Confusing co-creation with consultation is expensive
Co-creation, co-design, collaboration, consultation, co-operation. All the “co-” words do not mean the same thing and it’s expensive to mix them up.
If you’ve read anything else I’ve written, you’ll likely know that I’m a huge proponent of collaboratively designed strategy.
But the term “co-design” is increasingly used by people within teams, and sometimes entire organisations in ways that don’t fully reflect what collaborative design actually requires.
I think much of what gets passed off as co-design would be better described as consultation. It might not be that this was the intent, but often it is the outcome or the experience that those involved get left with.
Because co-design creates a clear impression that there will be an opportunity to shape solutions, it is not unusual for participants in a “co-design in name but not in nature” process to ultimately feel unheard and largely dissatisfied, despite the fact that they have been to numerous workshops.
I’m not here to be pedantic about how people use language for the sake of it. But it’s important to realise that the words we use shape how others experience the world. When we are unclear in setting expectations around involvement, it does everyone a disservice. Describing a process as co-design when it really isn’t, can look (and sometimes is) disingenuous, because people hear “you can be involved in building this thing” when what is really meant is “we’ve built a thing already, and we are interested in your views.”
Collaboration asks people to help shape the thing as it is being built, with some degree of shared decision-making. Consultation asks people what they think about something that has already been shaped.
A good rule of thumb is:
If people can shape the problem, the options, and the outcome, that is co-design.
If they can only react to a largely formed proposal, that is consultation.
Consultation isn’t bad
Just because we can use collaborative processes, doesn’t mean that we should. Consultation is completely valid and often appropriate way to handle stakeholder engagement. The issue I see is that the nuance between different tools with different purposes goes unexamined. While neither is inherently better or worse and both can be effective, there are two cardinal sins:
Choosing the wrong tool for the job
Saying you’re doing it one way and actually doing it the other way
When faced with a problematic situation there are at least five possible responses:
Working with others to collectively develop a solution
Coming up with a solution on our own, testing it with others and then implementing it
Changing things that are within our control
Choosing to wait until the conditions for change are better
Living with it the way that it is
Not everything needs to be co-designed. In fact, the first thing and most straightforward thing to remember about co-design is that we don’t have to do it. It’s a choice that we have, but it isn’t the only choice.
When work calls for deep collaboration
Collaborative design is a good choice when:
The problem is genuinely unclear and there are multiple plausible pathways.
The people affected hold knowledge or insight that you don’t have.
Diverse perspectives are likely to improve the outcome.
A wide group of diverse people need to own the outcome for it to succeed.
You have the time and resources available to undertake deep work.
The process of collective sense-making itself holds value those who will participate.
A collectively supported solution is more important than a quick solution.
Information asymmetry is often a key driver: when others hold essential knowledge or perspectives, designing with them, not just for them, becomes more critical.
Consultation is a good choice when:
The direction is largely set and decision-maker is clear.
The problem has a logical technical answer (a suitable method or process can be applied to determine an appropriate solution).
You need sense-checking or to meet a legal or governance requirement.
You want people to feel heard on an issue, but you don’t really need their input to design the answer.
The matter needs to be resolved in a straightforward and timely manner.
The ultimate test is not whether the issue is “important enough” to be co-designed, but rather, whether you genuinely need people to help design the answer and share in the decisions that shape the solution.
What co-design requires
The conditions surrounding a co-design activity will make or break it. Here’s at least four conditions you need for it to be successful.
01 | A leader who is prepared to lead
In an organisational context, a leader who supports a collaborative design process will need high emotional maturity and leadership skill. They must be willing to support a collective sense-making process and to provide effective leadership and decision-making. Undertaking a collaborative process does not absolve a leader of their accountability.
Crucially, co-design requires clarity about which decisions are open to influence, which remain constrained, and who has the authority to make final calls. Shared decision-making does not mean the leader steps away; it means they deliberately create room for others to shape the outcome.
02 | Strong guardrails
It would be unusual in an organisational context for there to be no constraints around design. Often the situation is that leadership will have determined a series of principles underpinning a certain issue, and the space for collaborative design exists only inside those guardrails. It might be a fixed budget or a non-negotiable regulatory requirement. Any lack of clarity about which parts are subject to a “co-“ and which parts are not creates the possibility for misaligned expectations and disappointment. If people believe everything is up for grabs, but discover later that key decisions were already made, trust erodes quickly.
03 | A team that can hold a position lightly
The leadership team sponsoring the work and the team working on the problem will dance through a fair amount of messiness in a sense-making process. It might feel like it’s all going in a particular direction, when a new piece of knowledge is uncovered that changes the course of things. The divergence process must be allowed to occur before a convergence begins.
Teams therefore need to be able to hold their initial positions lightly, treat early answers as hypotheses, and stay open to having their thinking reshaped by what emerges in the process.
04 | Visible governance
Without a clear pathway for decision-making (and arbitration if necessary), participants can become jaded with a co-design process very quickly. Without this, the process can feel like it’s only for show and as if the group has no agency. If this happens, people will feel as if their time is being wasted and will disengage.
Visible governance makes it clear how input is considered, how decisions are made, and how trade-offs are resolved. When people can see how their contributions connect to decision-making, they are far more likely to stay engaged, even when they don’t get everything they wanted.
The risk of over-promising
I genuinely believe collaborative design, done well, can be transformative for the people involved and the problem they’re working on. But we should not oversell what co-design can deliver. A room full of universally satisfied stakeholders is not guaranteed, and overwhelming consensus may not be achieved.
What is possible, when the right guardrails, leadership, teams, and governance are in place, is better-informed decisions, made transparently, with clear opportunities for people to shape both the journey and the outcome.
The reason all of this matters is that people matter. I would encourage you to think about whether you really are going to co-design something, or whether you are focused on doing good engagement. Both are viable and neither is inherently better.
The important thing is to label your approach correctly, set the guardrails clearly, and lead the way through with integrity. Use the right method for the job, be honest about the level of influence you’re offering, and design the process to match.
Thanks for reading. Let’s unsquiggle this, good people!
