Getting that Seat: Transitioning from Design Execution to Strategic Design Leadership

Are you a design leader aiming to elevate your team from executing tasks to shaping strategies? Transitioning from tactical execution to strategic design leadership can be daunting, but it’s a crucial step in today’s world of holistic experience design.

When products stood alone, tactical design teams were enough. Now, design requires teams that partner strategically across the business, creating seamless customer relationships across silos.

Leaders evolving teams to this partnership mindset face several challenges:

• Perception: Changing how design is viewed within the organization.
• Placement: Securing the right place to have the needed impact.
• Resistance: Overcoming team and business reluctance.
• Mindset: Developing strategic and collaboration skills.

I’ve seen five Year One DIY actions that set a strong trajectory to overcome these challenges.

1. Turn Your Research Eye on the Business

Design teams have long offered unique value by transforming customer empathy into meaningful experiences. But to be strategic partners, teams also need empathy for the business, understanding the needs and work of the others who impact the experience.

• Year One DIY: Conduct a research program to learn how your business partners perceive design, its value, and your team today. Use the insights to set your strategy and evolve your relationships over time.

IRL: A financial services company had reorganized to unify design teams, but the business units still competed for design attention. We organized customer journey collaboration events between competing areas. Behind the scenes, the profiles we built of each group helped redefine the team’s value proposition.

2. Redefine Your Value

When design teams operate as internal vendors, they often compartmentalize their value into activities they perform, reinforcing a tactical view of design. To become more strategic, shift the focus from what you do to the value you bring, aligned with your business partners' needs and motivations.

• Year One DIY: Create a value proposition statement that articulates how design solves business and customer needs. Ensure the services you offer reinforce this value.

IRL: A pharmaceutical device company was losing sales to competitors with more seamless user experiences. But internal design services were structured for billable activities like 'Eye-tracking Studies.' We refocused the offerings to highlight the value they bring, like 'Buyer and User Insights' and ‘Integrated Experiences’.

3. Be Open to Challenging Where You Sit

One of the most frequent challenges is organizational structure. Shifting structures takes time, whether it's the division your team sits within or who owns the design system, but it's often critical for long-term change.

• Year One DIY: Assess whether your team is positioned to have the desired impact. If it isn’t, develop a strategy for making the needed moves, and work with your leadership to make it happen.

IRL: A design team in a communications company was charged with crafting the future customer experience but struggled to get their visions into production via the execution teams which sat in IT. With a reorganization on the horizon, we set a strategy for unifying visionary and execution teams under a new product organization.

4. Love Your Team Ambitions

Shifting from a tactical mindset to the complexity, ambiguity, and new relationships of a more strategic role can stress the team, and build resistance to change.

• Year One DIY: Listen to your team and frame changes in terms of the challenges they face. Encourage team members to take on new roles and responsibilities that help them grow into the kinds of designers they admire.

IRL: A health services company design lead faced a team tired by multiple reorganizations. We refocused development on where the design profession is moving globally, and opened opportunities for them to do public thought leadership. This fed the growth ambitions of several rising leads, and built new energy.

5. Tactical Delivery Still Matters

When building new capabilities and roles, attention naturally shifts to achieving the new ambitions. However, the primary value design brings is in making things real.

• Year One DIY: Identify how design execution will happen. Often leads build relationships with agencies, freelancers, or other divisions. In order to ensure execution remains linked to strategic vision, develop creative direction skills within your team, and resource the time needed for close oversight.

IRL: An insurance company foresaw rapid growth in direct-to-consumer sales, and leadership expected design to lead the way. With high expectations but limited runway, the design lead retained an agency to establish the first launch, while hiring two design directors with the mandate to take over and build a flexible external execution team.

Finally, It Starts with You

Most design leaders find little time to step back and evaluate where they are, where the business is, and where things could—or should—go.?

Start by asking yourself first 'does design really need to show up in a new way?' And 'who do I need to ‘be’ to lead in that world?' Then dig into the DIY above.

Transitioning from tactical design execution to strategic design leadership is challenging but achievable. By shaping a strategy and leaning on your network of peers and others who’ve been through the transition, you can elevate your team's impact and become a more strategic partner within your organization.