Are you a Design Leader or a Business Leader? YAP talks with Marzia Aricò

In this episode we talk to Marzia Aricò  about design leadership and Marzia shares great stories that illustrate the key to creating traction and long-term impact as a design leader.

We particularly liked talking about Marzia's experience of taking design into London Business School and the challenges that she faced repositioning design as a way to generate commercial value, rather than a form of corporate entertainment or light relief. 

Marzia shares practical tips for those of you looking to make the jump from design expert into formal leadership roles,  and we talk about the attitudes, behaviours and competencies that you need to adopt, maintain and discard if you're going to transition successfully. 

About Marzia

Marzia Aricò is a strategic designer, leadership coach, and consultant helping large organisations navigate transformation through design. With over 17 years of experience, she works with executives and design leaders to build the mindsets, structures, and capabilities needed to make design a true driver of strategic decision-making.

Her work blends systems thinking, organisational design, and leadership development — turning complexity into clarity and intent into action. Marzia is the founder of Design Mavericks, a global community of design leaders shaping the next chapter of the discipline, and the author of Design Leadership Chronicles (BIS Publishers).

She regularly collaborates with senior teams across sectors and speaks internationally about the evolving role of design in governing intelligent, adaptive organisations.

Service Design YAP is developed and produced by the Service Design Network UK Chapter.
Its aim is to engage and connect the wider Service Design community.

• Episode Host: Stephen Wood
• Production Assistance: Jean Watanya

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another edition of Service Design. Yap. I'm your host, Stephen Wood. As we enter the months of dark mornings, let us transport you to a Sunda Palazzo where we chat all things service design with Matia Ika. Given Marcia's focus on leadership and design, I wanted to quiz her about what it takes to transition into a leadership role.

What skills and behaviors should you take with you? What should you leave behind, and what do you need to learn on you? We learn about Marsy's experience with designers, garnish, and the difference between attitudes, design that you see at B School and D School. And we also talk a little bit about the secrets of a perfect Negro.

Our conversation was so enjoyable. I almost forgave Maia for living La Dolce Vita in her Palazzo. Whilst the Yap team keep warm by huddling around [00:01:00] our overheating. MacBooks, enjoy.

And welcome to another edition of Service Design app. I'm joined today by the service design guru, Matia. Ariko. How are you doing Matia? I'm doing great. And do you wanna tell the listeners where you are based? Just to start them off with a, a feeling of real en. I'm based in Palermo, Sicily since a couple of months.

Okay. And uh, although this is probably not great for an audio production, do you just want to describe the, uh, palazzo where you are recording this, please? Yes, it is. It is a big palazzo with a big room. Therefore you might hear some echo. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. You can just, all of that fantastic molding and beautiful gilding on the background.

You'll probably, it will come through on the recording. That's great. Mm. So although you, you probably need no [00:02:00] introduction to most people in the service design community in, in the UK or Europe. Do you want to start by introducing yourself and just telling us a little bit about your career path? What got you to where you are today?

Okay. So my father is an architect. Actually this Palazzo is studio. And so I grew up surrounded by creatives in the architecture space. But when it was about choosing a path for myself, I decided, uh, that I loved, that I wanted to go with design because it was just closer to people hands. This cake was just smaller.

It was what I appreciated the most because you could really think about interactions between humans and things. And so I actually started as an industry designer. I was designing chairs and tables, and I did a couple of cylinder mo and Milan, the proper stuff. And then I realized that I found myself and wanted to salon the moia pending months, thinking about the perfect curve of a chair that probably hundred people will be able to afford and [00:03:00] realize that probably my skills were better used.

Somewhere else. So I moved to London and I went to study innovation management. And where did you study? Tan Martin. And was that in granary then, or was that in home in Holburn. And the building is still empty after so many years. I know. It's crazy, isn't it? It was beautiful building. Absolutely. And you've mentioned chair design, and you can't mention chair design on a design podcast without naming your favorite chair.

No, I'm not gonna do that. Are you gonna I am not. I am not going to do that. Okay. There we go. We shall select one for you and edit it. One of, one of the IKEA ones or, or like a Philip Star. Something. That's really enough. Yeah. There we go. So where did you go after, uh, after you left St. Martin's? I started working, so I started working straight away and I did, um.

