The real value of design transformation
We need new words and outcomes to shift how we work and win together.
Design transformation. Design-driven. Human-centered design. Design thinking. Design sprints.
These terms are everywhere you look around the business world. It would appear that Design is having its moment. And yet, for decades now, many are still doubtful of the value offered, if any.
That doubt persists because we’re using the wrong words and focused on the wrong outcomes, which frustrates some and alienates everyone else.
By redesigning the language we use, questions we ask, and criteria we use to measure success, we’ll transform how work happens — and in doing so, our ability to solve any problem we choose to.
Words spark feelings
On a cold October night in 2018, I sat in the main gathering room of a private workspace snuggled in the heart of Chelsea, NYC. After a long workday, a friend (let’s call him, Phil) and I sat enjoying a nightcap while waiting for a mutual acquaintance (let’s call him, Steve) to join us.
Phil and I drifted onto the topic of a design sprint I’d be running later that month for a group of business executives. Phil asked about the intention of the sprint — specifically, the value that a group of business-minded folks expected to get out of it.
What he was digging into was, in fact, the argument for a new leadership development program he and I had co-created earlier in the year. The thesis of the program was that in order for innovation to yield results and practices like design thinking to take root, you need the grassroots support of others outside of the usual players — design, product, technology, and research. And so the program sought to catalyze business innovation by bringing cross-functional cohorts together to learn and lead new principles and methods — methods not unlike design sprints.
Steve arrived. As he settled in, we invited him into the discussion. Almost immediately, his postured stiffened, his eyes rolled back, and he shared his position,
“Design sprints represent everything wrong with innovation.”
Steve is a notable member of the design community, with many who have followed and supported his work for decades. His outlook mattered. It also wasn’t the first time I’d heard the likes of it. Over the course of that year and the year before it, outside of the small but growing bubble of design sprint teams I collaborated with, many other design purists had taken opposing stances against sprints.
Steve continued, “There is no shortcut to design. There’s a process. There are systems that have taken years to establish and refine. And here come design sprints claiming to figure it all out in a few days, where everyone in the room gets to pretend to be a designer!” This is how he felt. And his feelings weren’t wrong.
Design sprints felt threatening. He saw them democratizing the craft of design to non-designers. He framed them as a shortcut — as a way to cheat the design process that skilled designers use to do their job.
In fact, the first time I learned about design sprints, I had a nearly identical reaction. I remember saying, “How on Earth will spending 5 days in a design sprint do anything to change the products we build over the course of months?!”
The difference between Steve’s feelings and mine was that Steve, a Designer, felt threatened from sprints. But being from tech and product, I felt more alienated — as in, this feels like something I’m not equipped to participate in.
Where our discontent converged, was that we were both simply confused. And the name wasn’t helping.
To me, a non-designer, the word ‘Design’ felt outside of my purview. After all, designers do design, right? And the word ‘Sprint’ implied fast. Put them together and the definition we elicit is a change in process that makes design go faster. Which isn’t wrong! But, perhaps, not where you want to begin the conversation.
Because what do we know about people and change? Most don’t like it. Many resist it.
Inviting people to accept change involves using words and language that disarm and invite open-minded curiosity. Design Sprints, in a name, scores poorly on that front. As does design-driven and design transformation.
What person working in HR wants to be design-driven? They want to be HR driven! Or perhaps, people-driven.
How would being design-driven help a Recruitment Manager solve the problems she’s expected to deal with on a daily basis? Likewise, what Head of People would jump to contribute budget towards HR’s design transformation initiative?
The challenge, then, is demonstrating to the team and its senior leaders, the value and applicability of design in solving the problems the HR team works on, while minimizing the confusion and fear such change evokes.
We enroll their support through the words we use and the path we propose to get there.
And we create successful outcomes when we use design to transform how work happens within HR.
Redesigning teamwork
I think the most fundamental criteria for measuring the success of any business is its people. When the spirit of a team is broken or lacking, so is its creativity. Without creativity, there’s little ability to solve complex problems in innovative ways.
And so at the very core of it — what’s really broken here — is that nobody ever taught us how to work together. This is the most kernel problem that design transformation seeks to shift.
Today, we organize a group of people to work on a project based on their skill sets. We wish them godspeed to follow a generic series of protocols and processes that may have partially worked for one group solving one problem but has little relevance to this group and this problem.
We start by asking questions like: When should this be completed? What’s the budget? What features should we build? What’s the market opportunity? How much revenue does it need to generate or money does it need to save us?
No room in the conversation for the team to meet, to see one another, or to understand the problem they’re being asked to solve.
From the outset, each person checks in with shields up. They hold back their best ideas, tensions build, productivity drops, and the final products & services disappoint. What’s more, the output-driven metrics we used to define our success point toward failure. The team is disbanded and we miss our opportunity to understand what really went wrong.
