Nicholas Johnson, PhD’s Post

Last week I had the pleasure of hosting our summer Design Leaders Forum dinner at our global headquarters here in London. We set up the Design Leaders Forum to create a venue for design leaders, especially those working with incumbent brands in highly regulated sectors like Financial Services, Government, Healthcare and Energy, to share views and perspectives on the common challenges and opportunities as we try to build high impact, human-centred design capabilities within our organisations. We kicked the new season off with a discussion around 'Impact: Moving beyond cost, risk and growth'. Design generates a deep and nuanced appreciation for customer's lives, identifying their values, goals, and attitudes, understanding their needs, behaviours and motivations. This insight provides design leaders and their teams with a point of view that helps their organisation transcend the transaction to not only achieve the balance sheet ambitions, but also deliver on the sustainability, wellbeing and purpose driven ambition across a much broader group of stakeholders. There was so much to think about, but three things resonated with me over the weekend, reflecting on the session. There will be more to come soon! Designers Needs to Be Confident - When 'Design Thinking' is everywhere in an organisation, what does ‘Design’ even do anymore? As organisations reconsider their structures in light of an evolving transformation agenda, regulatory mandates, and cost challenges, it becomes more important than ever for design to clearly lay out what it can bring to the business. Designers Need to Articulate Business Value - Tying the work design and designers do to the balance sheet and commercial benefit is still a topic of conversation and challenge. We have helped train the business on 'Design Thinking' but we haven't helped the business train designers on 'Business Thinking'. The Obsession Over Design Operationalisation - Here is where a real risk begins to emerge from a dominant business perspective on design as primarily an 'aesthetic' function versus a function to transform the business and the services it offers. The discussion was spirited to share how we might showcase design in the business as a place where we assemble the teams and allies required to make transformation human-centred and re-define 'creativity' as a powerful force for change, aligning around customer need and improved business performance. It is a real privilege to have the opportunity to convene this forum and something I always look forward to. I find the discussion very empowering and energising. Look out for more updates on this event and others soon. Will Shaw Paul Thurston Nicola Potter (Hinds) Nicholas Johnson, PhD Laurence Buchanan Jess Hawkins Clive Grinyer #design #servicedesign #humancentreddesign #designthinking #digital #banking #government #healthcare #retail #energy #insurance

Want to increase the maturity / visibility of Design? Learn to say no and start small. Too often the need to be: - accepted & understood - valued - integrated - etc etc inside organisations means that Design takes on more than it should. It enters areas & projects where in reality, it is just fighting an ongoing losing battle. It’s damaging. My first remit as a leader was to prove the value of an embedded design team The area I worked in is now said to be the most mature area for Design in that company. Why? - Because we focused in one place, with one group of stakeholders. - We managed expectations - We made strategic decisions on where / how Designers should be placed - We didn’t say yes to everything - We build ‘mini’ case studies and showcased them up / out to open more doors - We made ourselves very visible - We created advocates along the way Of course it took time. But if we hadn’t gone deep and focused on one business area, we’d have a different story today. Design leaders are continually being asked to do more with less So we need to be intentional in looking at where Design can have success and impact, now more than ever. It’s hard when you see demand and want to please But saying no protects the team — it sets boundaries — it shows maturity If we can’t significantly influence an area If we can’t create change If we have no impact on the roadmap Say no We need to get to a place where the tick box is not just in having a designer in the room It is having a designer there that has a voice and adds value #Design #DesignLeadership #DesignMaturity

Did business really break up with design, or did it just break up with a generation of design leadership? That's the question Robert Fabricant asks in his new piece for Fast Company, which examines the shifting landscape of how design is valued in the c-suite. In the piece Fabricant unpacks how a generation of design leaders—the very people who secured design a "seat at the table" at big companies—are now finding themselves with fewer seats to choose from. Some of the most interesting observations from the piece: —Chief Design Office positions, the pinnacle of c-suite design, have contracted in recent years, leaving many design leaders unable to find roles (and compensation) that reflect their level of seniority. —Design leaders have a management problem. As design scaled up in big business, it necessarily required a new approach to management. As Fabricant writes: "As design thinking went viral in business, it required a different management class to operationalize and institutionalize this new capability. Change requires change management. Many creative leaders were left floundering." —As a reaction to this shift, new online platforms and communities are popping up to provide top-level design talent with more fractional positions, where they can parachute into a team for a set amount of time. Read all of his great story here: https://lnkd.in/e5Sm9Y5i