An exchange at, uh, London Mission School. They picked, I don't know, like, uh, 10 students from the Academy of Arts [00:04:00] to join their, actually to entertain the MBAs. I think that was pretty much where I was. You were the garbage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's like, like 10 designers saying, oh, do you wanna join our MBA code for about six months to.

Design new creative ventures. And I was like, oh yeah, why not? So I went there and I hated every single minute of it. Uh mm-hmm. Because, because, because I, I all of a sudden realize how people outside of design actually work. And what I mean by collaboration, which is basically splitting tasks. Doing the thing on your own and then trying to connect all of the pieces together, and obviously these pieces do not work.

So that was the first time that I actually understood the difference between collaboration and co-creation. Yeah. Yeah. And if you think about the model where that was taken, it comes from abattoirs, right? Where you, a corpse goes in one end and everyone has a bit to chop off. Uh, you never tend to [00:05:00] jigsaw it up at the end, but, but still, well, it's really well for disassembling a body.

Yeah. Not really for creating something complex where things have to move in parallel. And was this part of an academic course at LBS? Uh, yeah. No, they were the regular MBA. Cohort and they, they were doing the six months kind of, you know, course on new credit ventures. This was one, one of the modules that they were doing as part of the MBA.

And did you end up paying LBS fees or CSM fees? No, not at all. No. No. All not at all. That was offer free for us. That's why it did it because you know. Crazy expensive l bs and I really wanted to see it from the inside. There we go. And a fantastic sound of Italy just echoing behind you. Just a and, and we didn't put that in, in post-production.

Maybe we'll get some Maria Lanza or some Maria Callas behind you, but, uh, at some point. But no, that was the real deal. Awesome. So you, you went to LBS, you kind of found people from outside of the tribe and saw that they were working differently. Where did you go from that point? I joined, uh, spinoff from London [00:06:00] Business School on the future of work.

And so what I started doing was applying DES design. I was the only designer and I was applying design into the definition of what the future could be for work for very large organizations. So I started working in consulting and research was a bit of a mix straight away for about 80 large organizations globally.

And I was working between London, New York, Singapore, and Mumbai. And I did that for about five years. And then I actually realized that what I was doing in my time was pretty much corporate entertainment, which was actually worse than the chair, because at least with the chair, you got the chair. With corporate entertainment, you basically have nothing.

You have entertained a couple of people from an innovation department for a couple of months, innovation theater. Yeah. Fantastic. And then, uh, nothing actually happens. So, so I decided to do a PhD in organizational studies, and the reason why I decided to do [00:07:00] that is because I wanted to understand scientifically, why is it so hard to bring design in an organizational context?

Why is it so hard? To implement some of the stuff that we are defining and creating here. And I did that in collaboration with Livework. So I was hired by Livework in Oslo, and I started a PhD at the same time in Copenhagen at Copenhagen Business School. Yeah. Fantastic. That was quite illuminating because for the first time I actually saw, I mean, I, I, I gained the tools and the instruments to actually look at organizations from a completely different perspective than the one I used up until that point.

And were you based at the, at the design center in Copenhagen or no? No, no. Business school. There was the Copenhagen Business School. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you didn't leave with a very expensive wooden monkey then. No. There you go. This is it. It's the every, everyone sees them at the airport on the way back from Copenhagen and goes, oh, yeah.

Well, I, I can, I can justify spending 90 euros on a wooden monkey because [00:08:00] it's beautifully designed and, uh, I've seen them in the many people's backgrounds, and I also have one of them too. I was suckered. Awesome. So you were working for Livework in Oslo. What happened from that point? How did your career take a another fork?

Well, I stayed then I. Finished my PhD, which was uh, you know, incredibly painful and, um, so many points. I actually told myself, why are you actually doing that to yourself? Because you have no interest in staying in academia. Everyone here is just after this next gap in the literature. I had crazy fights with everyone there actually telling them that they were completely dead, the entire institution as they thought it was completely dead and was going to disappear in a couple of years.

And the questioning, the very reason why. Institutions like that exist really. Like I was in, in, in this entrepreneurship courses at a PhD level. And this dude obviously was a dude teaching, uh, teaching entrepreneurship to us. And, [00:09:00] and then, you know, it was, I don't even remember what he was talking about.

And then at one point I said, I'm sorry, can you please explain in what way is this relevant to the people out there actually doing entrepreneurship? And he said, what do you mean I don't understand? I'm like, beyond the literature and the theory that you're describing, there are actually people out there in the world doing entrepreneurship.

