Part 2: Article — From craft to leader: building a future design practice
Part 1: Abstract
This research component seeded and catalysed the idea that we as designers and future design leaders must think holistically in mindset and practice to become better more prepared leaders. Requiring designers to shift from user-centred to systems-centred, or me to we, particularly where design and organisation intersect.
Introduction
All designers begin with their craft. Learning the technical skills to be a designer, whether you go to design school or learn the software yourself, we develop aesthetic, immerse ourselves in design vernacular, talk fonts, colour palettes, famous products, and campaigns created by the legendary designers that we may one day aspire to be. Truth is, technical skills don’t translate directly to leadership skills. The designers we idolise are not sitting only making, the designers we idolise have learnt how to be leaders. Not only mastering their technical skills but also interpersonal skills, treating leadership as a craft that needs to be cultivated and practiced as a living medium.
Design leaders don’t just become leaders. Leadership should be treated as a craft that requires practice. It can’t be done by only reading books on leadership, filling our heads with information on the expertise required to be a good leader. Like simply knowing software and design terminologies does not make you a designer. Design leaders must have an appetite to learn by doing, have the courage to fail, be able to adapt to change, and act out the principles of leadership through experience.
‘Leaders are made, they are not born.’
— Vince Lombardi.
From user to ecosystem
The transition to a leadership role is hard for many designers because there is an authentic love of craft — but leading design means less designing. It means managing people, making operational decisions, adapting to new business cultures, letting go, putting trust in people and being accountable. When running teams we have to shift our field of view from a micro ‘user’ to macro level ‘ecosystem’ or zooming in and out. The user-centred view that became popularised by the practitioners of human-centred design, where the intersection desirability, feasibility and viability created what is know as design thinking. This approach focused on the user to solve small and large problems from the inside out.
We live in a more complex world of systems where the problems we face are interconnected, wicked and require a new way of thinking with a systems mindset. Until now, human-centred design separated people from ecosystems. Now, designers must begin to address people as part of a greater ecosystem, as opposed to being at the centre of everything. To successfully make this shift, design leaders need to embrace a broader, more holistic system mindset. Designing for two sets of values — personal and collective.
This article offers understanding on how we can re-imagine the future design practice using a systems-lens. Offering insights on capabilities that make a systems design leader, whilst reflecting on system design principles. Engaging conversations with design leaders from various backgrounds that help frame the role as it is today in order to redirect our focus to design leaders as future-makers.
Business impact of design
In the rush towards rapid organisational change and transformation, the demand for design and organisation to work together has never been greater. Traditional hierarchical management structures that evolve at a glacial pace are being stress-tested in profound ways. Design thinking, championed by IDEO, opened the door for design and business to intersect. Organisations trust design as process and are turning to design to adapt and move with the multitude of disruptive trends that transform whole industries, economies and societies. A trend that has shaped the world around us is digitalization, which has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, creating a new paradigm shift inside and outside the organisation. Organisations must now aim to balance stability (resilient, reliable, and efficient) with dynamism (fast, nimble, and adaptive). As well as improving in tactical areas such as structure, management, communication and collaboration, decision-making, and increasing the use of technology and innovation.
To meet these needs, leadership and organisations are undergoing a seismic shift, questioning and reframing known models in response to fast-paced changing environments. The disruption caused by Covid-19 has pushed people out the physical organisational model to become more autonomous, connected and networked, where management and leadership is being redefined again. The challenges create new problem frames for designers to address and deliver new opportunities. Forcing us to evolve from user-centred experts to systems-level decision makers. Like the times we live in, we must expand our mindset and way of seeing, into a more holistic way, through the lens of design thinking the user into the lens of systems thinking the ecosystem.
What is system thinking?
Systems thinking looks at the broad context in which we all live and operate. To achieve this we use a systems-lens. Systems thinking is a way of working that helps us respond to complexity. Systems-led principles and models enable us to better understand a problem and identify opportunities for holistic change.
This coupled with a set of tools we use to embed them in our daily work, they facilitate new ways of thinking and understanding the world around us. To respond we need to take a dual approach in looking at problems from the bottom-up and top-down or by zooming in and out to see the interrelatedness of these parts. If designers can zoom between systems thinking and design thinking, switching between the holistic and the user view continuously, we can harmoniously blend both of these mentalities to build mental models of that system to inform us on how and where we should intervene.
This explains System Thinking as a model but the question shouldn’t be ‘what systems thinking is?’ It should be ‘what system thinking means for designers?’ As designers, we need to define systems thinking in a way based on how design practice and design leadership perceives the world.
‘Systems thinking means the ability to see the synergy of the whole rather than just the separate elements of a system and to learn to reinforce or change whole system patterns.’
— Richard L. Daft
What does a leaders mindset look like?
Mindset affects how design leaders think, learn, and behave. Mindsets are leaders’ mental lenses that dictate what information we take in and use to make sense of and navigate the situations we encounter. With the right mindset we can better harness all other leadership capabilities. When leadership development efforts ignore mindset, they ignore how leaders see and interpret problems and opportunities.
