Lessons for Design Leadership

Key Takeaways from the SDD Leadership Summit

In a world characterised by constant, unpredictable change and a cascade of crises, the landscape of leadership is becoming increasingly turbulent. Our political and business leaders seem ill-equipped to navigate the turbulent waters or get lost in an inter-tangled system of processes, laws, information structures, attitudes and mental models of the past. This prompted me to reflect on our practice and its leaders: How is design leadership faring in this VUCA world?

Heya, it's Anna van der Togt ????, Livework's Sustainability Lead. As I was reading and thinking about what type of action and skills we need to work towards sustainability, I pondered on the role design and it’s leaders should play in our transition to a regenerative future. I would love to share some of my thoughts with you in this piece, which also includes my key learnings from attending the SDD Leadership Summit a couple of weeks ago. Whether you concur with my reflections or vehemently disagree, please share your thoughts so we can continue the exploration of the qualities of a "good design leader".?

Taking stock: the design leaders so far.

Traditionally, the design industry favoured decisive, assertive leaders focused on tangible outcomes. The examples put forward in my product design education, for example, are people like Philippe Starck, Jonathan Ive & Steve Jobs and Raymond Loewy. Not only are these all white male designers, but some are also known to be very headstrong and authoritarian. Moreover, I have seen little to no indication that they questioned the unbridled consumerism their products elicited in the face of environmental decline.?

In recent years, the design community has been confronted with countless of its shortcomings. A few examples that come to mind:

• Large inclusivity gaps — like described in Caroline Cried Perez's insightful book "Invisible Women";
• Practices ridden with power imbalances — like outlined by Victor Udoewa in his paper "An introduction to radical participatory design: decolonising participatory design processes";
• A direct contribution to increased/over-consumption — Not only because we have had a role in industrialising products and services through designing for scale, but also because our attempts to make it pleasant, more seamless, personalised, and effortless for the individuals with the means to buy our goods, led to consumption beyond our planet's means.?

It seems that the traits we have celebrated in our design leaders may have served us well in the past — but confronted with today's interwoven challenges, they fall short. Driving forward relentlessly without including perspectives different than your own or without taking stock of the broader context and consequences has proven inadequate in designing truly desirable solutions — desirable not only for the direct users and the business but also for society and the planet.?

So, the question arises: What should design leadership in the future look like?

I’ll share my thoughts.

From Assertive to Morally Reflective Leadership

I think good design leaders are motivated by moral ambition, aligning their actions with their purpose. That is easier said than done, especially as moral ambition, more often than not, has to do with addressing the grand challenges of our time.?

Today's grand challenges have evolved from ‘complicated’ to ‘complex’. We started calling them ‘wicked’ problems as they live in systems with interrelated factors that are continuously in flux and give rise to unpredictable changes. During the SDD Leadership Summit Kristel Van Ael , Peter Jones , and Shauna Carey pointed out that solutions are elusive when tackling systemic challenges like these. Instead, it is about co-creating many incremental changes that jointly steer towards desired outcomes.?

Attempting system change like that requires leaders who are curious and sensitive to the larger context. They are actively trying to understand the forces at play — mapping out the system, understanding how it was shaped, and being in tune with what is new and what might be next. In their summit presentation Phil Balagtas , Tino Klaehne and S?ren Lethin showed how these design leaders explore the possible, probable and preferable futures and prepare for them using strategic foresight.?

Change isn't linear; it often accumulates after reaching certain "tipping points." Leaders must be sensitive to the world around them, identifying leverage points within complex systems. Self- and context awareness is crucial, allowing them to evolve their understanding of the right course of action continuously.

From Decisive to Amplifying Leadership

This ‘fingerspitzengefühl’* for the bigger context or system should translate to how design leaders interact with their own people. The design leaders we need explicitly encourage openness and invite a plurality of perspectives into their work and teams. During the summit, Annahita Varahrami, LCSW talked about the ‘psychological safety’ that that requires. Leaders should foster a culture with a shared belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, perspectives or questions.

Mariana Amatullo, PhD, FRSA took that up a notch and introduced the summit participants to ‘Resonant leadership.’ Resonant leaders know that their actions can impact others and use emotional intelligence to get "in tune" with the people they work with.?