In what way? What you saying connects to what they're trying to do. Mm-hmm. And that you just couldn't understand the question because it is not what they do. Like this is not paradigm there. So I was. No, they never have to worry about getting it from the whiteboard into the world. They just need to get it from a whiteboard into an academic peer reviewed journal.

And I refused to write any, any academic article. So I did a pornography, I did pornography. They did not like that. I did not like that. Uh, but, but I think that piece at the end was incredibly useful. And I think that piece of work really defined my career af afterwards. So I studiedly worked for about 10 years.

I became design [00:10:00] director. I moved to Rotterdam. Um, after a couple of years, I became managing director of the London office. And I used whatever I learned experience in that, uh, during my PhD to create a model to help very large organizations shift towards more customer centric models using design. So I started working with, I dunno, JP Morgan Chase in the States and London, but also like Zero in Australia, but also Addidas in Germany.

So very large organizations across sector to really trying and bring design. For transformation and that was incredibly, incredibly beautiful. I mean, I think we have achieved some great stuff and I met some incredible, and given the fact you were a bit of a rebel when you were doing your PhD, how long did it take you to complete your PhD?

No, four years. Four years. That's not bad. Which was, no, it's not bad. It was actually, it's part-time, isn't it? So no, it wasn't part-time, but it was, it was full-time and it was meant to be. Four years. So I actually did it in time and I was working [00:11:00] full time at the same time. So there you go. This is what women can do.

There you go. Yeah. Multitasking. I, I I will, I will give you that. I will definitely give you that. Awesome. So when, uh, when I saw you published a book, I, I was looking forward to it. As you know, you, you typically have a really strong personality and a, a strong style, and then when it. Turned out to be a graphic novel.

Yeah. I thought, yeah. There we go. Absolutely. Perfect. What a fantastic medium and really underrated, especially in the UK where, uh, graphic novels are seen as things just for children. Um, if you go into Europe, there are fantastic shops where you have really adult topics that are a, a addressed through graphic novels.

But why did you decide to go for that format? Because I wanted to go as far as possible from. Um, my PhD thesis, like my PhD, oh lord, this is therapy. PhD thesis was, uh, it's, it is PhD thesis, so it's [00:12:00] written in academic language that very few people can understand. Yeah. And, and, and you know, I knew that that piece of work was going to be relevant for so many people, but those people never actually managed to read more than the introduction.

Killing you. I mean, I tried to read that thing again a couple of months ago and I just couldn't, I just couldn't read it. Mm-hmm. So, or I understand alpha the things that I wrote. So, so I just wanted to use a medium that was as accessible as possible, uh, for as many people as possible. Uh, despite their ability to actually read the tick text.

And actually the other thing is that a lot of the people that I work with are, um, either, you know, are neurodivergent, so are either, uh, dyslexic or they have DHD or they are on the spectrum. And so reading tick text is really hard, where visuals are usually way, uh, easier to absorb. Yeah. And the combination of the two.

Yeah. Actually you are getting text dominant people and visually dominant people. And my [00:13:00] gut feeling is for all people where you've got those two things in parallel, it sinks in you, you actually retain it, uh, and, and you can remember it. Um, which is a great thing. I think there are nine case studies in the book.

Is there one that you are particularly fond of that you'd like to give us a, an overview of? Yeah, I mean there is this story of. Har, uh, she's actually British, um, but she used to live in the, in Australia. Now she's in Singapore. Uh, there's I think chapter eight and, um. Yeah, basically I think she's the best representation of someone that is, was able, is able to use design to really shift the way organizations think about the value they create for customers and someone that is not necessarily too.

Um, rigid on tools and methods and definitions and stuff, but it's, she's really able to use visualization, storytelling, artifacts, [00:14:00] tangible, making prototyping to actually connect to people and bring them to another space where they've never been. And so the, the, the story that I shared, they're not really case studies.

They're like stories, they're parts of their career fundamentally that describe some pivotal moments for them. Um, in this story, I share the time when she was working at IAG, which is one of the largest, uh, insurer in, in, in Australia. And, and this insurance that, that used to insure houses against the bush fires.

Now in Australia, bush fires these days happen every other minute, so the business model was not working anymore. So that's literally a burning platform. It's like, oh yeah. Oh no. Go on. We'll let you have that one. You get one podcast. God, yes, please, please. Just, yes. Yeah, that was beautiful. Um.

