The 3 reasons why design leaders are generally one level below their working partners

Design is rarely a peer to Product / Marketing / Engineering. It typically reports to one of them.

—Laura Baker, Global Design Director, Fearless?

Laura is not the only to highlight this problem and it is a topic keeps coming up, which is a problem for business success as evidence showing that design mature organisations outperform their competitors.

I want to share why I think this is, but I won't cover what I think done about it, as we as a design community keep thinking we are solely responsible for fixing this issue.

We are not.

This needs to be driven from the top management with an understanding of the business value of design as it is not easy. Design as a craft generally doesn't fit neatly with how companies tend to organise themselves.

1: Design is seen as unpredictable in a world demanding predictability over innovation

We are operating in an industry where planning and numbers (management) are favoured over strategy and the bravery of taking a leap of faith (leadership). Harvard Business Review has a great video of why planning is not the same as strategy and why one only results in incremental value, while strategy requires making big choices without knowing the results for certain.

Good design work is inherently strategy as it is customer centric and there are multiple "right" answers and you need to believe and commit to one without being able to fully predict results as it is at the end of the day in the hands of the customers.

For that reason other business leaders are happy to have design as a competence, as long as they can override it, it it becomes too uncomfortable for them.

The result is design leaders are generally one level down from their working partners and in effect are only equal as long as it is convenient.

The downside is that the strategic, true customer-focussed overview has less of a voice... and practically, being one level down also means the design leader are not privy to the same information as their working partners meaning they are always one step behind in conversations.

2: Design is treated as a feminine craft

Designers are Treated Like Women by Organizations

— Mauricio Manhaes, Ph.D. reflected on a recent study that "found that designers face discrimination in organizations due to the association of design with feminine traits". And Katrina Alcorn followed up with this great thought piece on the topic.

While business are focusing more and more on diversity and inclusion, the effort tend to focus on personal attributes of the individual, not the challenges individuals face based on their professional role.

The result is design is not taken as serious as other competences and sometimes is even being "parented" by other business leaders.

The downside is simply risk to business success as diversity of any kind bring broader perspective resulting in better business value.

3: The number of people in a competence is seen as equal to the value that competence brings

Design is part of a handful of competences that are always outnumbered. And I am not necessarily advocating for a higher design ratio, although some businesses could really benefit from that.

But it becomes a challenge when companies look at value inside-out as it results in the leadership believing value to the business equals the size of the cost centres.

The result is businesses giving more importance to the voice of larger competences and also organise around them with other smaller competences like design having to fit in.

The downside is the outside-in view from the customers is that all competences no matter size contributes equally to how they, the customers, experience the product or service. And if competences are not treated with equal importance, that experience feels unbalanced and even problematic.

Final reflections

First of all, we as the digital industry as a whole tend to think we are much more mature than we are. We are still an incredibly young industry still finding our feet, which means it is in our power to change things easily. We should also look to other industries where design is just a natural part of running a customer-focused business.

Second, I think we have fallen into a habit of hiding behind numbers and data. We need to lean more into trusting our professional hunches. Numbers are great, but following them is incremental and a follower mentality as a goal post is needed to aim for. But those goal posts are set by the leader companies that trust their professional instincts and take leaps of faith showing real leadership.

Thirdly, the design community is putting way too much pressure on itself to fit in better to get that seat at the table. But if we start acting like the other business leaders, then there is no point to us being there in the first place. Yes, it is valuable for design leaders to have business accumen, but likewise business leaders need to be better at understanding the value of design.