Who’s the most important member of your design team?

The other day I read a post that said great design organizations happen when a company is founded, that great design organizations are part of a company’s “DNA”.

Here is the thing, organizations don’t have DNA. Companies have cultures. And while a company’s culture is in a constant state of evolution—adding new members, distributing responsibilities, adopting new practices such remote work, etc., from my experience, the culture and the shepherding of those adaptations, starts with the company’s CEO. Or to be more specific, the CEO’s behavior. Not a poster, or the company values webpage, it is the actions and priorities of the CEO they provide the most tangible expression of an organization’s true culture.

While good design organizations can be created within a company—frequently the result of frustrations and failures (i.e., disappointing sales calls, customer complaints, or being outpaced by the competition), for a company to have a great design organization, one that delivers the type of design everyone strives for and talks about, design must be part of the company’s culture. Which is why I have come to realize that for design to be part of a company’s culture, the most important member of the design team is the CEO.

Regardless of the design resources and leadership an organization brings in, it is the CEO’s commitment to making design an organizational cornerstone that determines the company’s success with design. While a leader may say design is core to their business, that it is a value-driver, if their CEO is indifferent or worst green-lights deprioritizing or descoping design, it’s clear message that design is not a priority let alone a part of the culture.

Great design doesn’t just happen, it needs to be supported and championed by an informed leadership who knows how to hold it accountable, like any other discipline. Which means just like engineering, sales, or finance, design needs to be understood. CEO’s take the time to learn about AI, blockchain, and global markets, why shouldn’t they learn about design? A good CEO is curious and if something is important to their business, they will take the time to read a book or two. Companies with great design organizations all have CEO’s who took the time to learn about design.

Side note for all those design pundits out there wringing their hands; having a design-geek for your CEO means they have a strong curiosity and respect for design, it doesn’t meant they will expect to design any more than they would expect to write an algorithm—and if they do want to design, embrace it and hold them to the same standards as any member of the design team, with their contribution succeeding or failing on its own merits. Think of it as part of their learning and internalization of design.

Even in organizations where design has been a part of the culture from the beginning, and their design teams are well established, without the on-going support from their CEO, those teams and design as a cultural practice will atrophy. Don’t believe me? Look at the four eras of Apple….

First there was Steve & Woz… Steve always loved design,and made it a core pillar of the culture. And Apple had a great design organization reaching its first peak with the Mac.

Then Scully outmaneuvers Steve…. Scully didn’t value design, the culture shifted, and design atrophied. Scully was followed by other likeminded CEOs. I was there during this “between Steve’s” era and saw first-hand the impact the CEO’s lack of support started to have on Apple’s design organization.

Steve comes back… Overnight the culture shifted: design was again a core tenant of the company. And that era gave the world the iconic products and services we cannot seem to live without. It’s worth noting that while Steve cleared out large parts of the company, he retained many of the best designers, even promoted a number of them to key leadership roles. Steve also went outside Apple and recruited the best designers he could find. He was personally invested in building his design organization.

An apple falls in the woods… Steve passed away, Tim took over, Jony left, and things are not looking so great for Apple. It would seem once again they have a CEO who doesn’t really value? understand? prioritize? design the same way he values platform revenue, operations, and partnerships. As a result, design at Apple is at best in a holding pattern—having already lost much of the design talent and leadership that Steve personally developed, they have failed to deliver any game changers in nearly eight years.

Building great design organizations—whether it’s part of the company’s original founding charter, or whether it comes later, requires a CEO who understands design and its potential for delivering differentiation, innovation and value. While the CEO doesn’t have to be a designer, any more than they need to be an engineer or marketer, they nevertheless need to understand design well enough know how to place it on par with their other strategic must-haves, maximizing its impact to the benefit the company and its customers.

Which is why for me, the most important member of any design team is the CEO.

As always, please feel free to share your thoughts.

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