How the skill of facilitation evolves for design leaders

Full transcript

Intro

The role of facilitation as a design leader from a designer is going from that contributor to an enabler.

Some of the best facilitators I've worked with over the years are also designers. As a designer, as you grow from individual contributor to manager and up into executive design functions you take the skill of facilitation with you but it changes. The conversations change, the objectives change.

Well, if you're a designer on the path to becoming a design leader, I think you're going to like today's episode with Eric Quint, former Chief Brand and Design Officer at 3M. Eric joins me to talk about how the skill of facilitation evolves for design leaders.

Today’s episode

Jay: Eric, you know, when I think about a facilitator, I always, I have this picture in my head and maybe other people do as well of the person in the workshop that's working on sort of that like single project but as you and I have been talking about facilitation as it scales into leadership levels, executive functions in these large companies. And so I was excited to talk with you today about how you define facilitation once you become a design leader leading large organizations, thousands of people.

Eric: If you talk about facilitation, the first thing that comes up is the facilitation of a group of people that have mostly a creative challenge and then you try to optimize the participation as well as the outcome of that workshop. But indeed facilitation has different levels I think.

It can go to an individual level where you coach and mentor people as individuals, which is a form of facilitation as well, and design profession workshops and facilitation of workshops and creativity is very well known. But again, if you go even levels beyond that. Another level is the facilitation of the connections between the design function and the other functions in the company, for instance. Where you have to start to build bridges with marketing and R&D and your colleagues in the business to make sure that you optimize the value of design. And then even on the executive level, it is about contributing to the strategy of the company, make sure that design as well is represented in all of that.

Jay: Yeah, how does it change? How does the conversation or the structure change instead of being in the workshop, working on the project how is it different as you're facilitating at the leadership level?

Eric: Well, in a workshop it's all about the creative contribution. As a leader, you are more inspiring. You are more supposed to set the vision. And so the role of facilitation or as a design leader from a designer is going from that contributor to an enabler. So you are making sure that you enable your team to do the best they can. And so, as a leader, you are not involved in design execution anymore, maybe you have a few projects that ask creative direction on a higher level, but in most cases it's about setting the conditions around the team so that they can flourish and bring the best out.

Jay: Yeah, maybe you could think back to when you first moved into this leadership position, what were some of the early mistakes that you made as you transitioned from contributing to the enabling?

Eric: Well, it's that trap - people around you see that your contribution and your effectiveness of getting things done and convincing business people about creative concepts is very successful.

But the question I ask always my people if they go into a new role, but particularly when they go from a more designed operational role to a managerial role is the question, "What are you going to do differently?" And that's a very crucial question because the mistake I made is you think that management is doing more of the same, and that's not what it is about. So you need to build the best team around you.

Jay: So, maybe we can talk a little bit more specifically about the person that's moving into that leadership position. What's the most important things for them to accomplish?

Eric: Well, maybe if you think about the main roles of responsibilities of a design leader, I think there are three. The one is that I think you as a design leader, you are there to design what I call the function of design. So you need to design your organization of design and that's your main role.

Then the other role is as in the area of innovation, where you work mostly together with R&D but it is also branding where you work with marketing to make sure you get a brand experience and a customer experience that is exciting and consistent. And so sometimes I say the second role that you have is design the company, because everything that the company is doing is designed one way or another, from websites to events to products to interfaces to packages and you can do all. And there is always an act of design involved in there, but somebody needs to orchestrate the quality and the consistency across all of those touch points. So designing the company is an important one.

Then the other one is educating about design which is an important one.

And then the fourth one which I enjoy the most is being that rattle, asking questions, unexpected questions that will bring you new spaces and challenge the status quo. Because why have we done things like we always have done? And is that always still the best way to approach it?

Jay: Eric, these are great ideas. As someone that's outside of, has always been outside of the design function, I see that design has over the years become more taken more and more seriously it's much more of a strategic core function of the business so I have lots of friends that are moving into design leadership roles so I thought that this conversation would be really helpful for them as they start to plot out their journey and build their teams and inspire companies, right?

Eric: Yeah, I'm very excited about how design is developing and as you know I'm co-authoring a book on this published by Stanford University Press with two academics and this is to inspire young new design leaders to give them a lot of food for thought and tips and tricks and frameworks for them to be even better and more successful.

Jay: Great, we'll put a link to that book when it launches later in the year and I think you also shared that there's some other resources that you've written in the past so we'll link to those as well in the comments.

Eric: Yeah, sounds good to me.

Jay: Alright. Thanks so much Eric I really appreciate it.

Eric: Okay, thanks for having me.

Jay: Okay.

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