Promoting design leadership through skills development programs

Design Management Journal, Summer 2002 by Topalian, Alan

Recognizing that design management is still in its formative stages, Alan Topalian has

prepared a "brief" specifying a conceptual approach

to lifting the profile and effectiveness of the discipline within the corporation.

Going beyond current strategies, he discusses the audiences, content, methodologies, and desired outcomes of an education effort he believes should be broad-based, pragmatic, and hands-on.

Twenty years ago, it was just about impossible to find practitioners in business or design-in the United Kingdom, at least-who believed that managing design required special skills. Experienced designers tend to think they are efficient design administrators. Similarly, business executives often think that competence in, say, marketing, production, or project management transfers easily into an equivalent competence in managing design.

Professional practice has revealed a rather different reality, so executives and designers are coming to realize that special design management skills do exist. Some even go so far as to admit that such skills are critical to the continued success of their organizations. However, it is still rare to find organizations around the world that include design as more than a token input in staff training and management development programs. Moreover, very few academics have grasped the fact that design management represents considerably more than an optional sideline or a straightforward extension of management, engineering, or design practice.

If design management is to attract sufficient attention and gain credibility within business, there is a need to establish what Frank Cokayne (marketing director of Imperial Hotels at the time) aptly called "a new discipline with no concessions." Moreover, clear guidance ought to be available on what managing design professionally entails. The lack of a consensus on the scope and substance of this emerging discipline is an indictment of practitioners and academics alike.

True, little of the body of knowledge and experience necessary to underpin such a discipline has been documented. There are huge gaps in reference material, particularly at the corporate level. The lack of progress since the 1980s is particularly depressing, since raw material is available in abundance within business enterprises and independent design practices. However, few practitioners or researchers have seriously taken up the challenge to document and publish that experience for the benefit of wider audiences. Fewer still have the insight and expertise to gain trust and draw out that experience from those "at the sharp end." The supervision of such activity leaves much to be desired. Perhaps more disturbing is the fact that the academic world tends to ignore the BS7000 series of British Standards on design and innovation management issued since 1989, which were submitted to scrutiny around the world before publication.

In the 1980s, separating out design management for rigorous analysis was scorned by those who cried for integration. However, effective integration cannot be conjured out of thin air. It requires vision, knowledge, courage, and tenacity to deal with a myriad of practical details in circumstances that are often hostile and in which little solid, sustained support is forthcoming. Fortunately, more and more business executives are coming to realize-often through hard experience-that successful integration is not possible in the long term if they don't first separate design management out to determine exactly what they are required to integrate.

Courses offered under the design management banner

Design management courses have tended to fall into four basic types (see figure 1).

Management for designers

Those who propose this kind of course point out that designers commonly lack knowledge of industry and commerce. Consequently, they are insensitive to business and marketing considerations, and are reluctant to accede to compromises requested to address these. Moreover, designers are perceived to be broadly unsympathetic to the profit motive and generally lack the drive and discipline required to create wealth.

Designers are often criticized, too, for being inefficient administrators of design projects and their own practices. It is argued, therefore, that primary investment in design management education should be directed at designers to increase their knowledge of, and sensitivity toward, business matters. There are two types of courses in this area:

* Business familiarization, which covers descriptive material on a range of industries, in addition to general management techniques

* Business management, aimed at helping designers run their practices more efficiently

The first tends to be heavily oriented toward the study of marketing and innovation, while the second concentrates on office organization, accounting, business planning, project management, communication, and the legal aspects of design practice.

Taken together, the scope of these courses would extend broadly to topics covered in general business management programs, as well as to those that have particular relevance to running small and medium-size businesses. These would appear to be the predominant models for design management courses currently on offer.