What if, instead, we started the conversation by asking: Who should be part of the team? Who will lead each conversation? How will we decide what’s important? How do we want to communicate? How will we create safety and trust between us? How should we negotiate in order to effectively resolve conflicts? How will we partner with others outside the team? How will we measure and report our success?
Our definitions and practices around teamwork need to be redesigned — the way we meet, share ideas and make decisions.
When we harness design to shift how work happens, team members open — from feeling unsafe, to safe enough to raise their hand to tackle complex problems in bold ways.
From avoiding or ignoring conflict, to channeling it to unlock new, hidden opportunities through empathy and curiosity.
From one person maintaining all of the power and biasing the conversation, to cross-functional teams equally owning and contributing.
Redesigning outcomes
If you also believe that a company is as successful as its people, then in order to realize that success, we need to shift more of our focus from business metrics to organizational outcomes. Because teams that intentionally design how they work, will produce exciting business results. This is the order of operations: design great teams that produce successful results. It doesn’t work in reverse.
For example, I constantly go back to Suzanne Pellican’s story of leading transformation within Intuit. Theirs was a 7-year journey, where the outcome was to shift from many siloed centers of innovation to a cohesive culture of innovation.
To do that, she retrained and equipped each organization to solve their challenges using the same human-centered mindsets and methods her Design teams had historically relied upon. Her focus from the start was changing Intel’s definition of work. In doing so, Intel reaped the rewards of not only innovative products & services, but a newly invigorated workforce that’s maintained years after Suzanne’s departure.
What did that look like? How might we recreate her success, especially if we don’t have a 7-year timeline to work within?
Of course, I don’t have this all figured out. Up until this point, I’m acutely aware of what doesn’t work — of how things look and sound inside organizations that must change… that want to change.
But similarly, with each conversation, one small win at a time, I’m also building up a picture of the mindsets, words, and approaches that do work.
So for now, here are the organizational outcomes I push toward to signal that we’ve built a foundation capable of radical innovation.
Psychological safety: The groundwork that makes everything else possible. Psychological safety becomes the fundamental metric used to measure the success of all teams — the level of mutual trust & respect exhibited.
Feedback loops: All conversations — from 1-hour meetings to month-long programs — are designed to include reflection and feedback. This shifts the value of teams gathering from one-off outputs to lasting outcomes.
Learning mindset: Curiosity is no longer contained to a process like Discovery or within a function like Research, but viewed as a mindset that’s openly encouraged. Asking intentional, powerful questions is favored over telling.
Distributed power: Because the best ideas often come from quiet corners, seniority and title are part of the ideation and decision-making processes, but not mandated by them.
Showing over telling: Words on their own can be as powerful as they are misunderstood. Teams are now visualizing their ideas, allowing others to better understand them and build on top.
Problems over solutions: The most innovative products & services are rarely traced directly from today’s problem to tomorrow’s solution. Human-centered businesses prioritize the importance of understanding the root problem before jumping to [obvious] solutions.
I need your help to continue to flesh out these ideas and get them in front of more people. Especially those who feel threatened and confused with the challenges interwoven within design transformation.
What have I not considered? What parts of this conversation still need to be addressed?
What does it look like to be a human-centered business?
How might we make the journey there easier, better, more inclusive?
Where to next?
More and more companies have senior executive design functions — VP User Experience, SVP Design, Chief Experience Officer. Inside these organizations, Design has been officially welcomed to the table. They’ve managed to procure business value by applying design principles to solve important market challenges. These are the success stories we hear about. If we look closer, though, the journey there has left many feeling threatened and many more, alienated.
I suppose that’s why we’ve referred to them as transformations. Because it’s been bigger, slower, more complex, and painful than a change. Maybe it needs to be this way. Maybe the pain will help to burn in the memory of messy, broken systems for us to steer clear of tomorrow.
As I look back at election year in the US, I think about how poorly designed the general idea of government is. I can’t help but wonder how much more collaborative, productive, and peaceful we may be as a global community, if we were to apply these same principles to how we design the conversations and relationships that shape our world.
I don’t have the solution today. I’m simply in the trenches doing this work — supporting leaders and teams wading through their transformation journeys. It’s slow and sometimes agonizing. And I believe we can reshape the words we use and paths we take to be more inviting and inclusive… to help us pay attention for the outcomes that actually matter… to inspire more to begin.
Thanks to Mona Patel, Jim Kalbach, Mina Jonsson, Richard Banfield, Digant Dave, Julie Lane, Doug Powell, Kim Wiessner, Elaine Schwartz, Doug Stover, Ryan Andersen, and Chris Roberts for their ideas & inspiration in helping to shape this piece.
