Enabling Truth-Seeking Design Cultures: A Framework for Breakthrough Success
How truth-seeking cultures counterbalance our over-reliance with design process. A lesson from the repeated breakthrough success of Sam Altman and OpenAI.
Follow the truth, rather than the approach or process.
— Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI
Designing great products is so more than process, but a mindset.
As a design leader, I've seen firsthand how our obsession with process can sometimes get in the way of truly exceptional work. But what if we shifted our focus away from process and instead placed a greater emphasis on the attitudes, behaviors, and values that drive our work?
In this article, we'll explore the concept of ‘truth seeking culture’ and its vital importance in product design. We'll dive into the science, key values and behaviors that define this approach, and explore a practical framework for integrating this mindset into your product design and development organization.
Defining Truth Seeking Cultures
Today, I attended the Stripe Sessions 2023 event where Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, in conversation with John Collison, Co-Founder and President of Stripe, spoke about the state of AI and technological change. There is a lot we can learn from Sam, as an innovator who has repeated generated breakthrough success stories. While he shared some impressive predictions about Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and offered valuable advice for startups, what really caught my attention was his emphasis on the importance of 'truth seeking research cultures.' This concept piqued my curiosity and left me wondering: what exactly is a truth seeking research culture?
Quickly after the conference, I went home to write this article and worked with ChatGPT to create this definition:
"Truth-seeking research culture" is a term that refers to a culture within an organization that prioritizes the pursuit of knowledge and understanding, rather than adhering to preconceived notions or biases. It is a culture that values objective analysis and data-driven decision making, and encourages open discussion and debate.
In such a culture, researchers and employees are encouraged to challenge assumptions and explore new ideas, even if they go against the status quo. Mistakes are seen as opportunities for learning, rather than as failures. Collaboration is also encouraged, with individuals from different backgrounds and perspectives working together to arrive at a more complete understanding of the issues at hand.
Ultimately, a truth-seeking research culture is one that prioritizes intellectual honesty and a commitment to uncovering the truth, even if it is uncomfortable or goes against what people initially believed to be true. This type of culture can be particularly important in fields such as science, technology, and academia, where the pursuit of knowledge and understanding is a core value.
Sam Altman shared how in the early days of building OpenAI, he encountered many prestigious researchers he sought to work with on the technology, but soon realized that many of them were more focused on process than on truth-seeking. This got me thinking about how this applies to product design. In my experience, I have witnessed the same phenomenon in design organizations and reputable companies that are staffed with well-resourced and experienced people
I engage design executives regularly through my work at the Design Executive Council. I have noticed a general pattern of dissatisfaction from our senior most leaders with the state of design process today.
I’ll never forget a Fortune 100 company design executive tell me: “I’m so exhausted by our industry’s obsession on process.” Furthermore, we see repeated statements from CEOs harp on this bloat of organizations and our over-indexing on non-essential work that does not translate into business outcomes.
Let’s get in-depth.
Science of Truth Seeking Culture
There is growing evidence to support the idea that truth-seeking cultures can lead to better outcomes and performance in organizations. Research has found that high-performing teams tend to prioritize behaviors such as speaking up, sharing information, and seeking feedback, and that these behaviors are more important than factors such as individual intelligence or skill.1
Organizations that prioritize learning and development tend to outperform their competitors, with stronger cultures, more engaged employees, and better financial performance.2 A study of over 150 organizations found that those with strong learning cultures tend to have better employee engagement and retention, as well as higher levels of innovation and customer satisfaction.3
One article I reference often is "Why Innovation Depends on Intellectual Honesty" from MIT Sloan Review.4 It discusses the importance of intellectual honesty in driving innovation within organizations.The authors argue that intellectual honesty - a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths and admit when one doesn't know something - is necessary for true innovation to occur. They also suggest that leaders must create a culture of intellectual honesty within their organizations in order to foster a more innovative environment.
