I agree that “Design” is more than just a department (altho it can be one) - and that design is valuable anywhere in the organization.
Altho I have heard this said by many professionals (e.g. Finance, Sales). And this is true. Everyone designs, everyone sells, everyone balances budgets. Lived experience does not neatly fall into our disciplinary buckets.
Where I have reservations is about power. Power structures are real and persistent and the delicate balancing act we must perform is both taking power seriously and not seeing power as immutable.
I don’t think hierarchical structures are going anywhere. Therefore designer must work within those structures while constantly nibbling at the edges. We are left with a mixture of The Serenity Prayer and Marx’s line from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
“People make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.”
You may not get to choose whether you work in a silo or not. Silos, like all infrastructure, both enable and constrain. But you have to work from where you are at.
How do you see Designers navigating these power structures - either effectively or not?
I think you are hitting the nail on the head by isolating the concept of 'power.'
I see Design navigating power structures by doing stakeholder engagement right. By understanding the real needs of each stakeholder group (needs, motivation, language, KPIs, etc.) and crafting artefacts and narratives that can show how design work can make their life easier and their work more effective.
If designers manage to do that, they are listened to, finding peers and sponsors in the most radical places inside organisations.
You need to set the foundation for working towards a common goal. You navigate power structures by laying those foundations. I'm not necessarily against design having a seat at the table. I'm against designers demanding a seat at the table without the ability to navigate those power structures. If you are not respected, if people around you see zero value in what you do, having a seat at the table is not going to change anything.
I have seen plenty of Senior Design Directors or Chief Design Officers getting that seat at the table and generating zero impact with it. Not because of their inability, but because no groundwork had been laid.
I'm curious about how large multinationals manage (define ways of working) the integration of both in-house teams and external vendors such as IBM and Accenture into their design processes. Given these vendors have their own design teams, familiar with their unique structures and challenges, how does this complex dynamic influence their involvement in 'design'? It seems like a significant coordination effort.
Thats a big potluck lunch ?
You mentioned that some organizations have moved beyond traditional models to embrace a more holistic and harmonious operational structures. Could you provide examples of such companies? Additionally, do any of the firms listed on Fast Company's "Most Innovative Companies" insights.https://www.fastcompany.com/most-innovative-companies/list exemplify these new models?
To answer to your second question, you can find some marvellous examples of organisations that managed to move beyond traditional models to embrace holistic operational structures in the book Reinventing Organisations by Frederic Laloux. Probably none of the organisations mentioned in the book will find a place in the fastcompany list you shared. They equal innovation to tech, all those orgs selected are because of their application of tech, which has nothing to do with what we are discussing here.
To answer to your first question, the short answer is that they usually don't. The result is disconnected products and services that looked in isolation work well, but seen together are completely disconnected. I'm tackling this issue in a chapter of my book.
Thank you for your vision. I love the energy.
I am sceptical about “the table” but for slightly different reasons: https://tempo.substack.com/p/voodoo-chile-slight-return-on-investment
I agree that “Design” is more than just a department (altho it can be one) - and that design is valuable anywhere in the organization.
Altho I have heard this said by many professionals (e.g. Finance, Sales). And this is true. Everyone designs, everyone sells, everyone balances budgets. Lived experience does not neatly fall into our disciplinary buckets.
Where I have reservations is about power. Power structures are real and persistent and the delicate balancing act we must perform is both taking power seriously and not seeing power as immutable.
I don’t think hierarchical structures are going anywhere. Therefore designer must work within those structures while constantly nibbling at the edges. We are left with a mixture of The Serenity Prayer and Marx’s line from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
“People make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.”
You may not get to choose whether you work in a silo or not. Silos, like all infrastructure, both enable and constrain. But you have to work from where you are at.
How do you see Designers navigating these power structures - either effectively or not?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Matt.
I think you are hitting the nail on the head by isolating the concept of 'power.'
I see Design navigating power structures by doing stakeholder engagement right. By understanding the real needs of each stakeholder group (needs, motivation, language, KPIs, etc.) and crafting artefacts and narratives that can show how design work can make their life easier and their work more effective.
If designers manage to do that, they are listened to, finding peers and sponsors in the most radical places inside organisations.
You need to set the foundation for working towards a common goal. You navigate power structures by laying those foundations. I'm not necessarily against design having a seat at the table. I'm against designers demanding a seat at the table without the ability to navigate those power structures. If you are not respected, if people around you see zero value in what you do, having a seat at the table is not going to change anything.
I have seen plenty of Senior Design Directors or Chief Design Officers getting that seat at the table and generating zero impact with it. Not because of their inability, but because no groundwork had been laid.
Thank you for your enlightening article!
I'm curious about how large multinationals manage (define ways of working) the integration of both in-house teams and external vendors such as IBM and Accenture into their design processes. Given these vendors have their own design teams, familiar with their unique structures and challenges, how does this complex dynamic influence their involvement in 'design'? It seems like a significant coordination effort.
Thats a big potluck lunch ?
You mentioned that some organizations have moved beyond traditional models to embrace a more holistic and harmonious operational structures. Could you provide examples of such companies? Additionally, do any of the firms listed on Fast Company's "Most Innovative Companies" insights.https://www.fastcompany.com/most-innovative-companies/list exemplify these new models?
Thank you for considering my questions.
Appreciate all the good work you share!
To answer to your second question, you can find some marvellous examples of organisations that managed to move beyond traditional models to embrace holistic operational structures in the book Reinventing Organisations by Frederic Laloux. Probably none of the organisations mentioned in the book will find a place in the fastcompany list you shared. They equal innovation to tech, all those orgs selected are because of their application of tech, which has nothing to do with what we are discussing here.
To answer to your first question, the short answer is that they usually don't. The result is disconnected products and services that looked in isolation work well, but seen together are completely disconnected. I'm tackling this issue in a chapter of my book.
Thank for getting back at me! Looking forward to see more when your book comes out!