Driving Organizational Transformation: Design Executives as Change Agents
An original abstract painting by Sudha Broslawsky portraying how leadership and change converge to shape progress in organizations.
In an era where agility and adaptability in companies are paramount, design executives stand out as key catalysts in driving transformation. They’re not just leaders in their domain but act as wider-scale change agents, embedding themselves in the DNA of enterprises to evolve from within and emerge new and better to the world. Known as change agents, these are prized individuals who promote and facilitate change within a group or organization.
By embracing the business needs and pushing the boundaries of these perspectives, design leaders are pivotal drivers in pioneering innovation, solving user-centered problems by humanizing business solutions, creating engaging work cultures, and spurring growth and meaningful change within their organizations.
Change agents as architects of transformation
Design leadership, in its true form, is not simply about creating beautiful products and services—it transcends these constructs to encompass a broader business perspective: how the framework of the business is laid out and used, how different departments across the organization work with each other, how the organization and their customers engage, how the business makes its money, and more. Ignoring the strategic aspects of design often leads to the realization that design isn't as well-understood or utilized as it should be in many organizations.
Consequently, design executives have to invest significant effort into educating others on the true power of design and demonstrating it as a vehicle for growth, innovation, a positive culture, and good business.
As my team and I led Achieve through a complete rebranding and digital transformation in 2022, we played pivotal roles as functional experts and change agents. We drove the change toward a more human-centered organizational ethos, influencing the company's culture from the inside out. This could not be made possible without a leadership philosophy guided by understanding the unique traits, behaviors, and micro-cultures of the various teams across the company. Using this knowledge, we relied on deep, personal relationships and crafted bespoke alignment and calibration mechanisms—similar to fitting parts and fine-tuning the performance of a race car— to drive change effectively.
Historical evolution of design leadership
Designers haven’t always functioned as influencers of change. Design has been often siloed as a downstream function, relegated to mere aesthetics and form. However, the world was never the same after design started to take center stage.
20th century: The emergence of design leaders
Stepping out of the confines of making things “look pretty,” the late 20th century saw the rise of companies that placed design at the core of their strategy.
It's impossible to discuss design leadership without mentioning Apple. Under Co-founder Steve Jobs' drive for innovation and Chief Design Officer Jony Ive's design vision, Apple reshaped the consumer electronics industry, ushering in an unprecedented fusion of form and function. Jobs’ emphasis on simplicity and minimalism as part of the design principles he lived by transformed the world. The iPod, iPhone, and iPad are not merely products but design revolutions, impacting sectors from music to phones to publishing.
Early 2000s: The tech boom becomes a boon for designers
By the early 2000s, the tech boom led to the proliferation of digital products and platforms. User experience (UX) design emerged as a key differentiator for products and services that kept customers returning for more. Companies began to recognize that the most successful products were those designed with the end user in mind.
Designers not only became key contributors to successful products & services but they were also elevated to the highest positions as CEOs—virtually unheard of until Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia co-founded Airbnb. Airbnb is a huge success, bringing in $8.4 billion in revenue in 2022.
Chesky and Gebbia used their training as designers to have a perspective & clarity on what makes a good culture, how to create one, and how to leverage it in solving meaningful problems that help real people. They looked at the lodging industry with fresh eyes, focusing on how they could humanize their solution by providing an exceptional experience from both the guest and host's point of view. Their emphasis on community, trust, and a unique travel experience reshaped the hospitality industry.
“...we thought designers were the perfect people to run a company like this. A human-centered company, built around empathy, using creativity,” Chesky said in an interview.
2010s to present: Design-led innovation and culture change
The 2010s saw an even greater emphasis on design thinking – a holistic, human-centric approach to problem-solving.
Organizations began to integrate designers into leadership roles, recognizing that design-driven innovation leads to a competitive advantage.
As the first Chief Design Officer at PepsiCo, Mauro Porcini integrated design thinking across the company's many brands. The results? Stunning packaging redesigns, innovative brand experiences, and new product concepts, all contributing to a rejuvenated brand image.
Porcini focused on the idea that design thinking and focus on human needs spur innovation.
“The starting point, the cultural level in every company, needs to be the needs and wants of human beings,” Porcini said in a McKinsey & Company interview. While Porcini said this doesn’t always lead to something innovative and extraordinary, “that kind of mindset will push you to push the boundaries of what is possible all the time and accelerate the overall journey of innovation for your brand or company,” Porcini said.
How to be a change agent
Today, in the modern corporate world, design leadership is about understanding the business and customer needs, driving innovation, and fostering organizational transformation. With design having a seat at the executive table, influencing strategy, operations, and corporate culture— permeating every department and every facet of the business—now it’s time to use design as a power for change.
Here are 6 principles to be a change agent as a design executive:
Strategic vision & execution
Create a vision and strategy for your organization. Design leaders are responsible for curating a culture rooted in shared values so teams unite to fulfill the same mission.