The researchers found that many teams prioritize psychological safety without realizing that the social cohesion it promotes, though beneficial to learning, can sometimes undermine intellectual honesty rather than encourage it. However, when people are brutally honest (Steve Jobs would tell people at Apple that they were “full of s – – – ”), they can undermine others’ feelings of acceptance and respect — which are the cornerstones of feeling secure to challenge one’s colleagues.
If leaders can balance psychological safety and intellectual honesty, they gain the benefits of both.
In order to create a successful truth seeking culture, organizations must place a high value on intellectual honesty and create an environment where employees feel safe to speak up and share their ideas and concerns.
Design organizations are over-reliant on process
In my experience, one of the pervasive problems in in-house design organizations today is an over-reliance on design process. While constructs like double diamond and design thinking are helpful methodologies that provide visible structure to the messiness of creative problem-solving, they can also create intellectual laziness.
This is even more pervasive in organizations where you have hired too many mercenaries rather than missionaries. Mercenaries are primarily motivated by the extrinsic factors, whereas missionaries are motivated by intrinsic factors. Truth seeking is highest amongst missionaries, but are also the rarest to find and hire. However, change is possible to create cultures that uphold the right values, and provide the right mix of rewards and incentives that align to truth seeking culture.
I also worry that many newer designers who have joined the industry through the last hiring boom may not have had the time or opportunity to develop critical thinking, debate, and analysis skills, particularly in organizations that have prioritized hyper growth at the expense of productive design cultures. This gap is even more evident and further amplified in fiscally conservative environments where CEOs prioritize efficiency, essential activities, and streamline their companies.
Intellectual Laziness
Intellectual laziness can manifest in many ways, often leading to team environments where critical thinking, debate, and intellectual rigor are absent. It's the feeling that creative output is hollow and unimpressive.
This phenomenon is typically more evident in entrenched or low-motivation organizations, where internal complacency causes company stagnation and competitive disadvantages. A culture with a high degree of intellectual laziness is a dangerous place to be for too long, as companies that remain in a complacent state end up being disrupted or displaced by others.
For instance, design teams often rely on extensive 'design thinking workshops and brainstorms' to guide stakeholders through a seemingly well-organized process to generate new ideas or solutions.
How many of these have you sat in to only wonder, what was the point of this?
The issue I find is that it generate a facade of confidence that doesn't actually solve the root problem. It is often far more talking, than actually working deeply. While these workshops have their place, my argument is that we have over-relied on them over in-depth collaboration with open dialogue, evidence, analysis, and debate.
Furthermore, my issue with the illustration of the double diamond is that is looks too linear. I appreciate the general capture of the macro cycles, but it may mislead less experienced designers to assume it may not be as iterative as it truly needs to be. If you are serious about solving a problem, it will not fit neatly in a framework. You should be generating an obsessive amount of iterations at a rapid velocity with rapid feedback. If leaders want to create outstanding breakthroughs, leaders need to create a dynamic, tight-knit collaborative environment for this to happen, and hire people who exhibit obsessive problem solving and truth seeking behaviors.
The issue isn't with design process itself, but with the lack of truth-seeking mindsets of those involved. When we rely entirely on process and defer deeper capacity for deeper critical thinking, we diminish our ability to produce great work that has been thoroughly understood, reviewed, and iterated upon obsessively.
And I repeat..
Process rigor is not the same as intellectual rigor.
Process rigor is not the same as intellectual rigor.
Process rigor is not the same as intellectual rigor.
Process rigor is about structure, methodology, consistency
Intellectual rigor is about critical thinking, analysis, depth
Chaos vs Order in Truth Seeking Culture
While process provides structure, critical thinking and a truth-seeking mindset are essential for success.
The effectiveness of a process is dependent on the attitudes and values of the individuals involved. A team with the wrong mindset may engage in innovation theater, producing weak solutions that waste resources. Truth seekers are adaptive and constantly adjust to the needs of the situation, engaging in creative destruction and reconstruction to develop new understandings.
While process has its place, it is ineffective without the correct mindset. The right mindset combined with good process yields enormous benefits, but process should not be over-engineered at the expense of effectiveness, which begins with a truth-seeking mindset.