So they, she basically went to Oxford and did, um, course in scenario [00:15:00] planning, uh, with Professor Ramirez. And she learned how to use data to actually create scenarios that can actually hold and represent possible or probable, uh, futures. Uh, and she used design to make that tangible. Mm-hmm. So she went back, she created four probable scenarios for her organization.

And she, together with her team, made all of that tangible into, you know, artifacts, props, like things that you might find in buying the future stories, people, actors. It was not an immersive experience on how that scenario would play out for the people out there. Not necessarily strictly for the organization, but for the people out there.

Right. And the people that deserve, right. So that she, she thought about, you know, um, people that work in agriculture or, or, or also. It and she brought 70 of the top executives to this organization to experience them. And from that experience, they were actually able to elevate their conversation into how can we use the capabilities that we currently have in this [00:16:00] organization to respond that and, and not even respond, but just be Reddit for the future.

Right. And so they started a whole process of thinking about a competing new role for this business that was not there yet. Igniting organizations, uh, discussions that were not, you know, there yet. And so I thought that it was a beautiful, beautiful example on how a design leader can use design skills and mindset to ask the questions they need to be asked and to bring people to the point where they can bring whatever skills they have, whatever ideas they have in, into a space where you can actually co-create a better alternative future, which for me is at the end.

What design is, is the ability to generate and, and visualize alternative possible futures. Excellent. So she was using speculative futures and then provoca typing to help the organization ask better questions about its future. So in order to be able to do that, what sort of sponsorship did she get from the wider organization?

Because it's not really something, it, it, it takes time to do that properly. So you have to have the air [00:17:00] cover. It takes time to do the problem. But I think she do, I, I don't think at the beginning she had much air cover. I think the people trusted her to just join the session. Mm-hmm. Without really knowing what to expect because there was no better option at the point.

So, so, you know, it was an opportunity to really experiment with something new. And then through that she basically legitimized her work and she got a couple of people on board that really helped them move on with that approach. And then, you know, they used that. Scenarios as a scaffolding for the service architecture.

They started, you know, embedding these ways of thinking into the ways they were structuring products and services, and she had a couple of sponsors that helped them throughout. We had a lot of difficulties as well. So what I show in that chapter is also when Dan, she hit a wall and decided to quit that job and, and pick up on something else and move to Singapore.

Right. Which is also a reason why I'm really particularly fond of this chapter is because it's also showing when. You know that this stuff, sometimes they don't go according to plan. [00:18:00] And a leader is a leader when you can actually recognize after trying, trying, trying, that it's time to go. Yeah. The secret of a long life is knowing when it's time to get.

Exactly. And I think she did it beautifully and I think it's great and not many people. Are, you know, up to shed that part of the story. You know, a lot of the people that I interviewed did that, but they did not want to talk about it or talk about it, but they did not want to shed that in a book. So, so yeah, it's, and it reminds me a lot about the, the stories of p and g when Lly came in and was.

Senior sponsor for their shift towards more of a human-centered design approach. And they set up things like the Clay Street Project, which was an absolutely amazing facility where they would take execs and like sheep dip them through human-centered design and actually came up with the Swiffer, which generated millions of dollars or maybe billions of dollars of revenue.

So it was justified, you know, the impact and the outcomes, uh, that we get from this program. Really tangible. But of course o over time that crumbled and, and Clay Street is no more. And there were some [00:19:00] amazing people there that are no longer with the organization because of maybe a political seed change or maybe something became flavor of the month afterwards.

But, you know, business always works in cycles. You, you are never always in a moment of ascend and you have to try and work out how you catch the next wave and, and ride it as far as you need to without smashing into the reefs. So many mixed metaphors in there. So many mixed metaphors. Wow. So your book is all about leadership and on this podcast I think we've focused a lot on tools and techniques.

But we've kind of under-indexed on journeys for designers into leadership. If, if we think about what we need to, you know, keep and conserve what we need to learn anew and what we need to stop doing, as we make that transition into leadership, what would you say should be in those three buckets? Mm, impressed.

Impressed. [00:20:00] Sorry. It's lose, isn't it? Yeah. So I think I, I do a lot of coaching with folks that are individual contributors and, and at the point of moving into, into leadership positions. And I think one of the most difficult things that people experience is to let go of the practice. Hmm. It's almost like they feel that by moving into a leadership position, they will stop doing design and do something else, which couldn't be.

