Finding Our Way

Show Notes Help Jesse and Peter better serve you by sharing a bit more about who you are, what you’re into, and what you’d like to hear from us in this listener survey which should just a few minutes to complete. Thank you! Summary: Peter and Jesse are joined by design and business consultant John Gleason. Coming up through P&G’s famous design initiative, we get his perspective on design beyond digital products, such as consumer packaged goods, we explore some significant parallels across industries and design domains with important lessons on the pitfalls that lead to diminishing influence for design leaders, and share what they should advocate in order to break the downward spiral. Help UX and Get a Chance to receive $100! Peter is conducting a global UX and Design Organizational Health survey to better understand the state of our practice and industry. 5 respondents will receive either a $100 gift card or 1 hr of consulting/coaching with Peter. It takes about 10 minutes to complete. Thank you! Transcript Jesse: I’m Jesse James Garrett, Peter: and I’m Peter Merholz. Jesse: And we’re finding our way, Peter: Navigating the opportunities Jesse: and challenges Peter: of design and design leadership, Jesse: On today’s show, is design dead? That’s the question strategy consultant John Gleason asked at a recent design conference panel. The ensuing discussion struck some familiar notes for digital product design leaders, but John Gleason doesn’t come from digital product design. Today, we’ll get his perspective on design beyond digital products, such as consumer packaged goods, the stuff you find on the shelves in grocery and drugstore. We’ll explore some significant parallels across industries and design domains with important lessons on the pitfalls that lead to diminishing influence for design leaders, what they should advocate for, and how to break the downward spiral. Peter: Hi John. Thank you for joining us. John: Delighted to be here, Peter. Thank you. Peter: So you and I met on the internet, specifically LinkedIn, around a discussion that was happening based on an article written in Fast Company that was explaining what this journalist had witnessed at a panel of design leaders that you helped moderate. And the title of the article had the provocative statement: Is Design Dead? So that’s how I’d like to start this conversation with you. Maybe we’re starting at the end, and then this can be a very brief conversation… John: What if I said the answer is yes, end of story? Peter: Then, then, then we wrap up the podcast. Jesse: Thanks everybody for listening. You can find us at findingourway.design. Peter: But seriously, I do want to ask, it is meant to be a provocative, obviously there were discussions happening on that panel and in that room that led to this question. So when you’re faced with a question is design dead, how do you respond? John: Well, we respond by creating a conference to talk about it. So my conference partners and I, David Butler, who was the first head of design at Coca-Cola and Fred Richards, who’s a long time ECD, CCO -type person in the brand design space at big agencies. The three of us came together just simply to talk about the industry itself. And as we compared notes, I have started to see that design is in decline, particularly in the consumer facing space, probably starting eight or nine years ago, kind of as evidenced by shrinking budgets and shrinking organizations and diminishing the reporting structure of design into leadership in those companies. And a lot of the people that I’ve talked to kind of chalk it up to, oh, well that’s the economy. Oh, we’re gonna cut budgets, it’s belt tightening, it’s these things. But I’ve had the chance to peek inside more than a hundred big corporations and a couple thousand design agencies. And so I see patterns that emerged. Jesse: Mm-hmm. John: And that led to the provocation of “Is design dead?” And I think we inherently knew that the answer was no, but I don’t think the rest of the room…so we had about a hundred people design leaders from various companies, mostly consumer facing corporations, but we had telecom, we had financial services, we had healthcare, we had core tech there in the room represented as well. I don’t think most of the people in the room saw the patterns because they only see what’s happening in their company, or the one or two companies they may have been a part of. And so there was certainly evidence, as we started to unfold some of the things, people were, “Oh, just thought that was belt tightening. I just thought that was seasonal. I just thought that was post pandemic economy.” That started the conversation. Jesse: So tell us a little bit about these design teams that you were studying and what was the change that you noticed over time? What was happening with these teams? John: So a, few things that I’ve had the chance to see. I’ve tracked about 200, almost 250 companies since about 2016, 2017. Jesse: Mm-hmm. John: And it’s things like, what agencies do they work with? Have they built in-house teams? What’s the reporting structure of the organizations? And some of the patterns that I’ve seen, Jesse, are 39% of those companies, so 95 companies of the 243, have cut the top one or two levels of their design function… Jesse: mm-hmm. John: … or they’ve downgraded the title to some lower title in the company, or they’ve downgraded the boss, the reporting title of the boss of those organizations. Conversely, only 6%, only 15 of those companies have done the opposite, have elevated design with a higher title or a higher reporting status in the company. 9% of them, 22 companies have eliminated more than half of their entire design function in a single year. Jesse: Wow. John: 84% of them, this one shouldn’t be a surprise to people. 84% of the design leaders or the heads of design reports to a specific function in the company… Jesse: hmm John: Marketing, innovation product. To me, the troubling part of that is 75% of them don’t report to the head of that function. Jesse: hmm. John: They report to somebody lower in that functional hierarchy, which again, to me, signals a deemphasis of design, as a more of a service organization than a beacon for the future. Almost half, 47% of these companies, the head of design is at a senior director or lower. Jesse: Hmm. John: They’re not even in the executive community inside of those companies, nor do they have a career opportunity to grow beyond that director, senior director, some are even senior manager. Jesse: That’s as far as the design ladder reaches in those organizations. John: Right, right. Yeah. Jesse: So I find myself curious about the mandates of these teams and what these teams are being asked to deliver, and whether those mandates are shrinking as the teams scale down and move downstream as you’re describing in these very large organizations. So what kind of design are we talking about here? John: They certainly are diminishing in the scope of influence inside of those companies. So many of them, the design organization in a lot of consumer goods companies is really a packaging function. And it ends up being a decoration function for packaging. Jesse: Okay. John: In some cases, they might be able to influence a better consumer experience, but, in many cases, especially in the, present