Design thinking is a flexible methodology but provides a set of tools based on a mindset. The mindset is geared towards creativity and problem-solving. How problem-solving can be used in organizational thinking is a challenge for leaders. Umar Riaz, Director of the National Police Academy in Islamabad, takes a closer look.

While leaders in the corporate world have long embraced this concept to remain competitive and ahead of the curve, public sector adoption was long overdue. The private sector has been instrumental in using design thinking for its survival and having an edge over its competitors. But the public sector has not been motivated enough, especially in our case.

The public sector has been known to follow a set of predefined rules in a predesigned hierarchy. But the rules and hierarchy have outlived their utility in many ways. Now the public sector is under pressure to reform itself, be innovative and competitive, and meet the expectations of its customers – the public. Any organization that does not treat the public as customers ends up disconnected and disengaged. It might not go out of business, like in the corporate world, but it goes out of favor. The public sector falling out of favor with the public leads to a considerable loss of political capital for the government. Thinking of citizens as customers is not a new idea in itself. Public management ideas from the 1980s popularized the idea and ushered in an era of private sector practices in the public sector but this resulted in mixed results. What is needed is the transformation and adoption of better, competitive practices. 

The police is a unique public sector department. While health and education work is straightforward and service-oriented, and revenue and taxation as regulated, policing is pure enforcement. It’s not to say that citizens do not feature in police priorities. They do – consistently and repeatedly – but it’s often from a self-righteous and one-sided approach with colonial roots and modern pretensions. The department often decides what is good for citizens, and at best, the government speaks for the citizens. While the government has legitimate and political rights, it is also burdened with running the government machinery. The need is to have a new citizen-centric model at two levels – one horizontal and another bottom-up. At the horizontal level, this would mean establishing a direct link with citizens and ensuring that the interventions are not imposed from the top but adopted from a local level.

“To bring change is to be adaptable, to walk in someone else’s shoes and think on behalf of someone else.”

Design thinking and its five steps: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test, provide a blend of tools for problem-solving and changing the orientation of the public. Empathy as the first step is most crucial. To bring change is to be adaptable, to walk in someone else shoes, and to think on behalf of someone else. That someone else is the public, or the customer. The definition of the problem comes second but is equally important. Often the problem is wrongly defined or not defined at all. The tool is divergence, creating as many options as possible. Convergence, the selection of appropriate options, follows divergence. Ideation is the time for exploration and designing the concept. Here, design as a process meets design as a model. The ideation phase is also a link between problems and solutions. The solutions should also follow the convergence-divergence cycle and end with the development of prototypes and testing of the model. Testing should not necessarily be viewed as ultimate success, as forcing success would be confirmation bias. Innovations do not thrive on random successes but on failures that provide the impetus for further innovation. 

The final question would be, how can the design thinking framework for citizen-centric initiatives be introduced in the police department? Training is the obvious choice, but training in design thinking through dated methods will be tricky. Training workshops have to be hands-on and skill-based. This is only possible with a workshop-based, contextual approach. Local case studies have to be piloted and developed for training workshops. One should also be cognizant that the initiatives have been around for a long time. Police and public services have generally been mindful of change and have been trying it. The issue is about scale and consistency. Case studies are the accepted method for adopting the lessons learned and best practices. A distinction has to be made between the case studies and case method, the former being just a story but the latter being the story with a model. The latter is the accepted method for MBAs and corporate consulting. In the public sector, such cases have to be developed for storyboarding and further engagement. 

“Innovations do not thrive on random successes but on failures that provide the impetus for further innovation.

Lecture-based trainings are necessary but are not sufficient. The thinking has to be included in the business process. Business process re-engineering is a fancy and convenient term. This and other fancy terms become a one-size-fits-all solution and impose a solution over the problem. The DT technique would ensure that problem and solution be synced in a design through a convergence-divergence process. Leadership should be the target of the intervention, which should go beyond training. DT can be incorporated to accompany all new projects and initiatives, even those involving procurement and logistics. Management Information Systems (MIS) and software applications can be designed or altered to incorporate the principles and steps of design thinking. The leadership can be targeted at the training institutions but should also be sustained through innovation labs and innovation workshops. The organizational setups can be upgraded with the innovation teams specially designated and tasked to develop an innovative solution after the rigorous process. The significance of the process cannot be overestimated. Creativity and innovation are often thought to be like lightning striking out of the blue, while innovation actually comes with constant effort and focus. Design thinking ensures this necessary focus because it is not merely nurturing ideas but developing pilots that can sustain the test of time and expectations.

In the same spirit of creativity and innovation, through assistance from National Endowment for Democracy and the Accountability Lab Pakistan, a design thinking workshop was organized at the National Police Academy. Newly-recruited Assistant Superintendents of Police undergoing two years of the Initial Command Course were the participants. While the acceptance and appetite for the concept were good, with trainees being fresh and eager to learn, some challenges did emerge. The first challenge was at the conceptual level; is design thinking about design as a physical construct, or is it thinking about having design as a tool? More clarity in the model will also remove ambiguity in the future. 

Like any other professional group, civil servants tend to look for shortcuts and bite-sized solutions instead of rigorous and holistic exercises. Their appetite will also improve if the steps provided in the assignment are reduced further without losing the model’s efficacy. The acceptance of any innovative idea also depends upon authority. Some people are ready for new ideas in any group, while most follow the authority. That’s why introducing the model to those in leadership positions is so crucial. The adoption by authority figures leads more naturally to wider acceptance. 

The experience so far about the content and ensuing assignments of the workshop has been positive. A valuable suggestion to include a case study mirroring the steps described in the framework was appreciated. This will help in simulating solutions. Local context can be strengthened this way too.  The examples from more prominent sectors like health, education, and justice will also be helpful. In the exercises and assignments conducted so far, a common and predictable mistake was regarding the identification of the initial problem and then restating the problem statement. The approach of super-imposing a ready-made solution over an oft-repeated problem was also seen during the exercises. More effort is required in the phase of problem definition and restating the problem. From empathizing to testing, the five steps must be synced with the problem-solution framework provided in the assignment instructions. 

Finally, the identification of ‘values’ and equating the solution with the selected values were not adequately executed. Linking values with solutions was the key part of the whole exercise, and the scant attention paid to values by trainees speaks volumes about the limited role of values in our public service. Values are also the sine qua non for the development of a vision for the future and will elevate the managerial solutions to more transformational leadership ideas. More emphasis on the value framework would help the trainees bring the goals in line with the public’s aspirations.