Many Design Thinkers face the challenge of how to position and sell Design Thinking within their executive team. They face a number of issues from CEO buy-in to resource allocation for design thinking activities. There are two basic strategies that can be used to get buy in from the team. The first is the Trojan horse method. Don't mention design thinking and try to avoid design thinking language. Instead, use the methodology and deliver results that make a difference. The second strategy is to consciously discuss it, position it and sell it to the executive team as a strategic decision for the corporation, up front before the process is well embedded and proven. We will discuss the second approach in this article as it is likely that most people will look for approval before going all in on design thinking.

When thinking about how to consciously sell design thinking into the executive team, it is helpful to think about gateways or control points i.e. to think in executive language, not design thinking language. The executive team is made up of the positions/functions that control resource gateways. There are three types of resources 

1. Physical - money, facilities, equipment, raw materials
2. Human resources
3. Intellectual resources such as brands, patents, copyright, customer bases and partnerships 

Resources are scarce for every corporation, for sure this is true for non-profits and probably just as true for governments.

In the Executive team, the head of production controls the resources to produce the output of the corporation. It does not work if it does not produce. The head of development controls the resources to turn ideas into things that can be produced. Product management produces results by managing the balance between the "customers" needs - usually meant as the retail or next level customers rather than the end users needs, and the abilities and competencies of the organization to create features and new products/services/experiences. Sales controls access to the channels through which the corporation gets its products/services/experiences to market. And so on. Respected organizations are those that make the very best use of scarce resources to create greater value.

OK, but what do gateways have to do with design thinkers?

Design thinking with its focus on understanding the end user customer needs holds the promise of controlling the gateway to what the customer wants. That can be an incredibly powerful gateway and a strategic position within a company. One traditionally held by default, based much more on intuition than knowledge and understanding by members of the executive team or the CEO. It is also a position that really only exists in a design led corporation i.e. a corporation who's strategy is to focus on users needs as opposed to production prowess, technology development or logistics. Of course nothing is black and white and excellence in many of these factors is needed in order to develop great value. 

The value that design led companies can produce is not under dispute. If it is, then the following research report and indexes should help you to discuss the value of design with your executive team. The 2015 DMI Design Value Index shows that corporations who are design led create 211% more value than those who are led by other factors over a long period of time. This index provides a USA corporation perspective but is based on earlier work (2004) done by the British Design Council in their Design Index: The impact of Design on Stock Market Performance paper which shows very similar results for European corporations.

I have my own personal take on the results of these research studies. I believe they are only uncovering half the truth. With further research, I think we would understand that it is not only a "design lead" that makes up this difference. When you look at the corporations in the research who achieved this growth, it is pretty clear that they are also the corporations who have progressive leadership open to implementing new ideas. I.e. a lot of credit must also go to the leadership teams in these corporations for their openness to new ideas, such as embracing user needs and taking action on those needs through design.

As you work on how to strengthen the position of design thinking within your leadership team it is useful to understand where you are on the journey towards design leadership. For that you would need some sort of maturity framework or model.

With such a framework you could ask, at what stage of conversion is your corporation leadership's thinking?

1. Is your CEO open to the corporation becoming more user centered?
2. Is your executive team open to new ideas and ways of generating value?
3. Is the rest of the executive team open to becoming more user centered?
4. How does your corporation compete? 

For the purposes of setting up a framework for yourself I used the 4 Stages of Learning concept. It will help you to understand how to behave and guide your executive team to a more powerful, reliable and effective way of creating customer value. The model states that in order to learn something your executive team will go through 4 phases of gaining and absorbing new knowledge. The phases are:

1. They don't know what they don't know.

In phase one you would investigate where the executive team is in their journey to understanding and supporting design thinking.

1. Are they aware of Design Thinking?
2. Do they know how it works?
3. Are they aware of the value that it can create for a corporation?

2. They know what they don't know.

In phase 2 you would be focused on ensuring that the team explored and experienced design thinking to learn experientially.

1. Are they asking you about it?
2. Are they asking to participate in design thinking?
3. Are they curious to know how to learn about it?
4. Are they asking what role it plays in your organization, how it fits in and what it takes to be successful with design thinking?

3. They know what they know.

Phase 3 is the active stage of learning that we all understand as learning. Here the team would be actively absorbing information about the effectiveness of design thinking, seeing teams delivering results new value being created and old ways being replaced by more effective ways, being aware of how a focus on the customer's needs helps create a new and more effective focus for the organization and rewriting existing processes to fit in with and acknowledge design thinking's role. They would be asking their teams questions like:

1. What customer insights are you acting on?
2. Do we have experience roadmaps?
3. How are our disciplines collaborating throughout our projects?
4. Who has been through design thinking training?
5. How is design thinking structurally integrated into our processes and ways of working?
6. How can we improve our design thinking outcomes and customer insights?

4. They don't know what they know.

Working in a design led way is second nature to the leadership. They expect the corporation to be discovering new customer insights on a regular basis, acting on them, building customer value around solving these insights, collaborating across the company, prototyping fast, failing and not being afraid to do so because the teams are learning and innovating faster than before.

Most likely there are experience metrics and quite possibly customer insight metrics in place that are accepted by the organization as a whole and people hardly remember why they are measured on customer experience as they work on improving it daily and so it feels natural to measure it. It is not so much a measurement of design thinking effectiveness as a way of doing things in the company. In other words it is now part of the company culture.

Though I cannot say for sure, I would bet that this is the case for Apple. I have never heard Jonathan Ive or Steve Jobs refer to Apple as practicing Design Thinking. They intuitively acted in a similar way and did not even know it.Hopefully this framework gives you a starting point and way to understand where you are in your journey towards becoming a design led culture. 

It is important to point out that becoming design led is going to require a champion and in case you had not realized it, until you have an executive and preferably the CEO pulling this culture change, it is a case of "tag, you're it."

It's tIme to lead!