Let Numbers Speak
Posted on December 18, 2010 | posted by:
Once I found myself asking a leading financial expert (who used to run a private equity fund): What was his trick; how could he make sense and see things just by looking at a financial statement or the stock exchange report? His answer was simple and poetic: “Let the numbers speak to you.”
Ten years later, in the midst of one of the biggest financial crisis in the global economic history, I can’t stop from asking myself what were the numbers saying to leaders at top financial institutions. What went wrong in the dialogue among ministers of finance, investment bankers, traders, policy makers and economists that led to the collapse of a system far beyond their sector’s interest, but included all of us. What happened in that conversation?
A quick assumption would be to say that the insanity of greed blinded those in the financial world and blocked any other kind of understanding that went beyond the fat digits of their annual bonus. This certainly occurred, as well as other system failures, lack of institutional accountability, weak regulation and a surreal optimism. However, from our discussions in class, this appeared to me as one of Rittel’s “wicked problems” and a unique solution or fulfilling answer (if there’s any!) might be more complex to define. So I wondered, what if we look at the financial crisis from a designer’s perspective?
Perhaps this task is often left to economists, but if design is moving from the realm of products and services, to systems and ecologies, then the financial world (as distant as it may be from our studios) is nothing but the blood of the capital world we live in, right? Then I thought, what better timing to do an autopsy and see what we can learn from these weird puzzled problems we love so much.
At first I started following some key speakers in the subject, mainly economists and then I found a book by Gillian Tett, who runs the global markets coverage for the Financial Times and curiously holds a PhD in Social Anthropology. “Fool’s Gold” tells a different story, and so far in my reading I’m stroked by the similarities with the design practice!
Tett tells us that it all began with innovation. A small group at J.P. Morgan was trying to develop a new innovative set of products that were later mutated by the market, creating a riskier version. Instead of greed, it seems this team was looking to improve the existing situation and bring a new future into being, as the author states: “…the irony is that they first developed their derivatives ideas in the hope that they would be good for the financial system.” Peter Hancock, the leader at this particular team at J.P. Morgan, was known for his passion for brainstorming around the office: “The team called his exuberant outburst of creativity “Come to Pluto Planet” moments, because many of the notions he tossed seemed better suited to science fiction than banking.” New technology seemed to be what sponsored their innovations. The author quotes Bill Winter, a key member of the team, saying that: “There was this sense that we had found this fantastic technology which we really believed in and we wanted to take to every part of the market we could.” Winter later adds, “There was a sense of mission.”
A team trying to bring a new future into being; a technology that promised a jump into new territories; a leader that recalls a science fiction writer; a sense of mission; a will for change; a bipolar product that could offer both control and amplification of risk; complexity in design that just a few could understand intrinsically, but many used and expanded; and even the fact that an anthropologist was hired to understand corporate dynamics to foster better “collaboration.”
Doesn’t all of this sound familiar?
I am amazed by Tett’s insider story about what led to this financial crisis and how it resembles the topics we are taking about in design. So maybe, although “excel,” “derivatives,” and “finance” resonate as dirty words in design’s creative process, it might be worthwhile to grab our pencil and proceed to do an autopsy of this curious “wicked problem.”
And, why not: Let’s imagine how intervention by designers could have actually made a difference!
P.S.: Dear Trannies, I invite you to dig into “Fool’s Gold” this summer and to meet next year for a fearless talk about what design can do in the far, far away Financeland!