Disruptive Cycles, Adaptive Strategies, and Principles of Leadership: Tantalizing Connections

Design Management Review, Fall 2006 by Thurston-Chartraw, Maureen

Design managers are uniquely positioned to advance the strategic and tactical agendas of today's businesses. Maureen Thurston-Chartraw outlines the qualities of this leadership role and highlights the work of two designers at Walt Disney who exemplify the ability to respond innovatively to their company's mission and content, the complexities of contemporary culture and technology, and consumer desires.

For the first half of the twentieth century, a winning combination of production prowess and persuasive marketing turned the US into an economic powerhouse. Boundaries between industries were relatively clear, consumer expectations simple, and market channels fairly predictable. Over the past half century, new global markets, technological advances, and a growing middle class stimulated the '60s and '70s; recession and yuppies defined the '80s; and by the end of the 1990s, we had witnessed the stock market's breathtaking rise and collapse.

Everybody has accepted by now that change is unavoidable. But that still implies that change is like death and taxes-it should be postponed as long as possible and no change would be vastly preferable. But in a period of upheaval, such as the one we are living in, change is the norm.

-Peter F. Drucker1

Now, midway through the first decade of the twenty-first century, disruptive cycles in political systems, global commerce, technologies, pandemic poverty, business models, and evolving customer cultures continue. These deeply complex issues require adaptive strategies, innovative solutions, and genuine leadership. Today, more than ever before, design is uniquely poised to be the creative conduit for transformational change. Professing that designers are "the new gurus of the twenty-first century," Bruce Nussbaum, editor of BusinessWeek, has openly challenged the design community to step forward and take the lead. But are designers truly prepared? Do designers have what it takes to lead?

Time marches on

Six years after Time Magazine's March 20, 2000, cover story on "The Rebirth of Design" and similar articles that followed, design has been dissected and analyzed, criticized and idealized. For better or worse, design has become ubiquitous. Exuberant design blogs chronicle individual ideas and challenge the status quo; Wall Street Journal ads feature artists and architects testifying to the design merits of their Infinity coupe or SUV; HGTV's Designstar is just one of an endless stream of design shows that proliferate on the cable channel; industrial designer Karim Rashid's book Design Your Self: Rethinking the Way You Live, Love, Work, and Play positions itself alongside weighty tomes on design's contribution to business strategy and top-line growth; and then there's Fast Company's July 2006 cover story, "Design's Next Diva", declaring "designers are the new rock stars." In all its glorious diversity, design has become an oh-so-fashionable media darling.

Not that I object to this unprecedented fervor over all-things-design, but I'm the product of a traditional late '70s industrial design education, and all this media attention and pop-culture celebrity is a bit surreal. We were taught materials, processes, and rendering-skills we would need to get a job after graduation. There was no mention of nor concern for creating an experience; a brand was simply more expensive than the generic; innovation was something technicians had to worry about; and being a design star wasn't even on the radar. We were taught to take direction from our client or from our counterparts in engineering or marketing. Design was a silent service function and we were its servants. There was precious little expectation of our becoming leaders.

Design leaders: Born or made?

A recent Google search on leadership produced 947,000,000 hits. Apparently, quite a few folks are interested in what it takes to be a leader. Author Bernard Bass2 theorizes that there are three basic ways to explain how people become leaders.

1. Some personality traits may lead people naturally into leadership roles. This is the Trait Theory.

2. A crisis or important event may cause an ordinary person to rise to the occasion, bringing out extraordinary leadership qualities. This is the Great Events Theory.

3. People can choose to become leaders, and they can learn leadership skills. This is the Transformational Leadership Theory.

I recognize and appreciate the first two definitions but champion the third-especially when it comes to my product design students at Art Center College of Design, in Pasadena, California. The goal in my design leadership classes is to help students discover what I was never taught in school-the ability to articulate design's aggregate value in terms that are meaningful to creative and business audiences alike. The world is far more complicated now than in my college days. And expectations of what the design process can deliver has grown exponentially-innovation, strategic leverage, customer experience, market share, profitability-graduates have to adapt their vocabulary to address design's new linguistic context. Given that the first ingredient of leadership (at least according to Warren Bennis3) is being able to express your own guiding vision, my goal is to help my students find their voice.