In the August issue of the MIT Sloan Management Review, there is an article by John Shook describing the A3* report - a lynchpin of the famed Toyota approach to improvement. As a structured, fact-driven and ideally visual way of capturing and sharing a situation, the A3 is really attractive. It's more rational than intuitive, but there's room for intuition in the A3 for the enterprising business designer as well. We've got similar tools that we sometimes use at work.
In one of the callouts in the article, I found a really nice observation by the author that made me stop for a second.
In the A3 report, design responses to challenges are typically framed as "countermeasures" rather than "solutions." Whereas "solution" connotes the "end-all, be-all", countermeasures represent a refinement or evolution to combat a challenge. As Shook points out, countermeasures might introduce new challenges to the system. You'd never expect such rude behavior from a solution.
"Countermeasures" is just a much more honest way to frame design responses. Plus, the word appeals to my irrational attachment to The Hunt for Red October.
*As a paper size, I like A3 (tabloid or 11X17) for worksheets and sketching - especially early in a process. You can see the whole problem, especially if your sketching is as "loose" as my ideas usually are. I find my writing and visualizations get smaller and clearer as I work through the divergence and convergence cycle. Too bad. If I was working more sustainably, I'd flip that.
