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
Dave Gray
Connection, Community, and the Future of Work
2026 • Rosenfeld Community
Nalini Kotamraju
Research After UX
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Daniel Korczynski
Why AI Is Bad at Research (and how to make it actually useful)
2026 • Advancing Research 2026
Gold
Meghan Hellstern
The Next 100 Years of Civic Design: How Might We Better Rise to Meet the Challenges of Today and Tomorrow?
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Daniel J. Rosenberg
Designing with and for Artificial Intelligence
2022 • Enterprise Community
Lada Gorlenko
Theme 1: Intro
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Michelle Morrison
Practice What You Preach
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Stephanie Wade
Building and Sustaining Design in Government
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Nathan Curtis
Discussion
2016 • Enterprise UX 2016
Gold
Corey Long
Hiring in DesignOps: A Critical Study on How to Hire and Get Hired
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Matt Duignan
HITS, Microsoft's internal human insight system: From research library to living body of knowledge
2019 • Advancing Research Community
Brendan Jarvis
Framing Tomorrow by Questioning Today
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Daniel Gloyd
Warming the User Experience: Lessons from America's first and most radical human-centered designers
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Kristin Skinner
Theme 1 Intro
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Sha Hwang
The Lost Year
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Taylor Klassman
Shaping the Next Era of UX Research: Collaborative Forum
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold

More Videos

Jesse Zolna

"Having a huge appetite for research and a huge manner for research is a good problem to have. So let's lean into it."

Jesse Zolna

Inviting the Whole Org to Come See For Yourself

March 30, 2020

Samuel Martin

"You should never be engaging lived experts without compensating them for their time."

Samuel Martin

Co-Design vs Faux-Design: Navigating the Complexities of Sharing Power in Co-Design

March 27, 2026

Sarah Auslander

"Small, tactical projects helped us secure political will and organizational capacity needed for systemic policy change."

Sarah Auslander

Incremental Steps to Drive Radical Innovation in Policy Design

November 18, 2022

Jake Burghardt

"Stop Wasting Research isn’t about conducting new research; it’s about getting more juice from existing insights."

Jake Burghardt

Stop wasting research: Unlock more value from research insights

June 24, 2025

Steve Chaparro

"I grew restless within the walls of architecture and wanted to apply design principles more broadly."

Steve Chaparro

Bringing Into Alignment Brand, Culture and Space

August 13, 2020

Steve Portigal

"Pilot projects with evangelists inside the company make ethnography manageable and successful."

Steve Portigal Chris Chapo Kelly Goto Christian Rohrer

Discussion

May 13, 2015

Audrey Crane

"The most alarming result is that people didn’t know how to work with the design team or get help from them."

Audrey Crane

Shadow Design–Where Else is Design Happening in Your Organization?

April 20, 2023

Gabrielle Verderber

"Use whatever information is available in the tool. Views, downloads, and links in Slack channels are all helpful adoption metrics."

Gabrielle Verderber

Documentation Your Team Will Actually Use

October 3, 2023

Mila Kuznetsova

"Power dynamics exist in every session. People don’t want to be embarrassed or feel put on the spot."

Mila Kuznetsova Lucy Denton

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

March 9, 2022