Reflecting on some recent advising sessions, something I don't see talked about as much is how critical it is to have an incredibly strong, unified* Design leadership team in order to build an even stronger design team and product. Why this is so critical 👇 What I’ve seen happen when you DON’T have that unified Design leadership team: 1. Massive gaps in the user experience – Let’s start with the obvious one. When Design leaders are staying neatly in their corners and not communicating, the experience degrades pretty quickly. Especially where the "seams" of their teams/org are. We've all seen (and let's be real…probably have been guilty of at times) the navigation structure that clearly shows the org chart vs. what users actually need. This can happen way too quickly without that unified team. 2. A lack of Design’s ability to influence product direction — The best Design leadership teams work together, pushing each other, to have a unified perspective of what the big things are to tackle in the user experience that leverages the unique expertise of the Design functions, all the way from it being grounded in research, to it having a compelling narrative. When they have that unified perspective and are all consistently sharing that perspective, it is so much easier for cross-functional partners to understand and buy-in on it. 3. Design works against Design — When Design leaders don't have a shared perspective on what is important (both in the user experience and the culture), don't have the right level of visibility into each other's work, or even worse, when they don't have mutual respect for each other, it leads to the leaders (mostly) inadvertently working against the progress of the other leaders/teams vs. together toward a unified vision. 4. A limit to the flexibility and scalability of the Design team – To build great experiences at scale, having the flexibility of shifting people to focus on different parts of the product is critical. When the culture and processes are dramatically, instead of it being exciting for that person to focus on a new space, it is incredibly disorienting, slows everything down, and can quickly lead to burnout. *A note on when I say "unified". I don't mean at all that they agree on everything. In fact, the opposite. They push each other the most, early and often. However, they have shared respect, cultivated by their leader, and shared responsibility around aligning within a timely manner. THEN they support each other in any way they can with hurdles they may each face (e.g. cross-functional buy-in or team-wide communication). ——— Is this interesting? Let me know if you want me to share more on how exactly you can cultivate this strong design leadership team –OR– if you want more personalized advice around this, set up some time with me here: https://lnkd.in/g-vyymtW

Fast Company published an engaging article called "The big design freak-out: A generation of design leaders grapple with their future" by Robert Fabricant. This article reminds me of several years ago when BRUCE NUSSBAUM in Fast Company wrote an article, "Design Thinking is a Failed Experiment. So What's Next?" For years, design leaders have wanted a seat at the executive table where design is recognized as a critical business function and shapes organizational purpose, goals, and objectives through its market offerings. The number of Chief Design Officers or Head of Design roles has grown, demonstrating the importance of design as a critical capability. Yet this growth is now being tested by chaos in organizations, markets, and competitive landscapes. Organizations are continually pivoting for relevance and profitability. Design leadership and operations impact each other because accomplishments from delivering value through operational rigor support how much power design has at the executive level. But it is more than efficiency. Machine learning may automate many things designers have historically done to deliver value. Instead of having a seat at the executive table, design leaders are now reporting one level below to the people at the table. The growth of design leaders now may be evaluated with new capability and performance expectations by management. The emerging answers will shift design executive responsibilities, but to what? What do you think about the emerging design executive responsibilities will become? #designleadership #transformation #changemanagement https://lnkd.in/gDDZvXvD

Design needs to get better at saying no Too often the need to be... - accepted - valued - integrated - understood - etc etc inside organisations mean that Design takes on more than it should. It enters areas & projects where in reality, it is just fighting an ongoing losing battle. The client accounts in which I have seen the most success have been those where go & no go decisions have been made strategically. Where we have gone deep and chosen areas of the business to work with and mature rather than spreading Designers too thinly. Design leaders are continually being asked to do more with less. And from what I can see, it isn’t changing anytime soon. As a result, we need to be intentional in looking at where Design can have success and impact. It’s hard when the demand is coming in and you want to please. But saying no protects the team — it sets boundaries — it shows maturity. If we can’t significantly influence an area If we can’t create change If we have no impact on the roadmap Say no. We need to get to a place where the tick box is not just in having a designer in the room It is having a designer there that has a voice and adds value #Design #DesignLeadership #DesignMaturity

Pertinent and poignant post on the rise and fall of design leadership. Well worth a long read. Was our industry ever really equipped to navigate the higher echelons of power, positioning and politics? Wherever the role of design sits today in solving corporate, complex and wicked problems I'll say this: there are many, many people suffering in the world today through poor design. Poorly executed (or not at all connected) civic and commercial services, compounding inequity and inequality, frustratingly complex work and life tools & processes, misleading and/or downright dangerous products, and a consumptive world seemingly oblivious to its destructive wake. We all see and experience poor (or absent) design choices viscerally. Less design influence won't improve our situation. So who else is going to step up, identify and resolve the things that aren't serving ourselves or the planet we live on? #greatreads #design #designleadership #strategicleadership #fastcompany #designthinkers cc Meld Studios Steve Baty https://lnkd.in/gBXpXieP