Furthest from the truth, I believe, because design, as I said before, is a attitude, is a mindset, citizen approach to things. All things. And so leadership for me in itself is an object of design. A lot of people think that you know, you're born leader or not. Like that, you have innate skills to be a fantastic leader.

See, there's some people out there who, who are born leaders, but there are very few, like, there are very few people that are born with the charisma and ability and you know, the, to drive followers towards new [00:21:00] vision. A lot of other people have to work hard to actually find the leadership style that works within the context.

And leadership is extremely contextual. Hmm. And so I think one of the first things that people should do when they think about a, a, a shift like that is to truly and fundamentally understand the context within which they're operating. Because when designers are acting as individual contributors very often lose the grip with that context.

You know, instances that I've seen to, to kind of, you know, worry more about the things. And the people related to the thing. Then the box, the larger context within which those things leave. And so one of the things that I usually is suggest to people to do is really organizational iconography. Truly understand your organizations.

Why is the organization working this way? You might think there is bullshit. Still, the place works this way. They produce values. Understand the way it works, understand how value is created, understand how money are made, understand [00:22:00] what are the decision making forums where you know decisions are made.

Understand who are the nodes in the network that are actually influencing. Above and beyond job titles, because that's another thing that you know, leadership is not a job title. Leadership is an attitude. It's a way you show up in the world and very often in organizations you will find way more leadership at the fringe than in the board.

And so understanding where the leadership lives and in what way that is legitimized and re. It is a key, fundamental aspect of that transition of the journey. Yeah. Like they say, the cobbler's children always have the worst shoes. So if you think about designers saying, well, actually, you know, I, I, I'm really good at looking at systems, analyzing systems of complexity and understanding how they come together.

Well, actually your organization is a system of complexity. You've got the nos within it. You've got the different stakeholders, you've got agendas, and there are ways of working and typically. Yeah, if you work with the grain, you [00:23:00] actually get more done. 'cause what you want to do as a, as a designer and as a leader, is to drive some form of transformation, create some kind of impact.

And if you are maybe more of a rebel in your mode and pushing it against the grain, it's gonna be a, a, a much more difficult. Journey. However, if you understand, as you say, yeah, when it's budget allocated, who signs off on it? What are the new strategic priorities? What are the things that you, we need to do?

What's happening? Maybe even to the share price, some of the things that maybe more people at your LBS, uh, than in your CSM class would have been focused on, but actually at a superficial level, at a very high level. I think that that's. That's accessible to everyone. You don't have to go into balance sheets and p and ls, which yeah, frankly are Yeah.

The things that most people hate in their m mba A and you don't need an MBA. Like, that's the other thing that people ask me. Should I do an MBA? Yeah. If you [00:24:00] want to, sorry if you, that's that really quick. And if you wanna, because you want to learn more things and understand what they do down there, for sure do it, but, but it's not needed.

Like you don't need an MBA in order to become a design leader. What you need though, I believe. Is the realization that a design leader is first and foremost a business leader who is lucky enough to have access to the magical world of design, right? And so your, your approach to life, your lenses, your, your way of relating to people the way you are looking at systems is radically different than other business leaders, but your dad to represent the business, your dad as a business leader.

Yeah, and if you don't, you're not gonna be there that long. No, no, I'm not going not that long. I have noticed on LinkedIn that, uh, the word leader appears in loads and loads of profiles. It's as if it's something that is mandatory as you get into a specific stage in your career. Is, is there [00:25:00] room for sort of the more experienced deep expert as opposed to a, a leader, or does that no longer exist in design practices?

I think it exists. I mean, there are a lot of people, again, I mean. Titles. But if you actually look at what people do, um, there are a lot of people that grow into the practice and, you know, manage large teams of people for, you know, the beauty of the craft. Learning to discern, uh, a beauty and to read intent, you know, and they do it within positions that are not necessarily efficiently leadership positions, but they're more.

You know, managerial roles or leadership maybe within the practice, but not necessarily as a job title within an organizational structure. Yeah, so almost like championing of craft rather than line management. Yeah. P and l, which is super needed. Yeah, super needed. Especially right now where you know everything is AI and there is no understanding what good looks like.