Chaos is necessary for progress as it fosters the emergence of new ideas and perspectives. However, chaos must also be managed to prevent it from becoming overwhelming and counterproductive. Without chaos, systems can become rigid and dogmatic, stifling innovation and progress. Therefore, it's important to strike a balance between chaos and order, allowing for necessary flexibility and experimentation while maintaining stability and organization.
This is what I’ve called in my original thesis paper, the omnipresence of dualities. You. must be capable of holding and operating under high degrees of tension, or you will not be an high performing executive.
Differentiating Effective vs Ineffective Truth Seekers
Effective truth seekers will not create paths of harm and destruction in their pursuit of knowledge. Rather, they will discover ways to nurture, inspire, and engage diverse individuals to learn and grow together.
In contrast, ineffective truth seekers may produce toxic work environments that are aggressive and combative. This is often the result of failing to foster a truth-seeking culture that prioritizes open communication, collaboration, and intellectual honesty. Without this supportive environment, truth-seeking can become a destructive force rather than a productive one.
So how can we set up the foundations for a truth seeking culture?
Implementation: Truth Seeking Culture Matrix
"Culture is the sum of all the things that every person in the organization does, or doesn't do, every day."
- Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb
Many cultural change programs fail because they are not sustained over time.
To help leaders create and maintain a truth-seeking culture, I developed a matrix that serves as a rubric for assessing an organization's adherence to key values such as intellectual honesty, empirical evidence, open communication, rigorous analysis, collaboration, and consistency.
It’s important to understand that these values are interdependent on one another to work. It’s a holistic framework, not an a-la-carte framework. When I think back to Sam Altman’s analogy for the early product development work of OpenAI, I wonder how different the world might be had he not upheld a Truth Seeking Culture for the company and its employees.
While it is unlikely that a team will fully track all of these metrics, the matrix serves as a tactical tool for assessing the prevalence of behaviors that uphold this philosophy. It provides a gut-check for determining whether individuals, teams, and organizations have reached a level of cultural maturity that supports truth-seeking.
Key Takeaways
If there's one thing to take away from this, it's that solving problems effectively requires a comprehensive, nuanced understanding of the problem. This is a fundamental principle at the heart of good design. To be an effective designer (or problem solver in general), one must be an essentialist and stay true to the basic realities of the problem at hand. Otherwise, we may create false solutions for problems that don't truly exist or prioritize unnecessary features over real needs.
Helpful guidelines:
Mindset is effectiveness, as process is to efficiency.
Don’t conflate process rigor with intellectual rigor.
The pursuit of knowledge and understanding is key to effective design.
Truth seekers are adaptive problem solvers who drive innovation and progress.
Use process judiciously, don't let it govern you to obsessive rigidity.
Over-reliance on process often leads to complacency and intellectual laziness.
Embrace discomfort, as it is the source of growth and enlightenment.
Mindset is values + attitudes, and culture is the sum of mindset in behaviors.
Product design teams are most effective when debate, critique, and analysis are consistent, but only if a trusted environment has been fostered.
I hope you enjoyed reading this as much I did writing it. If there is sufficient interest, I’d be eager to further develop the matrix with more concrete implementation examples and explore how Truth Seeking cultures can help companies succeed with greater degrees of breakthrough success.
In pursuit of knowledge,
Gordon
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Bersin, J. (2010). The High-Impact Learning Organization. Deloitte Development LLC.
Collins, J., & Smith, K. (2006). Knowledge into Action: The Promise of Learning Organizations. Performance Improvement, 45(5), 35-41.
Edmondson, A. C., & Lei, Z. (2014). Psychological Safety: The History, Renaissance, and Future of an Interpersonal Construct. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 1(1), 23-43.
Dyer, J., Furr, N., Lefrandt, C., & Howell, T. (2023, January 17). Why Innovation Depends on Intellectual Honesty. MIT Sloan Management Review. https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/why-innovation-depends-on-intellectual-honesty/