To agonize is to be more than just worried or concerned about an issue. It is an emotional struggle with the competing forces and demands of the situation and indicates an intense level of care about the right course of action. One agonizes about a problem because one knows that there are multiple, conflicting criteria and no identifiably “true” answer. One must act, even though one does not have a sense of comfort that the alternative chosen is the best that could have been achieved. It also connotes an emotional, visceral commitment to find the best solution, an enduring uncertainty as to whether it has been achieved, and the feeling that one’s reputation is on the line to achieve it. Problems that one agonizes about are fundamental to a professional identity and a sense of responsibility for living up to one’s own standards.

The tangible result from a design process is an artifact—a product, process, communication, or technique that we have designed. Appropriate use of the term helps us to realize how much of the organizational world is designed by managers, either consciously or unconsciously. Managers are responsible for their artifacts and should consider whether they are well designed or not.

A good design solution always reflects a balance of competing demands among user needs, the environment, future generations, resource capacities, real costs, and the unique historical tensions of the situation. Human judgment is the only way to achieve balance, and human judgment is an art developed over time by one who takes a designer’s responsibility for shaping the world that others must live in.

To borrow ideas and approaches in design work is commonplace. And an awareness of those elements of a design that are being taken from another project, another colleague, or another sphere of human activity is helpful in creating good design solutions. Designs almost always display borrowing because the slate is never blank at the beginning of a project, and all ideas and design elements are ultimately related to others. The important thing is to recognize what one is borrowing from other designs and situations, so that one can reflect on the appropriateness of using it, rather than inventing a new approach for this situation.

People experience organizations, systems, and policies as paths through the social and economic landscape. They affect human interaction by encouraging the use of certain actions and inhibiting others. People interact with each other as they follow paths through the systems in which they live and work and experience those systems as the paths they follow, not as the grand logic that a system designer may have had for them, whether it is a building, a software system, a reward and promotion system, a logistics system, or a departmental structure.

A path-creating design will necessarily involve collaboration among partners who each bring unique expertise and talents to the project. Without collaboration across boundaries of disciplines, organizations, and perspectives, a design project has limited possibilities for invention of new solutions.

Every project has constraints that serve to give boundaries to a problem. In a decision attitude, constraints are seen as undesirable, but to a design attitude, constraints are the elements of challenge in the problem situation. They can serve as stimuli to the invention of new approaches and to the creative adaptation of materials, techniques, and practices from other domains. When one identifies the constraints of a design problem, one is defining the problem.

A design project becomes crystallized when the basic structure and form of the solution, as well as the materials, technologies, and processes to be employed in the design, have been decided upon. Once a project is crystallized, the ability to revise elements of the design is greatly reduced, without incurring substantial extra costs. In general, a decision attitude moves toward crystallization too quickly.

The most familiar and expected solution to a design problem is the default solution. It is often the first thing that comes to mind and is related to the logic of path dependency. For instance, the default executive office has a large desk facing the door, with a window behind it and several seats in front of it for visitors. Organizational systems that follow commonly encountered standard operating procedures are default systems. Default solutions are often the safest organizationally, but are usually the least effective in creating an advantage for the firm. Being aware that default ideas will be generated first in a design process can make it easier to reject them and search beyond them for higher payoff, path-creating solutions.

Design problems, which contain multiple, conflicting objectives, cannot usually be solved by the logic of one person alone. To achieve a good solution, dialogue among the actors in the design process is usually required, if not to develop the design ideas, then to explore dimensions of the best alternative.