While everyones mindset is unique there are three distinct sets Fixed, Growth and Benefit mindsets which reflect common beliefs people hold about the nature of learning and leadership. Each mindset will affect leaders ability to engage with others, navigate change more successfully, and perform in their leadership roles more effectively.
Carol Dweck the Stanford Psychologist and author of Mindset contrasts two common mindsets Fixed and Growth:
1. A Fixed Mindset is symbolised by the everyday expert.
“In a Fixed Mindset people believe their basic abilities, their intelligence,
their talents, are fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that’s that,
and then their goal becomes to look smart all the time and never look dumb.”
— Carol Dweck
2. A Growth Mindset is symbolised by the everyday learner.
“In a Growth Mindset people understand that their talents and abilities can be developed through effort and persistence. They don’t necessarily think everyone’s the same or anyone can be Einstein, but they believe everyone can get smarter if they work at it.” — Carol Dweck
A third mindset the Benefit Mindset describes everyday leaders who discover their strengths to make valuable contributions to causes that are greater than the self, leaders who believe in making a meaningful difference, positioning their actions within a purposeful context.
3. A Benefit Mindset is symbolised by the everyday leader.
In a Benefit Mindset we not only seek to fulfil our potential, but choose to do it in a way that contributes to the wellbeing of others and society as a whole. We question ‘why’ we do what we do, and believe in doing good things for good reasons.
You may wonder: if mindsets are so important, which ones should design leaders develop and which ones should they look out for?
Systems leaders require a combination of both the Growth and Benefit Mindsets. There should be the drive and perseverance of the Growth Mindset, while having the love and care for the whole of the Benefit Mindset.
‘Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits, your habits become your values, your values become your destiny.’
— Mahatma Gandhi
Building a networked team
Building a team is like forming a band. Each member brings their own talent to the band, so that one compliments the other. For the band to play well together there needs to be a harmony. As a leader you’re no longer just playing an instrument. Now, you’re conducting the orchestra.
As Lubomila Jordanova Co-Founder and CEO of Plan A, a software as a service company that helps other companies calculate monitor and reduce their emissions points out, ‘businesses are actually communities.’ Complex, layered, and interdependent on all of its moving parts, the business is a dynamic system that functions like a living, breathing, organism. We do not think of the talents of the individual but how all the individuals will work together like a community. Keeping this systems view considers the relations of parts interacting and forming as a whole or holarchy.
Unfortunately there is no one size fits all approach to organisational structure. Given the way we now work remotely, in highly networked teams, that have ever more autonomy, organisations that are winning are the ones who move with speed and adaptability. These are defined as agile organisation. They embody the fundamentals of what it takes to be a company that is dynamic and stable at the same time. They share knowledge have high inter-connectivity between network teams, empowering teams to operate with high standards of autonomy, expertise, transparency, and collaboration. Spotify is an example of this people-driven approach for scaling agile that emphasises the importance of culture and networked individualism. A culture where workers are grouped into squads, which are then grouped into tribes, to maximise the benefits of the clustering of related knowledge and skills. Fusing together traditional and non-traditional models to form a dense network of empowered teams. Having a stable top level hierarchy, but replacing much of the remaining traditional hierarchy with a flexible, scalable, network of teams.
This asks a new set of skills for leaders to understand human networks (business and social), how to design and build them, how to collaborate across them, and how to nurture and sustain them. Good in theory, but when discussing new corporate structures with Design Leadership expert Andy Polaine he explained, ‘it’s behaviour that matters.’ He goes further to explain, ‘structure is something you constantly need to tweak. The best structures are ones constantly going through that sense and respond cycle of adapting to what’s changing, as such, there is no best structure, best structure is the one that kind of fit-for-purpose at the time.’
Conclusion
It is evident that we exist in times of complexity and uncertainty, and clearer still that our current traditional leadership models are being disrupted. It is time for designers to step forward and face the challenges that affect not only themselves but everyone of us.
‘Designing for all of life, not just human life.’
–John Thackara
Designers by nature are problem solvers but without the right framework and perception of the world around us we will continue to make the same mistakes. To quote Terry Irwin of Transition Design on our ethical position as designers, ‘can I, in good conscience continue to teach my students to be concerned about fractions of millimetres between letters, given what is going on in the world? Is it the design equivalent of rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic?’ With the world in crisis mode, shouldn’t we be putting our creative minds towards the real wicked problems that are systemically broken? Yes!
Being a design leader shouldn’t be just about providing the tools to do the work, it’s about creating the right conditions and working closely with people to shift their understanding and the way they think. We know from systems practice that our mental models matter, because they shape how we act and how we see the world. We understand the best way design leaders can do that with their team is to approach it mindfully. Help your team to build mental models that prioritise systems thinking, while also giving them the flexibility to optimise and adapt a range of tools and design methodologies to their situation. This means being able to zoom in and out, from a design-thinking user-view to a systems thinking ecosystem–view.
Yes, there is still lots of work to be done but thanks to the multi-disciplinary, facilitatory role that design plays, designers are well-placed to bring this system mindset and framework to any business and make nodal fixes to organisations and systems that could steer humanity and all life back on course.
*This article is part of my work in the Future Design Leadership unit in the Master of Design Futures program at RMIT University.
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