Start by understanding the business, the market, company’s goals and objectives.
Partner with the business leaders in setting the vision and a roadmap. Leverage research to facilitate a productive visioning effort to define a North Star.
Build a solid foundation by hiring the right people and getting buy-in from business leaders and peers. Demonstrate how investing in design will add value and growth.
Define a clear direction for your teams and the broader organization, ensuring alignment with the company's goals.
Prioritizing opportunities
Effective design leadership involves identifying and focusing on opportunities that have the most significant potential to bring about positive change and add tangible value. These opportunities include providing value externally to customers and changing the inner workings of the company itself.
Take a holistic approach to assessing priorities across the enterprise and identify key initiatives to invest in. These will be your “hero stories” in demonstrating the value and impact of design.
Leverage strategic and design research in identifying the right problems to solve and foster innovation in the creation of service and product solutions.
Define key metrics and engrain a mindset of both quantitative and qualitative measures of impact into teams, initiatives, and projects for continuous growth.
Advocacy & evangelization
It’s imperative for design leaders to prioritize advocacy and evangelism of design for the success of both the design organization and the broader business. Design thinking is not just limited to how design performs as a department—it empowers teams across the company to think strategically and build the right solutions collaboratively. Think of it as DNA because design has the power to influence the inner workings of companies, their mindset when tackling unknown or ill-defined challenges, and how products, services, and consumer interactions are ultimately built.
Promote inter-departmental collaboration with design thinking. Invite people across teams to ideate and co-create solutions.
Permeate research insights to teams across the enterprise, and make design thinking a foundation for all strategic thinking.
Regularly measure the success of your external customer-facing and internal organizational & cultural solutions. Present the positive outcomes to the business when advocating for more opportunities for change
Invest in educating and up-leveling the broader organization on Design. Hold round table sessions, lunch & learn sessions, and office hours to engage the broader audience in conversations around the influence of design.
Adopt a "show, don't tell" philosophy to demonstrate the tangible outcomes of design thinking. Keep track of your “hero stories” and consistently broadcast them in meetings, shareouts, and newsletters.
Relationship building & collaboration
Design leaders must focus on building great partnerships and relationships in all directions of the enterprise – upwards with business leaders, sidewards with peers across departments, and downwards with the design organization and cross-functional execution teams. By identifying champions, sponsors, and allies across the organization, design leaders can realize significant success in bringing their vision to life.
Invest in getting to know key players across the enterprise, focusing on their goals and motivations. Approach with the mindset of making them successful, and seek opportunities to demonstrate it in action.
Leverage these relationships to identify high-impact projects and use these to demonstrate the value of design.
Involve other functional leaders and their teams in co-creating vision, goals, and solutions through design thinking frameworks.
Share the success by recognizing these partners in wider meetings to further strengthen the trust and relationships.
Proactivity & resilience
As with any transformative endeavor, design leaders might face resistance or pushback. When driving change, it's essential to anticipate challenges and develop strategies to address them. Some of these strategies are:
Involve others in your action plan early on and create a sense of shared vision.
Identify champions who will support you and build trust and strong relationships.
Invest in understanding the potential causes of resistance and be proactive in addressing them.
Keep the teams inspired by clearly articulating your vision and the desired outcomes, and provide the support needed in terms of tools, resources, and frameworks.
Celebrate both wins and failures and create a culture of reflection and continuous growth. Model the behaviors of resilience and perseverance as a leader and lead by example.
While you can't change everyone's mindset, it's important to understand whose support is required to make progress.
Holistic skill set
With design thinking, you’re naturally dispositioned to think about problems and their solutions holistically. Beyond deep design domain knowledge, design leaders require a holistic skill set and mindset, ensuring comprehensive understanding, curiosity, empathy, effective communication, and adaptability within the enterprise. Key tactics for cultivating this holistic approach include:
Broaden your expertise beyond core design and technology functions into other key areas such as sales, marketing, business, and finance.
Develop a deep understanding of diverse organizational cultures & functions, and a mindset of aligning with core enterprise ethos.
Be keenly attuned to the well-being and productivity of your teams. Have consistent practices in place to foster a culture of recognition, celebration, and reflection.
Have self-awareness of gaps in skills and investment in continuous learning opportunities that could improve your leadership abilities.
In today's dynamic business environment, design leadership extends far beyond building products and services. It's about shaping innovations, nurturing organizational culture, and driving holistic transformations. From Apple's iconic designs to Airbnb's game-changing approach, design-centric strategies have proven their worth. These success stories were steered by design visionaries who brilliantly blended human-centricity with business growth.
The essence of design leadership is its dual impact: externally, it defines unparalleled human experiences; internally, it fosters collaboration, innovation, and cultural transformation. As we move into the future, design leadership will be the beacon that directs businesses toward deeper connections and unparalleled growth.