I think someone that [00:26:00] actually is able to keep up the standard. It is super important, but it, it is not gonna be for everyone, right? No. No. And you, you mentioned that this idea of, of craft and expertise in professional practice is really important now because of ai. Mm-hmm. How do you see design leadership evolving?

Given the fact that the our, our world is now has AI in it and it will do for the foreseeable future, I think that is an amazing opportunity for all of us. Actually, I decided not to write about AI for quite a long while. Thank you, although thank you for that. Yeah, thank You're very welcome. You're very welcome.

But there was a point where, you know, my LinkedIn was flooded. Flooded, maybe it's the algorithm on another ones to, to, to really, to really upset me mm-hmm. For, for lack of a better word, of people writing stuff like, oh, design is bad because AI is doing much better than us and we're all being [00:27:00] very redundant.

And that really pissed me off. That really pissed me off because if you think about design, it's a pixel pusher activity, then okay, then it's true. And then maybe, maybe it's better like that actually. You know what I mean? Maybe it's better like that. But if you think about design in the definition that I gave you before, which is the ability to define alternative desirable futures.

That, that it cannot be. That it cannot be. And actually was reading this, um, you know, the MIT report, uh, that was published in July. The Gene, I divide the State of AI in business, I think it's titled, and it's very funny because everyone reports the first couple of lines of that report that says that I think the 95% of the pilots, the run with AI failed.

Mm. And, uh, bringing this as an example of how AI is doomed and it's ruining our lives. And, and it's a very bad investment, but no one actually finished reading that paragraph. 'cause you know, back to the point that people don't read. Right. Back to the point people don't read. Uh, [00:28:00] yeah. I asked Chad GPT to summarize it and it didn't come up with anymore.

Yeah. Where they say that actually the issue is not technology, but it's the approach. And what they mean by approach, if you keep reading, is actually design. It's understanding what problem are you trying to solve. It's understanding decision making processes. And so I think design is a fantastic, uh, role to play if positioned right.

And so what I keep saying is not a good designer is not a question of what you do is a question of where you position yourself within the system. Right? And what do you consider your. Your, um, object of design. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because when design is integrated from the onset with these, uh, you know, uh, projects, uh, or is proven, the organization's achieve higher adoption, reduce bias, improve trust.

Trust is a massive topic area in, in this respect. But when design is missing, the pilot stall uses and employees resist a arise, impossible to find. So, you [00:29:00] know, so I, I think it's a great opportunity and, and I think the point here is really a shift towards a positioning of design in respect to governance.

And when I say governance is not necessarily like a rules on paper. That they are written to define, you know, specific relationship between things and people, but it's really the structuring of agency. It's really the rendering of intent that is the fundamental part of it. And so I think design is a fantastic role to play that.

I see very few designers playing that. Role though. So can you tell us a little bit more about agency and intent, then the, the, these new aspects of, uh, of design that maybe are under index at the moment? So you are, when you are within a system, you have the ability to showcase why certain things are happening.

So what is the intention behind a certain decision? Three, right? Why are certain things happening and what is the end state that you would like to see? [00:30:00] Very often, intent is not very visible for the people within the ecosystem. And very often the approach with AI is the one of speed, the one of cutting corners without fundamentally understanding what's behind it and what the consequences are.

And so that consequences sometimes is complete loss of trust, right? Which in the sphere of adoption is a super problematic thing. And so I think designers can, you know, they have all of the, we already have, we already do this. We already do this just in other spaces. Service designers have been doing this forever.

It's just a question of articulating a role. It's a question of, you know, showing and practice of that looks like, because there is also business value to be gained. It's not just, you know. Demanding a, a position within the system. But it's also, you know, truly also back to the point that designers, that design leader is, is a business leader.

Showing out that approach that [00:31:00] is problem slower can however bring quite a lot of value downstream. Yeah. And mitigate risk as well. Yeah. Mitigate risk. Yeah. So if we come, uh, we come as designers, we, we can help people to explore scenarios. We can look at impacts and we can think about, okay, what are the signals in the market that show that potentially this is gonna add value?

And what could be those scenarios downstream that may impact on our ability to get into market or that may have consequences Good or. So if we think about designers shifting into the role of being people who are gonna help us to visualize, explore, and navigate paths towards alternative futures, does it mean that we're gonna have.

