Design leadership with targeted value
A Design Impact conversation with Andreas Hauser
Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with Andreas Hauser, SVP, Global Head of Design Services and AppHaus Network at SAP Design (for more go to SAP UX & Design). This conversation is part of the new Design Impact publication focused on sharing lessons learned from established and emerging design leaders. This article is the first of a two-part series focused on SAP. The first one concentrates on Hauser’s design leadership journey and some of the key lessons learned that paved the way for his global design team to be successful. The second one covers Enterprise Design Thinking at SAP and its pioneering role in the industry.
Passionate about design, but not a designer
Hauser is not a designer by education, but he recognizes that as he grew professionally, design became his passion. His background is in information technology. He started as a developer and until the late 90s; he was leading development teams and worked as product manager. Hauser began his journey as a Design Leader more than fifteen years ago, when he led the design effort for one of SAP’s largest flagship products. In this project, Hauser built a global design team and made user-centered design mandatory for the entire product. The team designed over 4,000 screens before they were implemented and conducted research with over 6,000 users globally in China, India, the US and Germany. From that point, his responsibilities increased to on-demand solutions and then to all cloud solutions.
Four years ago Hauser was asked if he was interested in building a team to help customers in their User Experience and design journey. He started with a team of 70 people globally in four locations. His team now works as a Design Agency within SAP, not just doing design, but also leveraging the technology to create solutions that deliver value and make users and customers happy.
Leadership is about empowering and engaging people
Hauser and his team work like a startup within SAP. They are able to bend some rules in order to try new things that otherwise would not be possible. He describes himself as a people-oriented leader who does not believe in the use of a command and control approach. In his words, “it is less about me and more about the team.“
Hauser is experimenting with different ways of leading teams. He believes in empowering people, letting them come up with their own ideas and take more responsibility. When SAP started the AppHaus in Heidelberg, the space was empty and Hauser gave his team a fixed budget to design it and furnish it in the way they wanted. They could buy a €500 or €5,000 couch if that made sense to them. There were no limits, except the given budget. The result was astonishing. Instead of coming up with an up-scale office design solution, the team opted for a mixed approach to create a functional environment that was attractive to them. They went to IKEA, second hand shops, and eBay to find what they wanted to use. They also built some stuff themselves. In the process, the space became their own; and the team became highly motivated and engaged.
Hauser finds particularly rewarding to see the growth of the people he coaches and helps on the way.
Design leadership delivers value
One of the most important challenges for emerging and established Design Leaders is to deliver value to the organization at different levels. For Hauser, design value is critical. It is not just about creating good design. It is about looking at design in the context of the added value for the entire audience. From that perspective, design, technology, revenue and customer satisfaction go hand in hand.
For customers, or the external perspective, it is pretty simple, you have to articulate the business impact of the solution and make it clear to them. If customers see the benefits of what they get, they will pay for it. Design Leaders have the responsibility to create solutions that solve a problem or address a particular need for the customers. One of Hauser’s customers, for example, has over 3,000 contractors. All the contractors rotate every 18 months and each of them gets a two-day training to learn how to use the system. Imagine the implications of delivering a solution that reduces the training time from a two days to a half day. It is easy to calculate the financial impact of such design solution and the type of value it delivers. It can be quantified in terms of monetary value, impact on IT, reduction on change requests, and customer satisfaction. His team created a tool that helps customers calculate the value of design.
When design is in-house, it is important to understand the different parts of the organization. In SAP there are three main areas: sales, consulting, and development. The priority for Sales is about selling software and making money. That is their job and that is the way they are compensated. Consulting is interested in delivering consulting services. Development is interested in getting their products adopted at customers and making them happy so they become success stories. It means that to convince an audience to invest in design, the design leader needs to demonstrate the value of design from their perspective and specific area of interest.
To be able to persuade their audience, design leaders need to know and understand each part of the organization and choose arguments that speak to its own needs and motivations. For example, sales would like to learn how design would help them increase deal sizes, or how the design’s team engagement can help them close new deals or help building up a trustful relationship with the customers. Consulting leaders would be receptive to invest in design if they learn that design helped them sell services and place a team for a couple of months in a very strategic project at the customer. For development it will be important to get to know the feedback from customers to their products, improve the products, so that they get highly used and adopted by customers.
Hauser asks for design leaders to be cautious and look at the entire ecosystem inside and outside of their own organizations. For him, design leaders have the responsibility to be clear about what is in it for the teams they work with and to look at the value of design and User Experience holistically, showing very concrete successes. Design leaders need to know who is their audience and adapt their message to that specific target, whether it is an external customer, an internal client, or the CEO.
Amplifying the Value of Design
Hauser and his team take a very proactive approach to promote success stories. His team leverages these case studies to persuade members of the organization to invest in design. However, Houser argues that the value and impact of those success stories is amplified when people outside the design team convey the message. Some of the stories from the Design & Co-Innovation Center (DCC) at SAP include “How 10 Customers add Value with Design” and featured projects where customers talk about how SAP’s design team helped them achieve success in their projects.
Design Leaders, collaborative leaders
Design leaders are typically not responsible for the development of the product or the sales. They are the ones leading the design organization or the design team. The only way a design leader can win a leadership position is by being recognized as a collaborative leader. The implications are clear. It is not about creating a vision in isolation. It is about creating that vision together, in collaboration with all the stakeholders across the organization. It is about understanding what is important for them, helping them, and making certain that they see the value for them. From a leadership perspective, design can only win if its leaders are perceived as effective collaborators.
For Hauser, collaboration is a critical aspect of his work. He does not have all the experts in his design organization. Typically, when he needs this expertise, he gets it from leaders in other areas. If he did not cultivate mutually beneficial relationships with other leaders across the organization, he would not be able to obtain access to the resources needed. In his words, “design leaders need to be influencers, connectors, relationship builders and above all, good collaborators.”
Humanizing Leadership
Hauser recently delivered a keynote speech at the Fifteen Seconds Festival in Graz with the motto “No egos, no agendas, no bullshit”. He talked about Humanizing Leadership and his experience in leading design teams within global organizations. We invite you to check out his blog, the recording of the session and the presentation.
In the next issue of Design Impact we will discuss the important role that SAP has played as a pioneer in Design Thinking at Enterprise Scale.
We are always open to meet and connect design leaders. If you would like to share your story, have design people in mind, facilitate an introduction or suggest folks we should reach out to, please email us @ DesignImpact
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