The Designful Company Review

I am going to share with you some of the major insights and take­aways I got from read­ing the book “The Design­ful Com­pany”.  I am going to take it one step fur­ther, and show you how you can use this infor­ma­tion today on your blog or small busi­ness to start get­ting mas­sive results.

Buy The Design­ful Com­pany by Marty Neumeier

This book talks about how to build a cul­ture of non­stop inno­va­tion.  The real power of this book comes from imple­ment­ing these ideas. Marty came up with “16 levers”, each one, if used alone, can help you or your busi­ness come up with bet­ter ideas, and bet­ter ways of doing things.  When you com­bine sev­eral of these “levers” together, or the whole 16, you can­not help but build a “cul­ture” of non­stop inno­va­tion. Let me tell you a bit about myself, and what I got out of this book.  I’m not in big busi­ness.  I do con­sult­ing for small busi­nesses, mainly ser­vice busi­nesses, and I cre­ate and mar­ket infor­ma­tional products.

This book “The Design­ful Com­pany” is not aimed at me.  It is aimed more towards big busi­nesses, peo­ple with thou­sands of employ­ees, and can really help those with “real” prod­ucts. Thing is, I did get a lot out of it, and so will you.  There are sev­eral impor­tant con­cepts that I learned while read­ing the book.  Sev­eral of the top­ics and ideas are not entirely new but most were brought up in a new way, that really gives you that ah-ha moment.  The moment where it all clicks. The book also goes over how to choose which idea to work with, how to test it out, so you can make sure that your not wast­ing time nor money on stuff that will not fan out. I highly rec­om­mend pick­ing up this book.  It is a quick 2 hour read, and if you do not have time to read it, Marty has a quick sum­mary of about 10–12 pages that explains the con­cept as suc­cinctly as possible.

Major Take­aways are:

• Here are a few impor­tant take­aways I got out of this book.
• Organic growth is the gift that keeps on giving.
• Invest in cul­ture, vision and inno­va­tion over “quick fix” solutions
• The great­est inno­va­tions of all time are usu­ally break­throughs, not products
• Don’t work from a place of fear
• Col­lab­o­ra­tion is key for your suc­cess in the future
• “Par­al­lel Think­ing”.  Marty dis­cusses using the “6 hats” of think­ing, which is basi­cally six ways a group can think and work through issues.
• And per­haps my favorite, and most pow­er­ful take­away is “The Con­cept Col­lec­tion Box”, this dis­cusses ways to drive inno­va­tion and kick it into high gear.  This shows how Google can be so inno­v­a­tive, as well as how Sam­sung became one of the fastest grow­ing com­pa­nies with over 100 new prod­ucts launched a year.

My Action Steps:

Here are my action steps after read­ing this book:

• Focus on build­ing each part of my busi­nesses one by one.  Focus on slow growth, not quick rapid growth.  Spend time on things that accu­mu­late over­time, not things that bring in rapid growth, and then die down just about as fast.
• Start a Con­cept Col­lec­tion Box - Spend about 1 hour a day, or 1 day every 2 weeks focus­ing on ideas.  How can I come up with new ideas that are dif­fer­ent and new?  How can I help my clients cre­ate bet­ter ideas, and inno­vate within themselves?
• Orga­nize each idea into good but dif­fer­ent, good but same, not good but dif­fer­ent, not good and the same cat­e­gory and focus on cre­at­ing more ideas in the “Good but dif­fer­ent” categories.
• Take each new idea and think about them objec­tively using the “Six Think­ing Hats”.  When­ever I’m get­ting ready to imple­ment a new idea or con­cept with a client, or cre­ate some­thing myself, run that idea through each “hat” and see how it stacks up at the end.

How Can This Be Applied To My Blog Or Business?

What you can do today, right now that will encour­age nat­ural growth? How can you ensure that every­thing you do is accu­mu­la­tive in nature?  How can what your doing now, keep on work­ing in the future? Cre­ate time­less arti­cles, things that are not depen­dent on a cer­tain time or sea­son.  Is focus­ing on a major event going to give you growth in the future?  Or is talk­ing about the lat­est issue in your indus­try only going to be good for the now?  This does not mean do not cover new events, it means, focus your time on your high­est lever­age activ­i­ties. Don’t be afraid, if what you have to say is impor­tant say it, do it.

Don’t let other peo­ples thoughts about you or your idea stand in your way. How can you col­lab­o­rate with oth­ers?  Think Lat­er­ally.  Who can you work with that is not a com­peti­tor, but is in a sim­i­lar cat­e­gory or niche?  How can each of you work together to pro­duce some­thing greater than your­selves? If you’re in a small busi­ness, how can you get the design team to work with the man­age­ment team and come up with ideas? Start a “Con­cept Col­lec­tion Box”, what can you do that will greatly improve your busi­ness, your life, your blog, any­thing. Spend time on this.  Invest in your­self; you are the most impor­tant part of your business.

Con­clu­sion

I hope this arti­cle has helped you in some way.  If you have enjoyed this arti­cle and would like more arti­cles like this, please post below.

Tagged as: Blog, Book, Business, Mindset, Review