Less but better designers. I'm not sure. I think design is such a massive world, right? I, I've been a designer in 45 different ways in my life, and it's not that I'm more of a designer now than I was out of industrial design school. I'm just a fundamental different type of designer. So I think, I think what I'm seeing right now is that, you know, the world [00:32:00] of design is kind of converging towards two.

Very large buckets. One is, is the authorization, is the people that actually do the execution right? Which you know, is there. And I don't think it's anywhere to go back to the point that you need people and that understand what good looks like. And because otherwise we will all fall into this mediocrity of lack of taste.

Um, and on the other side, there is a subset of people that do not necessarily have a design background. Some do, some others don't. But fell in love with design as they were exploring challenges, uh, and, and, and wicked problems in their organization. Mm-hmm. That are doing exactly what I, what I'm explaining.

They are, you know, using design for exploring futures to define what the future is, desirable future want, wanna see, and how the organization get there. And you kinda need a both. And so I don't think we're gonna have less designers. Uh, I'm hoping that. The, there will be a, a layer that will [00:33:00] of course disappear, but a new one will emerge.

So I'm not really worried about that. I, I, I really hope though, that when people choose the bucket, uh, they are aware of what, you know, the, the area, the, the, the boundaries of the. Of the field where they're positioning themselves. Right. It back to the point that I was saying that it's not about what you do, but what you position yourself within the system.

Exactly. And I think the risk is that the organization sees a single bucket and it's not, well, actually Yeah, of course. Of course they do. Of course they do. But that doesn't matter. That doesn't matter. Well, I think if they see it as well, actually, we've got lots of people who are focused on execution and I've got low-code, no-code tools that can do that.

So actually, do we need the bucket as opposed to saying, well, actually this is a double diamond. We've got people at the beginning who focus more at the beginning. Um, others who focus more at the end and, and some people are holistic. Mm-hmm. But, but actually, you know, it's very, very difficult to [00:34:00] completely replace those at the beginning.

Yeah. Uh, you can augment them. Yeah. And you know, I know the majority of designers I, I work with are using AI tools to help them accelerate things like producing. Prototypes or provocate types. It's really easy now to do it in a way that gives you high fidelity. Um, but it doesn't replace the thinking. It doesn't replace the, uh, you know, the, the design research or the, you know, all the analytical element.

But yeah, if, if we're seen as one bucket, that's the major risk. So we talked a little bit about your career path, where we've talked about, you know, transitioning into design leadership and how leadership isn't one thing. It's actually more of a maybe an attitude and a mindset and the way that we, we, we show up in an organization.

And we've also spoken about, uh, the remit of AI and how that's gonna reshape design as, as a practice. If there was one thing that you'd like designers [00:35:00] who are considering transitioning from an individual contributor role into either an expert or a leadership role, if there was one thing you'd like them to think about or think about more deeply than traditionally they do, what would that be?

Hmm. I think it's this point of governance, actually. This point of how the ecosystem works. How decisions are made, what, where are the overlaps and what is the intent behind all of that? I, I think that is the one thing that I think a design leader today should be thinking about. Um. And as I said before this, this really, really truly, uh, not only requires a fundamental understanding of the context, but also, uh, rallying around what is the ultimate goal that we are here to achieve, which is something that that is usually lacking, right?

And it's something that brings me back to my. PhD time. What, what It was [00:36:00] actually, one of the key aspects of what I was, uh, describing is that when in an organization there is lack of agreement around the goal that brings people together. What are we actually here to do, uh, as a group of people in systems that enable these people, right?

Because organizations eventually are just that. So that is a fundamental part. So being clear about the goal, align people around the goal, and then clarifying the rules of engagement and what the governments is around that, how design can help, uh, improve that understanding and, and make it more transparent and visible.

I think that is a fundamental, you know, contribution the design can give to organizations in the world today. Okay. Yeah. Design is a business and design is in the business. Mm. And you've gotta understand both of those sides of the equation. Fantastic. Nancy, thank you so much for, uh, finding time to speak to us today and for taking us through, uh, a really great, uh, story from your book Design Leadership Chronicles.

And, and we always look forward to reading your substack, uh, design [00:37:00] Mavericks. In a world where wear a wash with, uh, really dull content, yours is always ones that makes us smile and think in equal measure. Thanks very much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I've got an idea. It's a hundred to one shot.

Service Design app is a production from the Service Design Network, UK chapter. It's hosted by me, Stephen Wood, with production assistance from Jean Tya. Music is by Duck Ersatz.