I'm not to say everywhere, but I think there's a greater understanding even within strategists as part of their work. Like I had strategists talk to me about using design as, know,

having design thinking as part of the toolkit. It's not everything, but it's part of what they might draw on or use as part of it. The flip side of that is, know, a strategic designer might actually just, they just use design as an approach. It's an ethos. It's a way of thinking through the strategy process. It's the experience and embodiment of design. It's slightly different nuance, but it's showing up in different ways. So you have the more traditional strategists who take a very,

Mike Jones (27:14)
Yeah.

Leanne (27:17)
economic lens towards strategy, right through to kind of building out these other capabilities, more design centric, in a more design centric way. So I think, you know, I think from that point of view, there is already a sense of the power of bringing in stakeholders, and that's internal, but also external. But I think there's a big call for, for organisations to make bolder steps. So how can we help?

Mike Jones (27:34)
Yeah.

Leanne (27:42)
our clients or the partners we're working with imagine new futures in new ways. Like how can we get them to think about their future in a more radical way? What processes or experiences or conversations can we bring into the strategy project to shift the thinking? ⁓ And that's also part of it is like, how do we do some of this bigger picture work? And I think that's particularly

Mike Jones (27:59)
Hmm.

Leanne (28:08)
important because we've got climate change ⁓ pressing on all organisations. There's a need to do radical things to reduce consumption and creating environmental harm. How do organisations conceive of those big issues in the view of traditional competition strategy frameworks? There's a need to expand the conception of strategy that brings in these non-human aspects like AI and

Mike Jones (28:11)
Yes.

Leanne (28:34)
⁓ the environment and even just social issues, like how do we tackle some of the big grand social challenges of our times as part of what we're doing as a business. Not saying that that work hasn't been happening, but I think some of that work does challenge some of the traditional models and frameworks of strategy and how it's conceived and how the analysis is done. I think bringing in design approaches and through those models and frameworks, they're

Mike Jones (28:34)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Leanne (29:00)
is the opportunity to start to introduce different data sets, different ways of thinking about the challenges that might even bring in the ecosystem rather than just the traditional competitive framework. like, how do we think about this at the industry level? How do we work with our competitors? All that kind of stuff. So I think that's for me, there's a lot of work already happening within design studies moving into these, to quote,

Mike Jones (29:20)
Yes.

Leanne (29:28)
Tony Fry, like, redirective practices, how as designers do we make sure we're not doing more harm than good for the environment? And so I think, you know, designers are still grappling with this big change too, but as part of that, there are practices that are being developed to, you know, start to consider, what's circularity and how can we kind of, as design communities, do better in our processes and thinking about what design should be and materiality and all that kind of stuff.

Mike Jones (29:33)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Leanne (29:56)
So then

the question goes for strategy, what does that look like? And I think in more traditional ways and traditional approaches, some of those ideas are challenged somewhat. ⁓

Mike Jones (30:06)
Yes.

you know, and a lot of good stuff is going on. It's, I don't, it's not like I'm going to organisations and they're surprised. I think they're welcoming to a different approach. It's really just how and how can we support them to embed these new practices or experiment these new practices in a way. And the idea of moving beyond just competition.

Leanne (30:16)
Mm.

Yes.

Mike Jones (30:31)
I think it's really good. So a lot of traditional strategies are, are very much based on competition where she said bringing the ecosystem with all the different challenges we have. Actually, there could be strategies about how do we work with our competitors? How can we work with our suppliers collaboration? There's a lot of the third sector involved, which they're not trying to win anything. They're just, they're trying to do something. So I think all this approach really brings nuance to strategy rather than the sort of

Leanne (30:37)
Mm.

and

Mm. Mm.

Mike Jones (31:01)
1980s typologies of top right corner and you've won.

Leanne (31:03)
Mm-mm.

That's right.

I think part of the challenge too is that there is a certain risk of taking on a process of strategy that has less proof points. In management, there's a huge reliability on evidence. show me the evidence where that's worked. Or I know of certain types of strategy organisations who I know will deliver me a strategy that I kind of need. I need this strategy to look and feel in a certain way.

Mike Jones (31:22)
Mmm.

Leanne (31:35)
And there's also, so there's that coupled with how managers have been trained to think about what a strategy looks like. And often it's about, well, we need to have the numbers stacked up against the opportunities and, you know, the current scenario. We need to build the burning platform. And that's often done through a metrics. But what about the social relational aspects of strategy and how we do strategy in reality? And that's

Mike Jones (31:42)
Yes, yes.

Yeah.

Leanne (32:02)
brings forward a whole set of different articulations of the need for strategy and how you build a burning platform. And, you know, there's observations there about whether or not someone would have the, I guess, not the bandwidth, but the authorship to undertake a strategy project that looks so different from what the general discourse is on strategy. So

Yeah, so I think there's a challenging in a number of directions and it takes courage. And also, I guess, having some experience is something that's floated up in my research and comes down to how I've defined like strategists and strategic designers as well. People who've become attuned to even design thinking, the methods and tools and approaches to design have

Mike Jones (32:29)
Yes.

