Why Design by Committee will Continue…
Whether its Smashing Magazine telling us that design by committee should die or Paul Boag asserting that design by committee is a blight on the web design landscape… the reality is that design by committee is here to stay (in most cases).
Design by Committee is Crap
The problem isn’t that these guys are wrong… they’re not wrong. Design by committee is a corporate sink-hole of time, motivation and managerial post pissing that turns good ideas into sub-optimal band-aid approaches that appease some arcane level of consensus and generality. It’s the designer negotiating with the developer negotiating with the accountant negotiating with the generic middle manager named Tom who hangs out at the water cooler telling everybody how he gave up coffee for the last seven days…
And seriously… who the fuck is Tom?
So morally and idealistically I agree. We all agree. Design by committee is a piss poor way to work on web projects. But I’m here to tell you that it won’t change and we had better stop moaning and figure out the nature of the beast.
Three Interrelated Aspects of Organisations
There are three clear aspects to organisations that determine their direction, flexibility and their approach to business – changes in these three factors are interrelated and occur only through great expense and top-down strategic effort (not to mention high failure rates).
The first two factors are organisational structure and strategy. They determine the organisation’s communication channels, it’s distribution of power and the way that it approaches the competitive environment. If strategy changes then structure has to change… and vice versa… like a slow walking mammoth. So there is a world of difference between working with a small flexible agency, a large bureaucracy, a large functional or multi-divisional corporation or an element of a distributed strategic network… and whether they pursue cost-leadership, differentiation or related linked/related constrained strategies.
That’s a large subject on its own – let’s just accept that businesses aren’t generic. They change slowly and with great effort. And unless you are dealing solely with small flexible agencies you are not going to change their internal structure or strategy.
The third factor is organisational culture – the stories, rituals, symbols and underlying beliefs within the organisation. And don’t forget the large sub-cultures that exist to complicate the picture. We all know that organisation’s don’t just wake up tomorrow and change culture without great pain, risk and investment in resources… and more often than not the result is failure. Examples of this complexity are seen in the high rate of failed mergers…
My point then is that design by committee is a part of the interrelationship between those three aspects – structure, strategy and the underlying culture.
You need to Understand your Client’s Business
It’s easy for us to sit here bemoaning clients and their inefficiencies but unless we take the time to understand their corporate constraints we’re not really coming to terms with the job at hand. And I’d suggest if you don’t understand those three aspects of your client’s business then you will be pushing shit uphill to service their real needs.
Yes committees are full of crap… and you might get some buy-in at some level for reducing the clutter. But ultimately it’s a design constraint like any other.
When you see Tom by the water cooler… here’s a small trick. Give Tom a good idea… something that will make him look good in the committee meeting tomorrow… it’s called business politics.
