Organizations That Don’t Get It

Even as we are in the midst of a design renaissance, where experience designers, design strategists and researchers are at the highest demand in modern history, many assume that the role of design is to make things function, look and feel better. This is true with a significant number of designers themselves as well.
Organizations rushing to create new roles for designers and looking to hire top talent to fill those roles may see design only as an add-on or plug-in to their existing process, culture, and model of doing things. They fail to see design as a force that can transform, shape, and set the foundation for what the entire organization does, when, and how.
I’ve thought of a list of a few things that set apart organizations that understand design only as a stage near the final phases of production from those that leverage the power of design in everything they do. Turn this list around, and you’ll get a sense of what organizations that are fully embracing design have realized and why they’re ahead.
Work in silos and place the highest value on individuals
Organizations that hunt for their own Jonathan Ive, put out press releases announcing the arrival of an award-winning superhero, and focus on promoting individuals to new “transformative roles” place enormous pressure and expectations on the individual. They end up hiring and firing when the person - despite of their experience, reputation and awards - doesn’t manage to turn the whole ship around, or when another, seemingly greater superhero becomes available to them. Design is team work, and to place design thinking at the right level in the organization is a cultural challenge. Solving it requires the efforts and understanding of everyone in the organization.
Acquire rather than adopt
Money can buy you tools and resources but it won’t teach you how to use them.
Understand, and apply, only linear process
Agile, for example, is an iterative process in principle, but most organizations leverage it as a production tool, as it focuses on velocity and production efficiency. As much as Agile process leads despise waterfall, they end up compiling Agile into a linear process with repetitive outcomes.
Design is both iterative and cyclical. It’s asymmetrical, chaotic, and messy before it takes shape as something meaningful and beautiful. Design begins not by figuring out what to produce, but by research. By asking questions without suggesting answers.
Pour money into a design team, then leave it separate from the rest of the organization
There’s a limit to how much power and influence even the most senior design thinkers can have over the rest of the organization without being given some of it. If you want design to create meaningful change, you have to empower it.
Let design impact projects generated elsewhere rather than let design generate projects
If design isn’t allowed to be the instigator, it gets constantly relegated to the role of an enhancer, an optimizer, and an after-thought. Being able to merely enhance and optimize something previously conceived isn’t terrible but it’s far from great.
Take design as an input but not as a requirement
If design helps to understand and set what’s desirable but is always trumped by what’s feasible and/or viable, the output of design never gets implemented.
Think design is intuition and expression only, and doesn’t require research
This goes hand-in-hand with seeing design as art and not as a discovery process and problem-solving methodology.
Do you agree with the above? What would you add to this list? What else is keeping organizations from unleashing the true power of design thinking?
