Designer, Politician, Advocate, or Architect? You Decide.

How are designers supposed to advocate for the end users if we are not able to advocate for ourselves? How are we supposed to orchestrate specific experiences for users if we cannot pull together stakeholders in our own organizations?

All of these questions point to the critical need for designers to be politicians in their own organizations. If “politician” is a gross word to you, consider reframing to being a “design advocate.”

And another hot take — designers, or anyone that’s talking to users on any kind of regular basis are in one of the most effective positions to be advocates for change in an organization. The entire premise of the organization is to create value for a specific user group, yet company leaders oftentimes don’t have the time to understand and/or talk to end users. From my perspective too, designer-types tend to be thoughtful, introspective, and authentic. Speaking up in a meeting while carrying a brand of being true and honest will carry some weight to it, even if others disagree.

To create real change in an organization, it is critical to spend time socializing and being introspective:

• Socialize: to be followed in an organization, it is important to first be known. Get to know every person that touches the process that you align with, share career stories, and learn goals.
• Be Introspective: after spending time getting to know people, it is important to “get on the balcony” (borrowing from Professor Mo Sook Park’s Adaptive Leadership course). To understand why people might be behaving the way they are, it is helpful to know what is at stake for them professionally or personally and see if there are any ways to move the needle. Tiny changes matter.

Lastly, empowering people to feel like they helped create the change will help you go further. How can you get people on board with your vision and also empower them to feel like owners of it? In this way, designers are like undercover architects of organizational systems.

“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will all say: ‘we did it ourselves.’”. — Lao Tzu