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
Rachael Dietkus, LCSW
AI: Passionate defenses and reasoned critique [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
2024 • Advancing Research Community
Carol Smith
Operationalizing Responsible, Human-Centered AI
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold
Jemma Ahmed
Theme Three Intro
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Liam Thurston
Why Your Design Team Is Quitting, And How To Fix It
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Victor Udoewa
Radical Participatory Design: Decolonizing Participatory Design Processes
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Laura Gatewood
Beyond Buzzwords: Adding Heart to Effective Slack Communication
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Sheryl Cababa
Expanding your Design Lens with Systems Thinking
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Tony Turner
Capturing Deep Insights
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Chris Hammond
Embedding sustainability into enterprise design and development: A journey towards "sustainability consciousness"
2025 • Climate UX Interest Group
Rachel Radway
The Many Paths Of Design Operations
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Ash Brown
Silver Linings: What DesignOps Learned in the Shift to WFH
2020 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Dominique Ward
The Most Exciting Time for DesignOps is Now
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Jim Kalbach
Jobs To Be Done
2021 • Enterprise Community
Sam Proulx
Mobile Accessibility: Why Moving Accessibility Beyond the Desktop is Critical in a Mobile-first World
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Maverick Chan
From Doodle to Demo: AI as Our Storytelling Partner
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Patrizia Bertini
The (r)evolution of designOps: It’s Time to Think (really) BIG
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold

More Videos

Victor Udoewa

"The needs of a government of the people should be the needs of the people."

Victor Udoewa

Radical Participatory Design: Decolonizing Participatory Design Processes

December 10, 2021

John Donmoyer

"If you never want to fully embed yourself in engineering, that’s fine too — you don’t have to show anyone the code you generate."

John Donmoyer

Shipping your code generation experiments to production

June 11, 2025

Sarah Auslander

"It’s a marathon not a sprint. Pace yourself and take care of yourself and the other runners around you."

Sarah Auslander Betsy Ramaccia Gordon Ross

Insights Panel

November 18, 2022

Tanya Snook

"Hiring for fit is dangerous if you don't do it carefully, so we looked at fit for purpose—skills and ramp-up ability."

Tanya Snook

Designing the team experience: Building culture through onboarding

November 4, 2021

Marjorie Stainback

"We iterated on recruitment messaging about 15 times to get the tone just right during COVID."

Marjorie Stainback Molly Fargotstein Stephanie Marsh

What Research Ops Professionals Have Learned from COVID-19

July 16, 2020

Yunyan Li

"Post-implementation reviews help catch bugs or style issues before customers see them, maintaining high quality."

Yunyan Li Anna Le Jen Kim

UX Best Practices

June 11, 2021

Bria Alexander

"If you are not on Slack, you are missing out on one of the biggest and most interactive parts of our conference."

Bria Alexander

Opening Remarks

June 10, 2021

Victor Lombardi

"In science, it’s better to miss a phenomenon than to misidentify one that doesn’t really exist."

Victor Lombardi Ted Booth HK Dunston Andrew Otwell

Bridging Design and Climate Science

February 14, 2024

Dan Willis

"They had accidentally created a gaping void between the functionality they were producing and the needs of the people who depended on it."

Dan Willis

Filling the Void

November 7, 2018