Dancing in the workplace

Lessons learned on stage that help define Strategic Design

I could start off by defining Strategy and Design individually, however, I would prefer to define it by using a personal metaphor. My first exposure to Strategic Design was in the dance studio. I’ve been dancing since I was 8 and I started teaching dance at the age of 16.

My experience as a dancer and as a dance teacher, helped me define Strategic Design with more simplicity by dividing it into key principles. Find out how I identify the essential capabilities by using the 8-count- dancers clock!

and 5 6 7 8...Strategic Design is about:

#1 The emotions you want to trespass to your audience

In other words, “start with the customer”. We always want to create something incredible and have that moment shared with the audience, don’t be scared to get up close and personal. As a dance teacher, I always started a new choreography by understanding my students, my audience and then, I focused on the story that I wanted to create. In business, and as a design strategist, it’s the same! When we need to create a better business, we must start by observing and understanding our potential customers (goals, stories, needs, and desires). And how do we get the answers we need? By asking the right questions!

#2 Thinking visually (& with flexibility)

"Dancers can contort the body into shapes that mere mortals are unable to attain" - this is how we, dancers, define flexibility. Like in the dancing world, in business, we have to be physically and mentally flexible. We also work visually, as much as we can. In business, flexibility can be required - not only if there’s a need to change the initial plans, but also to understand how ideas are conceived, where those ideas come from and the expertise that was brought in to solve challenges.

On stage, movements and flexibility are both visual and we can create visibility on complex movements. In businesses, working visually helps us see the big picture, create visual anchors for strategic conversations and engage with our customers.

#3 Having a solo, but don't flying solo!

I know, on stage we all want to be the rising star... We can have solos, but we must work as a team. As dancers, we practice together in order to perform the best choreography on stage. On the dance studio, one-more-time really means 30-more-times and we practice until we can’t get it wrong by working together and supporting each other. Our goal is to take advantage of different styles, personalities, and capabilities that the class/teams have. As in business, we will uncover hidden opportunities, if we work with others that have different backgrounds and obviously- work as a team.

#4 Storytelling

Dancing is about creating stories, interpretation and being able to express ourselves. As dance teachers, we need to have a strong ability to create from scratch and adapt it whenever it’s necessary. Most of the time, we just want to tell a story through our student’s bodies. For a dancer, this means to interpret and take on a character and dance and portray that character with passion. Stories have a clear beginning and ending- most of them have heroes that you can connect with. In business, awesome stories stick and are remarkable. Awesome stories will be told by others and will inspire the journey ahead. Awesome stories can connect us with our customers and will help us to adapt the focus, every time we need it.

#5 Ability to adapt the focus

As dancers, the ability to adapt the focus means that we are constantly transferring weight from one side of the body to the other, or from the toes to the heels. In business, this could mean that what we thought was the right path from Point A to Point B, could possibly change, given the evidence that is thrown at us. In dance, this kind of shift requires core strength, but it also requires confidence in movement — knowing where we ultimately want to be, but also, being open to different ways of getting there.

#6 Stretching muscles gently and with simplicity

My whole life as a dancer my teachers used to tell me “you need to have a strong core, enough to support jumps, turns, and extensions that you have to perform on stage”. In business, I see “core strength” as the heart of simply requiring that we must know the core values and take it in a simple manner: step by step, working to get there. In other words, know the purpose of the what and why-of what you are doing, be smart and avoid adding features or goals that don’t solve the real problem.

#7 Try, fall, and try again … soon you will succeed 

As dancers, we always know where we want to go. We want the stage and aim to perform the choreography, correctly. Our mind needs to be one beat ahead of the music- this allows us to have a backup if something doesn’t go accordingly to plan. We are always one step ahead, of the choreographed steps and beat.

We can also apply this to the business world if we know where we want to go. This means that we don’t need to have a detailed three-year plan but need to have a clear vision of what we want to achieve in the near future (a winning aspiration). "Try, fall, try, fall..soon you will succeed" also means that we need to iterate over an over and again (prototype, test, validate) until we have a value proposition that answers customers' needs and desires.

#8 Being comfortable with the uncomfortable

Every new movement or choreography has different turns, jumps, and pirouettes. Sometimes we fall, even while we are on stage. Honestly, I confess that it has happened to me on the main stage. When it happened, I thought to myself: “Well done Cátia, you just fell in front of all of them… but the show must go on!”.  Luckily: my body and mind didn’t freeze, and I was able to improvise small movements into the choreography that worked perfectly to get me back on track! I was devastated after that, but I was surprised when people came up to me and said: “Wow that particular thing that you did was awesome”. What did I take from it?  – "Reality is different than what you set out it to be, and we just need to take the chance to make that moment different!”.

In business, everything is uncertain. Everything is changing and there is nothing wrong with that. We must accept and create something “beautiful” with that! Changing moments helps us create an impact that matters and uncover hidden opportunities!

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In conclusion, I can say that my first exposure to Strategic Design was in the dance studio. “Strategic Design” or “Design” can quickly become one of those buzzwords that we often hear like “innovation”, “disruption” or “transformation” – It has different meanings to different people.

Well… in fact, it could be a noun, an adjective or even a verb. It can be defined as a new way to look at the world, at projects or even at companies and see the opportunities uncovered by “creating” something new or changing something and making it better.

Strategy generally involves setting objectives, determine actions to achieve them, and assemble resources to execute the actions needed to accomplish long term goals. Design, on the other hand, allows for a creative solution to be made for a specific problem, by coming up with strategies that are future-oriented, to increase innovative and customer-centric marketable qualities for any business. The goal is the same, but the tools could different: we can say that in the business field, professionals look at the “environment” and data such as reports, graphs, markets, analyze surveys and statistics, to demonstrate the reliability of the facts and ensure that the best decision is made.

In the Strategic Design field, we also look at the “environment” but with a different lens, to understand, capture insights and look at the user and their context- in a qualitative and quantitative manner. This means observing the users, their behaviors and their context to be able to understand their hidden desires and needs using an emphatic approach (context user mapping, ethnographic analysis, customer journeys, personas, ideation involving the user to gather insights).

Strategic Design- it's like being on stage

Through my lenses, Strategic Design is like being a dance teacher or even a dancer. It's all about knowing your audience, working visually, not flying solo, being a storyteller filled with passion, stretching with simplicity, falling sometimes and embracing it.

In other words, Strategic Design is a concept, a mindset, a new way of creating solutions & businesses, for me it’s also the perfect match between strategy and design.

Thanks for reading folks!

Any suggestions or feedback, please reach out!

Cátia Pinto Ferreira

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My sweet-secret-inspiration came from Design a better business, Strategic Design Lab, TopTal Designers, Steal like an artist, Moments of impact, IDEO.org Human Center Design and Harvard Business Review.