Designers, Your Currency is Your Relationships
Invest in them.
I have probably worked with thousands of designers in my career. Either as colleagues or clients, my entire professional life has been immersed in design and designers. I often noticed how designers in large organisations tend to shy away from the strenuous politics and shield under the beauty of their practice.
Making things, imagining futures, connecting the dots; these are where most designers I have encountered shine and find joy. Unfortunately, if you are a designer in a company of any size, that’s probably only 10% of your work.
That’s right, 10%. A couple of years ago, I had this conversation with Marc Fonteijn at the Service Design Show. The interview, titled 'The Other 90%', focused on the critical aspects of designers' work that are not covered in their formal training (you’ll find the video at the end of this blog post).
I talked about the magic of learning how to navigate the ‘Organisational Dark Matter’, a phrase that I borrowed from Dan Hill in his book 'Dark Matter and Trojan Horses' (a highly recommended read!). The organisational dark matter consists of all those unwritten rules, incomprehensible decision-making processes, and dubious ideas of what is legitimate in that specific organisation. You know it’s there, you just can’t see it, or name it or label it. In my PhD thesis, I labeled that dark matter as ‘Organisational Logics’, as I explained in last week’s blog.
The only way to understand these dynamics and to learn to leverage them to your advantage to create impact is to immerse yourself in that environment. Relationships are your primary currency. You want to spend time with people, understand what they do, how they do it, why they do it. They might not understand what you do and your value, but you probably don’t understand theirs either.
Empathise with the organisational living being. I use the term 'living being' intentionally. I am a firm believer that we need to shift our understanding of organisational dynamics from that of a 'machine' to that of a 'living being'. This being has emotions, behaviours (sometimes irrational), learning patterns, trigger points. By hugging the organisational living being, by allowing ourselves to spend time and empathise with a diverse range of actors - especially those we tend not to like - we start unlocking the power of our currency.
All of a sudden, it becomes clear why certain people behave in certain ways, learning patterns emerge, and new opportunities open up. Mind you, an opportunity could also simply be the realisation that the person you are dealing with is immutable, and that you have no control over them. The only person you can truly change is yourself, and that's where I suggest starting.
Start today, start from here:
Make a list of the top three people in the organisation you cannot connect with.
Make a list of three people you are neutral with, that you don’t particularly understand.
Contact them all and ask to spend 45 minutes together for a coffee at their earliest convenience. You can use this sentence in your text: "Hi! I realised we have never truly spent time together and that I don’t know much about you and your work. I’d love to learn more about you. Would you be up to go get a coffee one of these days and have a chat?”
Show up to those meetings, interested and motivated to learn about the other person.
If one of these people’s knowledge or skillset is particularly complementary to yours, ask them to become your mentor. People are usually flattered by such requests and you will maximise your chances to learn from this person.
Set up regular catch-ups with these people; every 3-6 months is enough.
Start again.
Do it for the pure need to learn, selflessly and without a secondary objective.
Congratulations! You have just unleashed the secret weapon to understand, nudge, and steer organisations: meaningful relationships!
Let me know how it goes. I would absolutely love to hear your stories. It’s probably going to be painful at first, but it is so worth it.
Thanks for this great series of articles! Just watched the full video interview. Such an inspiring conversation! Talking about the 90% of work which designers need to do before doing the 10% of actual design work (great one btw): My perspective on this is that especially designers are perfectly equipped to do that 90% part. It’s all about design still: empathy, psychology, understanding systems, compile key findings, ideate, collaborate, test to create new services and solutions in a user centered and sustainable way. The only difference is that the users are the people around you, your colleagues and the services are your internal processes, tools and methods. The UX you want to create ultimately is the company’s culture. That‘s why I still love doing these 90% as I’m contributing to designing my own organizations experience.