Leanne (32:48)
developed confidence in using that through the experience of applying it into strategy work. So there's a level of needing to be exposed to and build trust in the process that it will get you to a result rather than, you know, someone like myself saying, hey, you know, design's great in strategy because of these sorts of reasons. Sometimes it needs to be felt and experienced because it is so different.

Mike Jones (33:10)
Yeah.

Leanne (33:12)
like just running through a design process. And I think that's why design thinking became so popular and all these capability programs were happening within organizations, training people about design thinking was a workshop based model to take you through the experience of the discomfort of exploration and not knowing the problem and being in that for a while and exploring. you know, we've all seen it when we're around talking about a problem and someone just goes, yeah, I've got the solution. It's like, hang on a minute.

Mike Jones (33:34)
Yeah.

Leanne (33:38)
How did you come to that? And just designers suspending themselves in that state for a while is actually, it's a very uncomfortable thing and something that more rational, traditional rational approaches don't rely on so much. It's sort of like, let's just get to the solution and let's run the numbers on that and then we'll make a decision. This is actually proposing a different way of decision making. is...

Mike Jones (33:39)
Yeah, he has a hair.

Leanne (34:00)
about synthesis, it's looking across data sets in a more nuanced way. It's taking time to explore them and question them. one of my, it actually came up a few times as a theme, it's sort of risk reducing because you're kind of testing it out as you go. You're reducing the risk of the idea because you're giving yourself time to kind of myth bust those assumptions. Yeah.

Mike Jones (34:15)
Yes.

Yeah. And

it's giving you that cognitive flexibility as well, as you start to execute the strategy, a lot of the challenge you may come across, you've probably thought about and you're right, this is a different approach. looking at data sets and, doing the numbers and making the, the traditional PowerPoint decks, you go, they, I'd say they do.

They do serve a purpose still, but I just wonder what lens that they are made for. You know, are they, are they, are they being made to be actionable and be useful for the strategy or are they being made for because of our traditional governance and our dealings with boards, the board needs to see this for approval. And then thus they want to see this data set in this way because all their,

Leanne (34:47)
Mm.

Mm.

Mike Jones (35:08)
directorship courses that they've done to become a board member all say that we need to have this and you need to have these numbers and you should have these things for strategy rather than they've started to catch up with the more, I say not newer thinking, know, modern thinking.

Leanne (35:17)
Mm.

Well, it's

kind of the difference between quant analysis and qual analysis. And often people will say, that's not representative. How many people did you actually interview? That's sort of beside the point. There's nuance that comes up. There are different methodologies that kind of come from different philosophical standpoints. But I think your point is true. There is an expectation set at these different levels about

Mike Jones (35:30)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Leanne (35:51)
what we need in order to make an informed decision about strategy and what sort of level of certainty does the PowerPoint deck give me and what does it contain? And I think that is absolutely true. People, and so often it's done based on economic modelling and a data set that kind of proves if you make these sorts of decisions, this is the kind of outcome you're going to get. And that modelling is the role

Mike Jones (35:54)
Mm.

Leanne (36:19)
is the reliability, I guess. And that's, think, the challenge is that, is it reliable? Who can be sure? But I think the point is not so much that. It's just that these processes, because they're much more about the social and relational ways of thinking about the challenge, formulating choices through the process, in the end, it's actually

the distinction is the process itself, not so much the deck. So you can still produce a deck by going through that process. It will be filled with different data points, but the points of getting down to a set of choices should be the same. It's then, well, how do we get to there? And therefore, and then how are we going to implement it that I think is the point. And if you've brought people through that journey, then as part of that,

Mike Jones (36:47)
Yes.

Yes.

Leanne (37:08)
presentation of the final strategy, you'll be able to have talking points about how those directions will be met within the organisation itself. But I think that is exactly the challenge for design in relation to strategy is that it's not seen as a robust or valid approach to ⁓ doing business work in the traditional rational sense.

Mike Jones (37:26)
Yeah.

Leanne (37:33)
Having said that, there is a lot being written about how, you know, I think Sean talks about it as rational technicality, something like this. And linear thinking is often talked about deduction versus abduction, know, versus synthesis. There's a lot being written by the scholars who saying like, business cannot rely on these traditional rational decision-making.

Mike Jones (37:36)
Hehehe.

Yeah. ⁓

Leanne (37:57)
processes. But the big question is, how do you introduce these different ways of thinking and problem solving that bring in more exploratory approaches, which are representative of design thinking, let's say, and much more collaborative sense making as an okay thing to do, a welcomed thing to do. Because coupled with expectations around the

The thing that I use to make decisions on strategy is how do we spend time together in an effective, productive way? So the idea of consultation and spending time in workshops is often kind of like, another workshop. But actually it's really productive time when you're sharing your knowledge and working through the complexities in ways that you are never afforded the opportunity to do in day-to-day work. It's like, that is where the breaking down of silos happens.

