Climbing the Corporate Design Ladder

Introducing strategic design in the enterprise organisation can be done by paying attention to the design ladder

At the outset of our design practice in my current company, we had no executive sponsor for design, nor did the company have a grand vision for introducing design thinking. As many other companies. However I as a seasoned design leader had just come from a period of consulting, realising just how much value an organisation can gain by practicing design. The problem is that design is not a natural fit to most engineering led organisations. First: The sequence, pace and vocabulary is quite different than a typical engineering led company. Design thinking runs in iterative, shorter cycles, often with unpredicted (yet valuable!) Results and frequent pivots. This is opposite from many risk averse organisations. When risk and ambiguity is something you want to eliminate at all costs, jumping into the unknown without a clear image of the end result can be angst inducing or even prohibiting strategic design thinking. However these activities can become catalysts for big change if tried with the right people and sufficient sponsorship.?

So when I onboarded, we started with little momentum and even less sponsorship for strategic design thinking. What we had was good traction for building a medium sized UX function to help build mostly internal digital tools for the enterprise - a function often requested these years as enterprises digitalise their business and operations across the World.

We saw that our work had evolved from one level to the next: We realised that if we build up a foundation in product design and reach a certain level of maturity, proof of value and traction, then we could prepare to lift design to the next engagement level and so on. By introduction of Design Thinking during the creation of the UX function for our digital transformation, the design methodology started taking hold in these areas, building trust and reputation for bringing real value, and then we were ready for advancing to the next level, design for business process development and strategy execution.

The first jump from Product Design to Process and business strategy execution is difficult, because the sponsors are different, the activities are different, the methods needs to be used differently. We found that we needed to build a new Strategic Design Team to reach this level.?

While we prepared the jump to level 2 we also created a Design Center of Excellence to mature the level 1 space and all later spaces in the climb. Here we built a design system, crafted design principles and founded a community of UX designers. We built the User Research function. This is another key finding when climbing the design ladder. Each step requires a full design team and professional operations to prevail, it is not a transitional level. If we just skipped and forgot about the previous steps, the foundation would erode and threaten the longevity of the implementation project.

Spearhead projects. When climbing the ladder, we found that we needed to focus our attention to perform as designers on the next level. We needed a break through project that could show for the organisation and ourselves that we were able to deliver value in this new level. By making it a Spearhead project, we were able to assemble more people, spend more time searching for the ideal problem to solve and were more articulated when crafting the approach and team.

The Design Ladder was first introduced by Danish Design Center in early 2000’s as a means to understand the reach of Industrial Design, but I feel it offers a great tool as to understand how to build design as a strategic discipline in modern organisations and enterprises.

Next steps: Climbing even higher. I don’t think there is a limit to the potential reach of design in any organisation. Design is as natural to work as the technical mindset and the business mindset. Building the strength from the bottom does not exclude the need for sponsorship, we definitely need that! However we have found that with this approach of bottom up, we are able to build presence and slowly build sponsorship and are not having to rely on a sudden epiphany from our executive leadership before we can get to work.

Conclusion: Lessons learned from climbing the ladder.

1. Focus on design at the level your organisation has reached, don’t try launching at a higher step than one above where you have an established, trusted practice already.
2. Once a level has been reached, keep maturing this specific level (horisontal growth)
3. When the design maturity at a certain step has reached a certain level in terms of trust, traction and presence, you can plant the seeds for design participating at the next level
4. When jumping to a new step, you need a spearhead project, carefully planned and selected. This is the hardest part,
5. Each level is very different: Stakeholder landscape, activity type, KPI’s. The means to succeed on each level are quite different although the basic Double Diamond framework is the same

What do you think about these hypothesis and the proposed framework and bottom up approach? Can you recognise similar effects in your own change journey in your organisation??