What I learned being involved in Design Transformation at a century old company.
To sum it up…
Investing in design raises the business as a whole.
When committing to design transformation at scale, it’s important to include everyone, not just the designers. When every employee, from all unique backgrounds, practices design transformation, you share a language of progress and growth as a whole. No person left behind.
Documenting transformation is crucial.
Don’t forget where you came from and don’t forget where you are going either. It’s important to document your transformation in human ways, highlighting the people behind the change. You can look back and learn from this while opening your perspectives to the future of your business.
Operating and taking risks, together.
With a shared understanding of what’s at stake, you need buy-in from all leaders, platforms, and business units to infect meaningful change. When one person takes a risk, you all take a risk. No one is operating in a silo; transparent communication and understanding between brands is critical.
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IBM Design Thinking
Upon arriving at IBM, I had the opportunity to go through something they called “bootcamp,” which is a rigorous three month onboarding program that focuses on design thinking methodologies, human centered design perspectives, and accelerated project timelines. The point being, if you can survive this, you can survive anything. Survive we did, and then some. Upon completion of the program, the other 63 designers and I were dispersed into functioning business units, tasked with upholding the idea of design and human centered problem solving, never sacrificing or taking the easy way out. It was now our turn to teach, lead, and develop new ways of working to be taught to the next camp of designers. It was here we implemented the power of the user and the power of digging deeper to find the real problems at the root. By using what we had learned from those before us, we were able to forge our own paths, improve the methods, and dial them in given specific business use cases—like this “seller’s map” Naveen Raja and I created to help our stakeholders understand the complex journey of our user. Strategies like this ultimately led to us creating shippable products to meet users at their needs, through simple and effective design, while helping inform the business of the power of design.
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All Things X
It was during this period at IBM when I had a bit of an “aha” moment. I was witnessing a 105 year old company start to trust design again, as they had in the 80’s but seemed to have forgotten about at the turn of the millennium. IBM was using design to lead the company to new ventures, new sectors, and help the world in new ways. We know that knowledge can come just as swiftly as it can go, so my friend and colleague, Patrick Lowden, and I decided to document this shift at IBM with a global publication. Our intent was to document the people behind the change, highlighting IBMers on a global platform, telling their unbelievably humanistic stories of design transformation. And that’s exactly what we did. Our publication, which is still active at IBM today, does not focus on profit margins or products, but rather the notable force behind them—the designers, the engineers, the technologists, the strategists, the researchers, and anyone who calls themself an IBMer.
During this time we also had the opportunity to bring on 18 designers and writers from around the world to help us craft, curate, and display these beautiful stories on a global scale.
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The risk
Whenever you set out to shift the way an entire organization thinks, you’re going to have to take some risks.
By continuously implementing clear and transparent communication, the IBM Studios team was able to align on global change quickly, understand our roles at that scale, and execute as a team, not as an individual. This led us to have open and honest conversations with Studios in places like London, Paris, San Francisco, and Dublin where the employees and change makers had an open platform to contribute to their ecosystem and to the overall IBM business plan.
With transformation comes boldness—it is not for the faint of heart. Once you commit to enacting change and putting human centered design at the forefront of your company, you have to put your money where your mouth is, literally. You need to hire, train, and encourage new employees while instilling a new rigor in your current employees. It’s a delicate balance to strike but if you listen, collaborate, and put positive outcomes in your sights, it will happen.
Many people will tell you you’re crazy. These people will probably be people you respect and admire. It’s hard to fathom transformation at this scale and even harder to design a plan to get it done. Take their criticism with a grain of salt and keep moving forward. The impossible is only impossible until it’s not. A combination of relentless hard work and time will always bear fruit, just make sure you have a clear vision to go with it.
