Sorry, but some companies shouldn’t be design led.

Coming from a creative person, this may sound like blaspheme. We’ve worked hard for design to get a seat at the table. And I certainly believe that design and creativity will improve the bottom line. For example, the Design Management Institute reported that over the past ten years, design-led companies have maintained a significant stock market advantage, outperforming the S&P by 211 percent.[i] Clearly a design-led strategy is profitable.

But I’m also open to the idea that it’s not for everyone.

In the bestselling book, the The Discipline of Market Leaders, Treacy and Wiersma pinpoint the three basic business strategies that leading companies use to succeed.[ii] The first strategy is customer intimacy, where the business focuses on experiences that prioritize a deeper relationship. Think Disney. The second is operational excellence, where it’s all about optimizing costs and operations. Like Walmart. And the third is product innovation, where the priority is bringing new products to market. Such as Adobe.

Some companies try to live in two of these categories, but it never works. You have to pick one and go all in.

And a great insight into which strategy a business will most likely follow is the background and skillset of the C suite. If the board is made from a majority of people who come from finance or operations, you can certainly guess that the decisions they make will be grounded in operational excellence. It’s in their blood. Collectively they will usually agree on strategies that focus on cost cutting and speeding the flow of inventory. A decision to lose money in the short term in order to create a more intimate customer experience is probably not going to happen.

And if the board is made from a majority of engineers who collectively agree to pump money into R & D, you can guess that the strategy of the business will be product innovation. You can see how the makeup of the board, as far as their backgrounds and skills, plays a huge roll in the business strategy.

This is the reason so many creative people have pushed to get a designer or creative leader on the board. It’s a critical step for a company to become a design-led business. Because it takes more than a finance person agreeing to give creativity a shot. It requires big changes and decisions that push leadership, and they have to truly believe in creativity. Otherwise you may give up and go back to what feels comfortable.

But if you’ve trained yourself in the arts of creativity, molded your brain to constantly tap into your emotions and exude empathy, you’re not going to give up. You’re going to push for creative solutions and decisions that are grounded in great design.

The trend to become a design-led company is growing. Once people see the value of putting design at the core of your company, they are constantly asking how they can help their business transform.

All that said, here’s where I don’t think it’s right for everyone. Of the three business strategies, customer intimacy and product innovation are ideal candidates for a design-led focus. With a creative champion (or more, hopefully) you can create amazing products and experiences that will give you a distinct business advantage.

But with an operational excellence model, I think the chances for design success are slim. And the reason isn’t because I don’t think design thinking works. It’s because a business strategy of operational excellence is completely grounded in logical decisions, not creative. For an operational excellence business, tightening margins, optimizing the sales chain, and prioritizing quick transactions is what makes that strategy sing. If you suddenly change your tune and pour resources into expensive emotional currency, you risk straddling two business strategies. Which is a bad place to be.

That’s why I believe that an operational excellence model should stick with what makes them successful — strategies that are the exact opposite of a more touchy-feely creative approach.

For example, The Gap was a classic customer intimate brand. It was all about deep relationships with customers, believing in good causes, and standing up for feelings of independence and great design. Then it joined the Old Navy family. The board had great success with Old Navy as an operational excellent company. Most of the leadership has a background in finance or operations. It was all about inexpensive clothes pushed out in mass quantities. And the Old Navy strategy has been wildly successful.

Under their leadership, we saw The Gap assimilate similar operational strategies — like packing more product in every store and huge discounting. The result was the loss of intimate relationships between consumers and The Gap. Again, you can’t win with two business strategies, you have to pick one to succeed. Until recently, that means The Gap gives up on customer intimacy and becomes like Old Navy. (They are trying to revitalize The Gap brand, but a divided house is a tough place to be.)

So what’s the best solution? Should the strategy to bring back The Gap mean Old Navy should become a customer intimate brand and add design-led leadership to the board? For Old Navy, that could be a disaster. Perhaps a better plan would be separate leadership so that the two companies can follow different business strategies. Then The Gap could go back to customer intimacy and Old Navy can thrive on operational excellence.

The takeaway is that every business needs to find the strategy that’s right for them and staff the board with the appropriate leadership. If your brand is all about customer intimacy and product innovation, then you’d better seriously consider having creative leadership on your board — because they will help you create experiences that will give you a huge advantage.

But if you’re strategy is operational excellence, then focus on what makes you great through finance and operations. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have great design and creativity as part of your brand. You certainly should. And any company should use design thinking to find new ideas and bring together a diverse set of opinions.

But being a design-led company is different. It’s all about focusing on design as a core component of the brand. About creating a culture that understands the value of trial and error. It’s about guiding all business decisions based on how design affects the customer experience.

In an operational excellence model, the strategy is focused on short term improvements in process and costs in order to create a larger business advantage. This model shines by optimizing everything, so that the business is a well-oiled machine. That environment is the opposite of a design-led approach. And that’s just fine. Because being a design-led business may not be the best fit for an operational excellence strategy.

Sure, it’s possible to move from operational excellence into a different strategy, if that’s the best approach for your company. But if you stick with operational excellence as your strategy and your board is made up of finance and operations people, then changing your business DNA to prioritize design as a core belief is probably a hard battle and ultimately may not be worth it.

I believe in creativity. I’ve seen how design can boost the bottom line. But I also know when to back off when it’s not right for a certain type of business.

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Adam Morgan is an Executive Creative Director at Adobe, with experience in creativity, strategy, and storytelling for over 23 years. He’s a keynote speaker at conferences and events — and was recently named an Adobe MAX Master speaker. Before Adobe, he was a creative director at several international ad agencies, delivering award-winning advertising and campaigns. He was named a 40 under 40 business leader by Utah Business Magazine, and Utah Ad Professional of the Year in 2014. To read one of his articles on data-driven creativity or more about his new book, “Sorry Spock, Emotion Drives Business,” that proves the value of creativity and design to your clients and stakeholders, visit him at adamWmorgan.com.

[i] 2015 Design Value Index (DMI) reported by the Design Management Institute. http://www.dmi.org/?DesignValue

[ii] The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose your customers, narrow your focus, dominate your market. Michael Treacy & Fred Wiersma. 1997 Addison-Wesley.