Stanford University and Neutron (an SF brand consultancy) recently asked 1,500 top American executives to identify the wickedest* problems their companies face. The number one problem? Balancing long-term goals with short-term demands.

As the role of design in business has shifted over the past decade or so (and KA+A’s focus has shifted along with it) we’ve seen firsthand how this is indeed a persistent and perplexing issue. As we integrate more tightly with product and marketing teams we often get a close look at how the struggle to balance immediate and felt needs with future goals and ambitions can play out in an organization.

One way to address the problem is to keep the actions and thinking required for these two ends separate. There are certainly many organization that take this approach. The vision casting, future minded CEO doesn’t trouble herself with the tactical troubles of today, while team members focused on execution are rarely afforded the opportunity to contribute to long-term aspirations. This approach invariably ends with the proverbial “tossing of the baby with the bath water.” This is not an indication of a lack of know how, it’s just difficult to integrate new ideas, functionality, and products with old ones when no thought has been given to the synthesis of the present with the future.

Design thinking and processes, however, can go a long way to alleviating this wicked problem. First of all, excellent practitioners of design are, with few exceptions, exceedingly curious. They’re constantly feeding themselves with information, data, and experiences that are parallel, tangential, and even perpendicular to their discrete profession. As copywriter James Webb Young noted, new ideas come about by making connections with other disparate ones. Thus, designers are especially well equipped to create innovative and new solutions to problems.

Designing is, by nature, an iterative process. Designers move forwards, backwards, and sideways while en route to a problem’s solution. They don’t move in a straight line (if they do, they’re not being true to the design process). The result is that numerous “what ifs,” many of them future focused, are explored, considered, and accounted for in the solution that is finally implemented. Designers tend to be obsessed with the thought that there is always a better way to do something. The result is an unblinking eye towards the future combined with a cultivated knowledge of the present and past.

As the waves design and design thinking have made in the ocean of business continue to increase in frequency and amplitude, this approach to reconciling long-term goals and short-term demands will become more and more common. It can be seen clearly now on the web, an environment that demands many organizations to learn how to make sharp turns on a dime.

At KA+A we’ve had many opportunities to play mediator between the present and the future. It’s a role that designers are well suited for, and one that they should eagerly be preparing to step into even more frequently as time goes by.

*According to Marty Neumeier of Neutron, a wicked problem is one that is so persistent, pervasive, and slippery that it seems insoluble.