A Patagonia Story: Cultivating Accountability with Design Thinking

Accountability is a significant challenge for product organizations for a variety of reasons, such as the complexity of product development, the constantly changing market demands, and the pressure to deliver on time and within budget. However, participatory decision-making can help teams overcome these issues.

A collaborative approach that involves stakeholders of all types ensures a diverse set of voices are heard, and decisions are made using a consensus-building process. Involving everyone in a team or organization in this group process encourages transparency, accountability, and collaboration, leading, ultimately, to a more effective product development process.

One company that successfully implemented participatory decision-making is Patagonia, an outdoor clothing and gear retailer. Patagonia's sustainability director, Cara Chacon, recognized that their product development process needed improvement. She wanted to ensure that their products were sustainable and environmentally friendly, but she knew that this would require a collaborative effort from everyone in the organization.

To address this, Chacon organized a cross-functional team, including designers, product developers, and sustainability experts, to work together on developing more sustainable products. The team used Design Thinking, a popular participatory process, to generate and evaluate ideas. Through this process, they identified materials that could be used in their products, such as organic cotton and recycled polyester, and developed more sustainable manufacturing processes.

The result was a line of products that were not only more sustainable but also more profitable. This approach not only improved the quality of their products but also helped build a culture of accountability and collaboration, where everyone felt responsible for the success of the product organization.

Patagonia's success is an excellent example of how participatory decision-making can benefit smaller teams within an organization. Involving people from multiple teams in the decision-making process ensures that decisions are made with broader consensus and that the whole organization is invested in the outcome.

Getting started isn't as hard as it sounds, either. A facilitated group workshop for a cross-functional team or an entire organization is a great first step to creating a culture of accountability. Providing a safe space for stakeholders to voice their opinions, identify areas of improvement, and develop solutions together builds trust and fuels virtuous cycles of transparency and engagement between the participants. 

The leading indicators of success of this culture transformation will be clear. Leaders will make decisions that are well aligned with business strategy and teams will execute with a common understanding of intended outcomes. When this happens, holding oneself and others accountable will emerge as an obvious behavior. The entire organization will be invested in the product success, and measure of value delivered to users will be noticeably improved.