That's where the leveraging diversity of thinking happens. That's where the critical thinking comes in. And even importantly, like critical reflexivity. How do you start to see yourself with others in the decision making process? And how can you more deeply relate to others in that work? And that doesn't happen when you're just busy doing your own work on your own every day. Those magic moments and those seeing possibilities in new light.

Mike Jones (38:47)
Yeah.

Leanne (39:14)
comes through those moments where you have a chance to just turn over, turn the soil let's say, look at the problem from different direct perspectives and that is in the experience of strategy done in different ways. And I've got to say traditional approaches don't involve workshops and interviews and things like that, they do, but it's the point of why they're integrated into strategy projects and how they're used and there's a nuance there.

Mike Jones (39:19)
Yes, yeah, yeah.

Yes.

Leanne (39:42)
from traditional approaches and more design approaches.

Mike Jones (39:46)
No, and we're not trying to destroy and say it's all rubbish. There's still a lot of useful stuff that informs it. Yeah, and I know you gave a fantastic summary there about the usefulness of this approach. But it's like a muscle, isn't it? It's like the more that you embrace it, the more that you challenge the, it's not just the iterative process of doing strategy, it's the iterative process of

Leanne (39:53)
No, it's not. No.

Mm.

Mike Jones (40:16)
of this, of bringing it into the organisation and honing it so it works for you. And I think, you know, just going into it and trying with an open mind and practising some of this, it will only get better. But, sorry. Yeah.

Leanne (40:28)
Yeah. Can I just add a little point to that?

I actually think, and it's important to stress this too, it's not an and or. So when I've talked about design and strategy and more rational approaches, it's actually not about one or the other. It's about how those skills come together to just challenge each other and look for new possibilities. it's not enough just to do the design work without some sort of analysis down the track about decision-making.

Mike Jones (40:41)
Mmm.

Leanne (40:56)
It's about finding really clever ways of bringing those different data points together and making sure that there's a reliance on the right kind of assumptions and moving into this testing and experimentation mindset, bringing that traditional analysis and economic modeling with some real time testing. so where designers worked really well, particularly in consulting contexts, is where there's a fusion of those skills, where they create the opportunity for challenging each other and

Mike Jones (41:19)
Yes, yeah.

Leanne (41:24)
coming up with new approaches that wouldn't have ordinarily been seen. So it's not a one or the other. And there's definitely on the design side, there's a need to understand business and the language as much as there is for, you know, there's the opportunity for managers to learn a different way to approach problems. So I see it as a merging of skills, definitely like a cross-disciplinary opportunity. It's not, it's not.

one or the other. So think that's where the opportunity lies and that's the power in the idea of design and all of the attributes that come with that.

Mike Jones (41:49)
Yes.

Yeah, I like that idea of fusion. It's not about just like very partisan, no, it must be this or it must be that, it's about fusion. I think that's the way forward. But before we leave, is there one thing you'd like our listeners to go away and think about?

Leanne (42:12)
Yeah, I think if you're a strategy person who hasn't yet had the opportunity to explore design in a more integrated way to strategy or have the opportunity to work with strategic designers or designers who've found themselves closer to strategy work, I'd ask the question to have a look and see what's in it and make sense of that from your own experience. I think

for me coming through the research is that there's been a very dominant way of thinking about what a good strategy looks like. And so the invitation in all of this work and this conversation today is why not design and what else could come of integrating and experimenting with design approaches in some way. And that could be design thinking, but also taking some time to work with designers just to see what that way of working through a process looks like and how it feels different, even if it's

not specifically in a strategy project, but it might be a service design or product design project or something, just to get a sense of that. And so it's an invitation to explore different ways of thinking about the problems of strategy and also opening up the ideas of what frameworks and models are used to define strategy, just to start to think about those bigger issues and adaption and complexity as a reality of everyday business and how bringing in some of those approaches helps to sense and

build capacity and capabilities around being more adaptive as strategists, also for organisations and the people who work within them.

Mike Jones (43:37)
Yeah, it's great. It's fantastic. I like the idea about building that shared consciousness or shared understanding, that adaptiveness, being a fusion rather than just being partisan. Yeah, I think it's been awesome to have a chat with you, Leanne. Really enjoyed it. It's given me a lot to go away and think about. Good. Thank you. ⁓

Leanne (43:52)
It's been great to be here with you. ⁓ Wonderful.

Mike Jones (43:59)
For the listeners, if you enjoyed the show, please like and subscribe and feel free to share to your network so they can really get the value from Leanne's perspective on designing strategy. And I hope you enjoyed the episode as much as I have. Thank you, Leanne, and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.

Leanne (44:17)
Thanks so much, Mike. It's been a pleasure.

Mike Jones (44:20)
Thank you.