Why Art Matters As Much As Technology

Intentionality of design is an important component of any successful project. It means understanding the customers’ needs to ensure the final product meets, or exceeds, those needs in the customers’ own context and constraints. Wouldn’t it be great if these were baked-in at the beginning? If we intentionally designed products, services, and processes not only to be useful, but preferred? We are great at designing Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, STEM, into products, but not as great with design from the actual users’ perspective. Design Thinking is not new, but through “STEAM” (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art/Design and Math), its gaining recognition and validation in more aspects of our lives – in the things we use and how we use them – next iPhone, Golden Gate Bridge, pacemaker, insulin pump, etc.

What about the military? We don’t think of the military as a STEAMy organization, but parts of it are. As Deb described STEAM and its role in for/not-for-profit businesses, B2B and B2C, Matt realized that much of his work in his recent deployment to Afghanistan depended on STEAM. Building a new and resurgent Afghan Air Force from the ground up, while simultaneously flying it and using it in the fight, is no typical task. It is a combination of the complex, complicated and dynamic, to put it mildly.

Matt knew, more than most of us ever will, that understanding the culture of your customer cannot be underestimated. Making up for a delayed start in comparison to Afghan ground-based capabilities, NATO/US advisors had to work closely with their Afghan counterparts. Think about the language barriers, cultural differences, environmental factors (did someone say big mountains?), and the fact you are learning to fly in a combat zone and you’ll quickly see the immense challenge faced by our advisors and our Afghan student pilots.

In designing a framework, Matt and his colleagues embarked on a quest to first understand. The relationship started with a simple question: “How do you envision your Air Force?” From there, the design and build was a partnership with mutual goals and a common understanding of where everyone was trying to go. Too often, one is tempted to force their own lens or culture upon the customer—negating their perspectives and their wisdom in favor of our own biased idea of success. Imposing a western-view of the world would not have satisfied the true need of the Afghan Air Force, nor would it have done the young student pilots our advisors were training any good. The phenomenal progress and growth of the Afghan Air Force, and consequently the successes of NATO Air Training Command-Afghanistan, was a result of collaborative effort involving the user at the outset of design. Through inclusive value-streaming events involving Afghan leadership in the process of building and designing outcomes that fit not only their needs, but also their perspective, context and constraints, years of bureaucratic roadblocks were removed and immense progress was realized in a very short period of time.

Like much in this part of the world, sharing ideas from one culture to another is simpler when macro-level ideas are broken down into smaller, more understandable parts. The same can be said for the relationship between STEM and STEAM—the insertion of Art into the equation enables STEM to flourish and synergize with the customer. Matt’s team’s mission in Afghanistan was to set the conditions for a professional, fully independent and sustainable Afghan Air Force. That’s a pretty large task for anybody, requiring significant resources, mostly human capital.

Most emotional-intelligence experts will agree that any exchange involving the human element requires understanding each other’s needs to be successful. Assisting the Afghans in building an air force that was effective required technical assets. These assets required training to establish and use a system providing the legitimacy to take care of people inside their borders and become influence leaders outside their borders; in other words, a STEM-based mindset. Our advising stretched beyond pilots and cockpits to every function and facet of human resource.

STEAM forced us to look thru different lens: the culture, capabilities & motivations of our Afghan counterparts.

Adding art and design to the equation forced the team to look at the world through a different lens: the culture, capabilities and motivations of their Afghan counterparts. Through a better understanding of and between the partners, what the USA, NATO & Afghan airmen and airwomen built wasn’t just effective it was sustainable! This is where the true magic of STEAM came into play – resulting in a design that was strategically desirable and “wanted” by the end-user, because their needs were baked in up front. It stood a much better chance of being sustainable in a resource-scarce environment. Together, we built a system that was Afghan-appropriate, effective and sustainable. In the end, that is what ultimately mattered.