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
Jake Burghardt
Finding More Inroads into Research Impact
2026 • Rosenfeld Community
Lisa Spitz
Building Trust Through Equitable Research Practices
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Jason Mesut
Shaping design, designers and teams
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Todd Healy
Driving Change with CX Metrics
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold
Jess Greco
Creating a Basis for Change: Scaling Design Maturity
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Jemma Ahmed
Theme Three Intro
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Eric Shumake
Diagnosis UX: Building Influence in Healthcare Design
2026 • Rosenfeld Community
Aurobinda Pradhan
Introduction to Collaborative DesignOps using Cubyts
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Shahrzad Samadzadeh
What Is My Value? Two Takes and Some Mistakes
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Carol Smith
Operationalizing Responsible, Human-Centered AI
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold
Josh Clark
Sentient Design: New Design Patterns for New Experiences (3rd of 3 seminars)
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Nora Tejeda
Scaling Design Capabilities at BBVA Through a Self-service Design Model
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Sam Proulx
Prototype Reviews, People With Disabilities, and You
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
JP Allen
Navigating the UX Tool Landscape
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Jennifer Bolduc
What's involved with getting people back to work?: A panel discussion
2021 • DesignOps Community
Heidi Trost
To Protect People, You Have to Protect Information: A Human-Centered Design Approach to Cybersecurity
2025 • Rosenfeld Community

More Videos

Edgar Anzaldua Moreno

"Biases surface as you iterate, so lean approaches help you find and fix them quicker."

Edgar Anzaldua Moreno

Using Research to Determine Unique Value Proposition

March 11, 2021

Jack Moffett

"SAFe is very developer-centric and was originally designed for construction—the code production part of software."

Jack Moffett

SAFe or Sorry?

May 29, 2019

Aditi Ruiz

"It’s really hard for product managers to find time for actually doing the work because of all the meetings."

Aditi Ruiz Christian Crumlish Farid Sabitov

Pulse Check: Empathy Mapping Your Product Manager, Pt. 2

December 6, 2022

Mujtaba Hameed

"The core thesis is that saving time with AI and reallocating it into research itself unlocks the true potential of the field."

Mujtaba Hameed

The new horizon of ethnography: using AI to unlock the full potential of in-person research

March 11, 2026

Catt Small

"I kind of think of it one as like fields of influence — staff influences the team or pillar, principal influences organization-wide."

Catt Small Micah Bennett Brian Carr Jessica Harllee

What's Next for ICs: Exploring Staff and Principal Designer Roles

February 22, 2024

Helen Armstrong

"AI has no understanding of consequences — humans are the ones to bring that understanding."

Helen Armstrong

Augment the Human. Interrogate the System.

June 7, 2023

Taylor Jennings

"Short-term learnings kind of roll into long-term ones as you iterate and build on historical findings."

Taylor Jennings Joe Nelson Alex Knoll

Repository Retrospective: Learnings from Introducing a Central Place for UX Research

March 9, 2022

Jeff Gothelf

"Amazon deploys new code into production into the hands of customers once every second."

Jeff Gothelf

Who does what by how much?

November 20, 2025

Sheryl Cababa

"Freedom dreaming is dreaming about a system that is free from today's oppression."

Sheryl Cababa

Living in the Clouds: Adopting a Systems Thinking Mindset

June 6, 2023