Role of Design Leaders

McKinsey talks design.   Is design mostly strategically long range, or not?    Do you design your reactions to difficult times?

Are you asking enough from your design leaders?   By Melissa Dalrymple, Sam Pickover, and Benedict Sheppard  from McKinsey

Are you asking enough from your design leader?
Companies that excel at design grow revenues and shareholder returns at nearly twice the rate of their industry peers.1 So why aren’t more companies joining their ranks?

To answer the question, we interviewed 200 senior design leaders and 100 top executives and analyzed the answers of more than 1,700 respondents to the McKinsey Design Index (MDI) survey tool.2 What we found was striking: some 90 percent of companies weren’t reaching the full potential of design, even as, in the past five years, double the number of companies have added senior design roles to their organization.3

Of the four areas tied directly to improved revenue growth and shareholder return—which include design leadership, cross-functional talent, iterative processes, and end-to-end user experiences—CEOs must address design leadership first if their companies are to capture the full business value of design.4 Yet two problems exist, according to our research: a lack of clarity about where and how senior design leaders can contribute, and uncertainty about how much to expect of them in their role (Exhibit 1). To elevate the organization’s design ambition, and to clarify the leadership needed to deliver it, top executives must make three interconnected interventions:   .... '