Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Becoming a Changemaker by Leading with Design
Gold
Wednesday, March 29, 2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Share the love for this talk
Becoming a Changemaker by Leading with Design
Speakers: Maria Giudice
Link:

Summary

Design and research-driven leaders have evolved from being responsible for executing design concepts to having a crucial role in driving change across organizations. This is welcome progress, but with greater responsibility comes new challenges, especially when it comes to championing change in organizations likely to resist it. As design and research-driven changemakers have risen in the ranks of business, they’ve “learned on the job,” experiencing both setbacks and victories. We captured many of these learnings by interviewing over 40 design leaders and incorporating their shared wisdom in our book, Changemakers: How Leaders Can Design Change in an Insanely Complex World. Whether these leaders worked at IBM and Google, a US government agency, or a small consulting firm, their insights and observations are applicable to all and well-worth considering. This presentation will offer an overview of what we learned. It will cover the top mistakes changemakers make as they navigate the messy processes and people issues involved in driving any type of change. You'll learn how to determine the ground conditions needed for success, how to find and align supporters, how to minimize detractors, and how to repurpose design tools, frameworks, and techniques to your advantage. Maria Giudice is the co-author of Changemakers: How Leaders Can Design Change in an Insanely Complex World.

Key Insights

  • The role of design leaders has evolved from product delivery to shaping organizational culture at scale.

  • Changemakers must assess 'ground conditions' like executive support and resources before accepting leadership roles.

  • Rushing into change without understanding the organization's history and culture ('coming in too hot') often generates resistance.

  • Building a shared vision requires inclusive collaboration where all stakeholders feel heard and represented.

  • Prioritization and focus on a few small wins prevent burnout and enable sustainable change.

  • Tools like the impact matrix help teams evaluate effort versus impact to choose projects wisely.

  • Vision without execution is futile; delivering tangible outcomes with prototyping and milestones is essential.

  • Failure is inevitable in change leadership; embracing mistakes with courage leads to growth and innovation.

  • Visual communication techniques enhance stakeholder understanding and trust during complex change efforts.

  • Changemakers don’t necessarily need formal design training but must adopt design as a mindset and problem-solving strategy.

Notable Quotes

"The best future leaders will embody the qualities and traits of a DEO — design executive officer — creative business leaders at the intersection of design and business."

"Change is fundamentally a design problem and therefore change can be designed."

"Before you accept a mission as a changemaker, ask yourself do you have a clear directive, champion support, and the right resources?"

"Coming in too hot means running into a burning building like a firefighter, ignoring past work, and rushing without listening."

"Nobody wants to be told to do your thing unless it’s clear that it helps their thing. It’s just human nature."

"Don’t boil the ocean. Get small wins before you go for the big change."

"You need maniacal focus to prioritize, but remain flexible as priorities will always change."

"Vision without execution is hallucination. You must make outcomes tangible and measurable."

"Failure sucks and hurts, but if you haven’t failed, you haven’t taken enough risks."

"When you hit the bottom, that’s where creativity flourishes and it’s time to iterate, evolve, and redesign."

Ask the Rosenbot
Christian Crumlish
Morning Insights Panel
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Jason Mesut
Shaping design, designers and teams
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Ned Dwyer
The Intersection of Design and ResearchOps
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Benjamin Real
Maturity Models: A Core Tool for Creating a DesignOps Strategy
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Stephen Anderson
Puzzled? How to Coordinate Humans for Complex Challenges
2021 • Enterprise Community
Jon Fukuda
Theme 3 Intro
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Nicole Bergstrom
AccessibilityOps: Moving beyond “nice to have”
2024 • DesignOps Community
Samuel Proulx
Invisible barriers: Why accessible service design can’t be an afterthought
2024 • Advancing Service Design 2024
Gold
Vanessa Varin
Feedback: The Other F-Word
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold
Heidi Trost
When AI Becomes the User’s Point Person—and Point of Failure
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Aaron Stienstra
Leveraging Civic Design to Advance Equity and Rebuild Trust in the US Federal Government
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Ross Smith
Breaking Barriers with Empathy
2017 • Enterprise Experience 2017
Gold
Ron Bronson
Design, Consequences & Everyday Life
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Erin Weigel
UX Lessons from running more than 1,200 A/B Tests
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Amber Knabl
Empowering innovation: The critical role of inclusive product development in the AI era
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Lija Hogan
Doing more with more: Lessons from the Front Lines of Democratization
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold

More Videos

Sheryl Cababa

"Community engagement is a powerful lever often left out of systems thinking processes."

Sheryl Cababa

Expanding Your Design Lens with Systems Thinking

February 23, 2023

Mackenzie Cockram

"User journeys are the bedrock for deciding which data to collect and measure."

Mackenzie Cockram Sara Branco Cunha Ian Franklin

Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Research from Discovery to Live

December 16, 2022

Brendan Jarvis

"Our careers in design that aren’t regularly examined are unlikely to last."

Brendan Jarvis

It was the Best of Times. It was the Worst of Times.

September 25, 2024

Laura Smith

"Rather than handing off work, our designers and developers work side by side through sketching, testing, and iteration."

Laura Smith Tom Gayler

Embedding Service Design and Agile Practice within UK Planning Teams to Create Services that Last

December 3, 2024

Josh Clark

"This isn’t about Skynet; it’s about simple signals of awareness that adapt to immediate context."

Josh Clark Veronika Kindred

Sentient Scenes and Radically Adaptive Experiences

June 11, 2025

JJ Kercher

"At the committed stage, executives start asking what design can do for business strategy."

JJ Kercher

A Roadmap for Maturing Design in the Enterprise

June 15, 2018

Mila Kuznetsova

"Sometimes with kids, you just have to get artifactual data or creative outputs because they can’t always articulate."

Mila Kuznetsova Lucy Denton

How Lessons Learned from Our Youngest Users Can Help Us Evolve our Practices

March 9, 2022

Maria Skaaden

"I am uncomfortable too. Change is uncomfortable, exhausting, but it can also be fun and exciting."

Maria Skaaden

Panel Discussion: Methodologies and Work Environments

November 8, 2018

Frances Yllana

"Government might expand its self-perception from service provider to facilitator who partners with constituents."

Frances Yllana Ann Buechner Jess Jones Betsy Ramaccia

D.E.A.R.R. Diaries (Discipline, Experience, Architecture, Reflection + Revolution)

November 16, 2022