Design is holding itself back As designers / design leaders, sometimes we have to get over hurdles. Sometimes we just need to get over ourselves. We all like a moan but the reality is that a lot of designers and leaders don’t have the (business) skills in all honesty to move into those ‘seat at the table’ positions. The more design execs I speak to, the clear it feels that like progressing from an IC to a management role, the transition from management to exec is like moving to a new discipline. It requires: - new skillsets - new approaches - a new vocabulary - new areas of focus In the same way that new managers are typically given little support, there is very little that prepares design execs for their new roles. Design education is discipline focused. So the gap is on both sides. Yes, there is a part where organisations / leaders need to better understand the value that design can bring But if we want to make an impact and be valued in the same way as we think other disciplines are, Design also needs to ensure that we take some accountability of the fact that we are (on the whole) not setting designers up in the right way to move into these ‘generalist business’ roles. —- That’s my view anyway — where do you sit? #Design #DesignLeadership

Post #11 - June 24th 2024 Post #11 - Key highlights from the enlightening book 'Design Leadership Ignited - Elevating design at scale‘ by Gerda Gemser, Giulia Calabretta and Eric Quint In hindsight, it all makes perfect sense: Had this book been published 10 years ago, it would have saved me from being baptized by fire while growing as a research & design leader. But in design, you learn by doing and validate by redoing. Here are my main takeaways from this holy book: Calling ‘non-designers’ > The role of design is in flux 🌪️ The old design debate that “form follows function” is being replaced by “tactics follow strategies”. The interpretation of tactical versus strategic design continues to make its way in the business context, although its added value and competitive advantage has nuances. The tactical view of design remains focused on cost management, design style, expertise-based opinion, and short-term project-by-project deliveries. The strategic vision sees design as value creator and optimizer, with a systemic-portfolio approach (vs. ad hoc solutions) and with a long-term transformational horizon in the constant role of technology conversion (‘domestication’). Design value remains meaningful yet not fully measurable ⏱️ Almost 11 years ago, one of the authors of the book - Chairman of my master's thesis - invited me to pursue a PhD on the economic value of design. At that time I chose to pursue a professional career in consulting but to this day that proposal haunts me. The book argues that the value generated by design is often overlooked beyond financial metrics, yet it also yields strategic, collaborative, inspirational, competitive, and transformational value. While design's impact can be observed through quantifiable KPIs like user satisfaction, task success rate, conversion rate, and retention or drop-off rates, it also provides an intrinsic value to organizations that is hardly measurable. "Design leadership role consist of being a corporate rebel with purpose: to drive progress” 🪖 In their quest to maintain a competitive advantage for the company, design leaders are constantly tackling obstacles and objections (more often the latter than the first). In that crusade, the role of design leaders is to make design understandable by ‘erasing the perception that design is a black box or that designers are ‘magicians in black shirts’. We serve as catalyst for change, cultivating the right conditions for the design team to flourish between the creative exploration and the operational optimization. If you are an aspiring design leader - whether beginner or at the top - this book will provide the right arguments to continue advancing - and 'demystifying' - the discipline of design and its value. Bonus about Performance Evaluation 📣 Designers (in fact, anyone) thrive in constant and instant feedback, versus once-a-year performance evaluation cycles. If you are agile, let your debriefings follow the same pace 🤓

🛎 In the ever-evolving tech industry, culture and community aren't just buzzwords; they're essential for productivity and innovation. Design teams continuously adapt to changes, collaborating to shape a cohesive culture. I firmly believe that the strongest communities and cultures emerge when teams recognize the power of collective success. 🌟 Recently, I had the privilege of leading the development of a multi-brand design system for merged design teams. With unwavering support from my leads, partners, and leadership, we successfully delivered the design system to both internal and external customers, while also fostering a motivated community and a thriving culture. 🌱 While this article focuses on the implementation of a design system, it's crucial to recognize that similar projects can play a pivotal role in nurturing culture and grooming the next generation of leaders when new design teams are connected or merged. 🙏 I extend my gratitude to my leads, Jacqueline Liu, Vincent Polsinelli, and key contributors such as Justin Cheung, Marc Lauriault, Brie, Adam Seangio, Jane Palash, Erica L. and so many more. Your dedication and leadership were instrumental in our success, and I am immensely proud of what we achieved together. I have every confidence that you will all keep the momentum going and continue to thrive as a community. ✍ This is my full article with the key steps and more information - I'd love to hear if you have any similar cases to share or have any feedback. Let's get the conversation going in the thread. https://bit.ly/4ctZS5u #DesignTeams #DesignCulture #DesignSystem #DesignLeadership