Rosenverse
Becoming a Changemaker by Leading with Design

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
Erin Malone
Understanding the past to prepare for the future
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Peter Van Dijck
Building impactful AI products for design and product leaders, Part 1: The new product journey
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Nicole Aleong
Future Orientations to Everyday Life: Futures Anthropology as a Methodology
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Husani Oakley
Theme Three Intro
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold
Dan Saffer
Why AI projects fail (and what we can do about it)
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Milan Guenther
The $212 billion ‘so what?’: unlocking impact in development cooperation
2025 • Advancing Service Design 2025
Gold
Bria Alexander
Opening Remarks
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Uday Gajendar
The Wicked Craft of Enterprise UX
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Connect with the Advancing Research Community
2026 • Advancing Research 2026
Gold
Matt Webb
Context Window: Five Futures for AI
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold
Alnie Figueroa
The Future of Design Operations: Transforming Our Craft
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold
Louis Rosenfeld
Opening Remarks
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Jorge Arango
The Best of Both Worlds: How to Integrate Paper and Digital Notes (1st of 3 seminars)
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Eduardo Ortiz
Theme 3 Intro
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Dr. Nikki Smith
Research Strategy: Connecting Insights to Outcomes
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
You’ve got Gold! A Rosenverse demo with Lou Rosenfeld
2026 • Rosenfeld Community

More Videos

Sam Proulx

"Involving people with disabilities throughout the product development cycle is crucial, from prototype reviews through to acceptance testing."

Sam Proulx

Prototype Reviews, People With Disabilities, and You

October 1, 2021

Anna Avrekh

"Trust with your team needs to be established and continuously nurtured because tough situations arise quickly."

Anna Avrekh Dr. John Pagonis Klara Pelcl Sina Schreiber

Expert Panel: Leading in and with Research

March 10, 2022

Kate Kalcevich

"It's cheaper to fix accessibility issues in the design phase than to wait until after coding or production."

Kate Kalcevich

Integrating Accessibility in DesignOps

September 23, 2024

Kristin Skinner

"Technology can revolutionize how we think about education."

Kristin Skinner

Five Years of DesignOps

September 29, 2021

Husani Oakley

"Software is eating the world, but AI is taking it to a whole new level."

Husani Oakley

Theme Three Intro

June 6, 2023

Saara Kamppari-Miller

"If we had pulled something off the internet, half the time would be spent on critique."

Saara Kamppari-Miller

"Prototype" vs "Prototype"--Breaking Down and Rebuilding Our Understanding of What We Do

October 24, 2019

Jim Kalbach

"Empathy is not a good starting point for innovation because it’s unstable and doesn’t provide a clear problem to solve."

Jim Kalbach

Jobs To Be Done

February 25, 2021

Dave Malouf

"Do we have the feedback loops to feel our way through paths of emergence rather than pre-carved routes?"

Dave Malouf

Theme 3: Introduction and Provocation

January 8, 2024

Louis Rosenfeld

"Public sector work is about broadening your reach and delivering outcomes to everyone, not winning market share."

Louis Rosenfeld Lashanda Hodge Senongo Akpem Chris Hodowanec

Becoming a Civic Designer: Making the Move from Private to Public Sector

November 17, 2022