When in tune, these leaders know how to amplify what goes well. They focus attention on the ways in which the design team/organisation is at its best and try to elevate that. This proves to be a much more powerful leadership style than pointing out the deficits/things that go wrong.?

* "fingerspitzengefühl" is a German term, literally meaning "finger tips feeling". It describes people's situational awareness and the ability to respond appropriately and tactfully.

From Individual Leadership to Collaborative or Team Leadership

Addressing grand challenges like climate change doesn't necessarily need more individual leaders. Instead, it requires more individuals to join existing initiatives — to join "the movement".?

System change will never be ignited by one company, let alone one person. Simply because no one stakeholder is in control of the myriad of tools, policies, processes, norms, values or worldviews that need to change to bring about true system change. Therefore, system-oriented design is all about facilitating expanding inclusivity: strategically engaging more and more actors in the social systems and networks, collaborating and co-creating the transformation process.?

Translating that to our exploration of design leadership for the future begs the question of whether we should still be talking about leadership skills in individuals or shift our focus to teams or even networks of people.?

This is not a new concept. It was brought to my attention by the brilliant Clara Llamas , who focuses her PhD on connecting service design with something called Complexity Leadership Theory (CLT). In CLT the focus is not on the one leader, but on the many in the organisation or even the broader ecosystem. It looks at the social interactions within a network and how collective action can manifest to influence the dynamics enabling change.?

In a VUCA world, shared design leadership seems like a smarter choice. Diverse perspectives in leadership not only increase the adaptability to changing situations but also enhance the ability to navigate complexity effectively.

In conclusion

We need a new breed of design leaders. Leaders who are:

1. Morally ambitious, and who continuously reflect on whether their actions and behaviour align with their purpose.
2. "In-tune" with their immediate and broader context, amplifying what goes right rather than fixing what goes wrong.
3. Great team members, more than individual leaders, focused on collaboration and co-creation of system change.

I am curious to know if these design leaders are already out there: do you know one? What else might we learn from them??

Curious to know your thoughts, reflections, or critiques on these design leadership traits for the future. Please drop them in the comments below ????

I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude to Inge Keizer , Maytee Rodríguez , and the remarkable team at SERVICE DESIGN COLLEGE for orchestrating an exceptionally well-curated Leadership Summit ????!

?? What is next for us at Livework?

Here are some of the things you might want to join or be part of:

???? ?? We will present our work on four different occasions during the Dutch Design Week 2023 !

• On the 23rd of October, we will celebrate the launch of the PONT programme ! team to PONT — ‘The Public Design Practice’ is a three-year programme that will strengthen the impact of design approaches on societal challenges funded by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. Our Caroline Beck is part of the programmteam and there to tell you all about the design practices in NL.
• On that same day, Fred Montijn will give the opening talk of the DRIVE festival ! He will share his experiences as a designer on the Livework team that was tasked with bringing a human-centred and design-oriented approach to the 'recovery program' for victims of the Dutch 'Toeslagen Affaire'.
• On Thursday, October 26th, Noortje Küppers will be part of an expert panel discussion. Noortje will share her unique experiences of working within prison environments and will delve into our efforts to enhance work satisfaction for prison employees and increase the transformative potential within prisons.
• And our Lead sustainability Anna van der Togt will share our thinking on reinventing design and innovation for a future that is more fluid, emergent and erratic than ever at the SDD Satellite event! Theme: "Thriving through Change - Embracing Unknown Futures in Service Design"

???? For the folks in London who are as obsessed with making healthcare more human-centric as we are, please join us on the 2nd of November at the NHS Virtual Wards Summit . The brilliant Lindy Young , Ben Reason & álvaro Curto will run workshops on the digital transformation in Healthcare.

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About Livework

Good services don’t happen by accident. They need to be designed. That’s what we do.

Livework ?was the first service design consultancy. Over the last 21 years, we have used design to solve business challenges on more than?1,500 ?projects and programs.

We’ve been around the block when it comes to navigating and delivering change. In addition to improving and innovating in customer experience, we help organisations transition to becoming the customer-centric and sustainable organisations they aspire to be. Find out more on?www.liveworkstudio.com ?or drop us a line at [email protected] .