You’re an in-house designer. Do you have a good client? Or, you are a business leader with a design team. Are you giving the design team a chance? Will the designers’ work drive business success, or will it end up in the recycle bin, never adopted?
First, I’m assuming that the designers have adequate funds, connections to others in the company, data and access to customers. Those are important. But there is still something more fundamental.
Two Key Values—Pick One
There are two key values for success, and they are held by the leaders. Having at least one of these values is absolutely necessary.
The business leaders, internal client, or decision makers believe in design methods.
They therefore want to use the innovations the designers develop. The leaders have designers because the new and different design methods produce valuable insights and solutions. It’s like a carpenter getting a great new tool. “With this, I can do great things!”
The business leaders want the results that the designers deliver.
The leaders have given the designers a problem, and they want it solved. What will it take? What can the business do? This is usually a broad problem, like getting more customers, expanding our offerings, or increasing engagement. The business leaders believe the goal is important, and they are willing to support what it takes. It’s like a football team that needs a first down. The quarterback calls a play, and the team runs it.
Life Without Either Value
Leaders must have one of these belief systems. You don’t hear a wide receiver saying, “That play won’t work, I’m going to run short instead of long.” What carpenter would say, “No, I’d rather use a pocket knife and whittle it down.”
Alternatively, try an IT project missing these key values. Would a leader task a team with writing a program, and then cancel the project because he can’t imagine how it was created? “We’re not going to implement it because I’m uncomfortable with sorting algorithms. I just don’t understand them.”
Would a leader cancel a software project because it’s not done the old way? “This does speed up the delivery of accounting results, but I’d miss the sound of the adding machines.” It would be hard to defend. Unfortunately, design work is often rejected or ignored without any explicit statement. That’s why establishing one of the two key values up front is critical.
What You Can Do
Of course, design work must be defensible. Design solutions must be feasible and viable, as well as desirable. Prototypes must be tested. In my experience, unfortunately, the work is often discarded or cancelled because the results or methods are different. The leaders typically never talk about it. They just feel uncomfortable and move on, leaving the designers stranded.
There are many other ways to talk about this. We can call it leadership commitment, or cultural integration. Those things are what leaders do. This is a more detailed way of engaging with how leaders value design work. So ask yourself, or your leaders,
“What is it that you hope to accomplish? How do you think that the design team can add value?”
I recommend having this conversation up front, as part of an intake or project charter process. Don’t leave values to be tacit or implicit. Ask the questions and have the discussion. Sometimes having that discussion is enough to create the commitment and save the project later.
Then listen for the two key values.
“I believe in the innovative ways you designers do your work. It will bring us new and different results.”
or
“We need to accomplish this goal, and I’m willing to try new things and do what it takes.”
Beware of silence. Beware of a confusing answer. Whether you are a designer or a leader, you need one of these answers if you expect success down the road.
