Design ... Everything

Up until a decade or so ago, the powerful positions of leadership in most companies were anything but design. If they worked inside a company at all, they were the ‘decorators’ of the product at the end.

Back in 2005 I had the privilege of running Braun. Braun wasn’t like that.

The legendary Dieter Rams - along with Fritz Eichler and the leaders who followed them including Bernie Wild, Udo Milutzki, and Peter Schneider - shook the consumer product world with ‘less but better’ design. And design became a partner to engineering and product management inside the company. But design was such a source of strength in the company that other functions tried to adopt it as well.

I’ll never forget when Bernie Wild, my head of engineering, ‘educated me’ on what design was when I first arrived. And I actually had plaques made of famous design objects from a Mies Van De Rohe chair to other famous objects. At the end of that year I gave them to my leadership team as a surprise and emphasis on our celebration and bid to recapture our role in the design world. The leadership team knew each iconic design by name, when it came out, and who did it!

At one point the whole company recruited using Dieter Rams ten principles of design as their filter or metric; it was an attempt to make design more than about the product. Leaders tried to interpret what design should or could do in new areas, like recruiting. 

Frankly, I’m not sure that was the right tactic for hiring (though it has merit even today). But Braun leaders attempted to extend design beyond the product experience. Like Braun, even in the most design-centric companies the usage of design is grossly incomplete. The opportunity to use design everywhere was intriguing to me then … and it’s much more exciting now.

A friend recently emailed me a speech I gave at the annual BraunPrize - an international competition created to promote young designers’ ideas. Re-reading my words from 2007, I remembered how long I’ve felt that design could reinvent everything, but that most of us leading businesses didn’t realize it:

“...people tend to lead from their strengths [Strategy, Marketing, Product Management, or others]. Most business leaders do not arrive in business with a strength in design and don’t cultivate an appreciation for it...

...For most companies, the recognition that design is at least an equal, functionally, has not yet arrived [no matter what they say; actions speak louder than words]. Those companies [who treat design as second class] are in trouble and will change [or die]. A growing number of companies have brought Design out of the cellar and on an equal footing with manufacturing, R&D, marketing, and others. They are learning. They are starting to win.”

And the proof that stage two design companies work since then is unequivocal. These “design companies” (those that put it on at least an equal footing with the other functions) had a 265% return on their stock compared to a S&P return of 112%.

When I came to Logitech in 2012 we immediately went to work to make ourselves into that next stage of design company; I found a great design leader in Alastair Curtis; we built a design team inhouse that is now mature and global. 

This worked, just like it did for those “design companies” from the prior data. We win more design awards than anyone our size (who cares but us, but it’s nice); our market shares have grown everywhere; our profit has more than quadrupled; our stock price has increased five hundred percent; and we have an array of opportunities ahead of us. All of this, in just six years.

But finally here’s the point of this article: we are nowhere near being a complete design company … yet. The leap we made to next stage in design is big: the other design companies who have done this and our own this past six years demonstrates that.

But I believe the next step in design could be as big (dare I say bigger?) and I don’t think anyone has done it yet: creating a continuous design / redesign company. Let's call this a ‘third-generation’ design company.

To recap, the first generation companies essentially viewed design team as the second or third-tier function that decorated at the end of the process; the second, or next-generation design companies have put design on at least an equal footing - and increasingly above Marketing, Product Management, Sales, etc. - and created well-designed products (where we are today). The ‘third generation’ will design and redesign everything in the company continually, never leaving anything alone and always with the user at the center. Everything.

The strategy. The accounting monthly and quarterly close. The meeting rooms. The meetings themselves. Everything.

Let me first also say the leaders including Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, David Kelley, Stanford professor, Roger Martin, former dean of the Rotman School of Management, Patrick Whitney, former dean of the Illinois Institute of Design, and others have espoused this idea for many years in one way or another. Apple is also undeniably the biggest company in the world and the closest to delivering this idea thanks to Jonathan Ive, Steve Jobs, Tim Cook and the leaders there who almost unconsciously operate this way.

Second, let me admit that I HAVE seen fully operating third-generation “design” companies: great small companies (twelve people or fewer) working as ‘complete’ design companies … at the start. 

These small startups are continuously thinking and rethinking what they do and how they do it using design thinking principles, usually without calling it design or at least without making a big deal out of it. They put the external and internal user of each product, experience, and process in the center and continually rethink and redesign around the user, the constraints, what’s possible. This idea is really pretty intuitive.

But as they grow and scale they lose that central idea. Designing everything gets clouded with layers of management, too many and too long meetings, a Taylor-esque segregation of duties harkening back to assembly line manufacturing in early car factories, and a general lack of ownership for the overall experience.

These problems and more settle in slowly like the thick fog they are, with each additional new position and, especially, new level. At their worst, the initially good small companies begin to lose the heart of what made them fast and fun and objective and replace that heart with soulless and superficial big company titles, added layers, and bureaucratic process. The hungry young child with energy and drive becomes a soulless robot.

Well, I’m excited to say that Logitech has this big company disease, too (all companies with many employees do at some level). Oh we’ve improved our design of products and experience and I would even say we are pretty good (we can always improve!). And we are a great place to work and surely better than the vast majority!

But we have SO far to go to find our way to “design everything” … to being a design company. To feeling and operating like a great young startup. Flexible, user centered, continually redesigning process, products, and everything else.

Why am I excited that we have this disease? We are doing okay as it is today. Imagine the upside to curing the disease, to becoming a full-blown design company. The speed, efficiency, novelty, ownership, fun, and impact!!!

I don’t know of any large company without an advanced version of big company disease. I think it’s really hard to avoid. 

In one of the business world’s single biggest ironies, small companies look to ‘big companies’ as their guides for best practices; and big companies are unwittingly usually looking back at the startup unit as the model for their future. Even more ironic is that this article is an example of that.

I refuse to believe that a company cannot be both large in revenue and small in behavior. What an adventure to try to create a third-generation design company!!! I’ve dreamed of this since my Braun days in 2007 and before and brought it with me to Logitech.

Logitech doesn’t have to become a third-generation design company to be successful (at least not yet).

But it has to become a third-generation design company to fulfill what we are capable of.

From my 2007 speech:

We are at the very beginning of a revolution. Not a revolution in design, but a revolution for design, for designers, and for business leaders.

There will be a growing number of very special companies. The most special places to work will be those that are design-led, design-run and design-marketed. To start. But that will be the beginning. The future of design is not what it used to be. Design will get more and more involved in the business processes … it will have to. Design will find its way into every discipline. Design thinking will touch everything in those companies.

To do this we have to know that great small teams are the best at this. And we have to master the ability to create a collection of great small teams rather than one large company. So many people are working on this idea (Google, Amazon, and countless others).

I think it can be done but we have a lot of learning to do … Designing, redesigning, and finding our way to the third-generation of design companies. And rediscovering what good small companies do naturally.

To hear more of my thoughts on this topic, you can watch a live stream of my Design Doing presentation at #TheNextWeb conference in Amsterdam at 10:25 am CET tomorrow, May 24. You can tune in here.