economic circumstance, it’s cost cut, diminished, streamlined. Jesse: Right. We’re basically talking about boxes and bottles on retail shelves. John: Yeah. Yeah. And, there are some where design sits in an R and D or innovation organization… Jesse: mm-hmm. John: … where design influences, again, the structural component of packaging. Occasionally they’ll influence the juice and the powders and the things that are inside the boxes and bottles. But mostly more powerful R and D organization says, Hey, design, we’ve got that. We’ll take care of that. Jesse: Right. John: And they tend to be looking at very narrow components inside the company. The other interesting thing, particularly as it relates to a more digital component, is many of these companies have assigned a chief digital officer in charge of the digital transformation and digital pathway for those big companies, building their own design teams, largely UX, UI and some development, although development tends to be outsourced and offshored. And they’re not connected to the other design capabilities inside the company. Jesse: Right. Yeah. John: And in fact they sometimes compete. I did some consulting work for a couple of companies where there was somewhat of a bitter, antagonistic relationship between the head of design and the head of digital. Jesse: Yeah. Well this is, I laugh because this is a regular pattern that we saw in our consulting work going back 20 years. That if the digital product design team was more closely aligned with digital than with design, sometimes that created a conflict and that created friction internally in terms of how things got done. I’m curious about the evolution that you’ve seen in these mandates. So in what ways have these design teams had to refocus their efforts as they’ve scaled down? John: I spent 20 years at Procter and Gamble. I was a part of the very earliest portions of P and G’s journey to elevate design. Jesse: Hmm. John: When I joined the design function, there were 60 people in the design function at P and G. When I left, about five years later, there were 350. It was all around strategic design, leadership, the head of design, Claudia Kotchka at the time, and the CEO AG Lafley had a vision for design. So, why I believe design is in decline is most of the design responsibilities that I see today are nowhere close to what I experienced at P and G. Peter: Hmm. Jesse: Hmm John: That’s the decline part, but you know, there are one or two work generations that have come in and out of the workforce since the early two thousands. I’m often brought into corporate organizations either by the head of design who wants to try to figure out how to articulate up to the C-suite about how design is more important, how it should be invited earlier, how it should be organized and not just touching an artifact, you know, a package or a website or a banner or something, but influence the entire enterprise. Jesse: Mm-hmm. John: The C-suite often has no clue what design would do with the rest of the enterprise other than the thing that they had been doing… Jesse: mm-hmm. John: … in the company. And so there’s often that disconnect. Jesse: right John: One of the things that I often see, first of all, there is no school largely for design leaders to step in and talk business. Jesse: Right. John: Very, very few programs. IIT does a nice job. SCAD is beginning to do things like that by building a business innovation component. But largely it’s teaching the tools of the industry. So when somebody lands in one of these important jobs, they speak the language that they know, whatever it is: UX, UI, digital, color theory, communication theory, whatever those things are. And the thing that I have seen is, when they are under duress, when the business pressures start to pile up, most design leaders recess back into becoming uber project managers for the design activities, rather than leaning into the organizational component of influencing structure in humans and leadership. Jesse: Mm-hmm. John: If it gets to that, it begins to spiral. And within two years, that person is often gone because they’re micromanaging their team, and they’re trying to deliver great outputs, but not really influencing… Jesse: Right. John: …where design can influence. Design has a superpower of seeing things that other people can’t see, but often can’t articulate that in the context of the business language. Jesse: It almost suggests that, there’s, like, this gravitational force that pulls leaders down toward this sort of operational value proposition, as opposed to a more strategic value proposition for design as a function, for themselves as leaders, that takes active, ongoing energy to resist for leaders, yeah? John: One of the things I observed at P and G was when design was added as this new strategic capability for the company at the request of the CEO AG Lafley, the other functions felt like they had to defend themselves against design taking the fun stuff away from them. And part of it was, it isn’t trying to take things away. There was a component of let’s make sure the right people are with the right skills, are working on the right things at the right time. The influence of design was intended to try to make everything else better. Jesse: Mm-hmm. John: The ability to step back and really advocate for the user, in our case, the consumer. You know, P&G was pretty well known for consumer research and brand management and marketing, a lot of other things. So the idea that design could step in and knew better than these things that have been in place for 50 or a hundred years, some people kind of took it personally. I earn a lot of enemies in the design space when I say this. I say if a company really wants to elevate design in a truly strategic way for the entire enterprise, it’s my opinion, the first head of design probably should not be somebody with a portfolio. Jesse: Hmm. Who should they be instead? John: It should be somebody that might have come out of the business, might have been a marketer, might have been an innovator, might have been a strategist, but has a high IQ for design because those people know how to have the battles with other people with more stripes. They know how to, play the political game. They know how to influence. And I’m gonna be horrendously unfair and I’m probably gonna get a lot of mail from your listeners. Designers index introvert. Jesse: Mm-hmm. Peter: Yeah. You’re not gonna get any pushback on that. John: Which means I don’t want conflict. I’m gonna run away from conflict and I’m not gonna address it. Whereas Claudia was an accountant by education and a marketer by training. And she had no fear walking into people that had more stripes than her to say, you’re not doing it right. I mean, she threatened a few business unit presidents to say, I’m taking your whole design team because you haven’t treated them well. You don’t respect them, and they all wanna quit, so I’m gonna take them. And of course, you can’t do that. And, you know, then the tete-a-tete occurred, and those are extreme examples, but part of this is, unless a business leader, whatever function you’re in, and I’ll highlight design in particular, unless you’re willing to fall on the sword for some things… Jesse: mm. John: … then, you can expect that the pressures of the business environment and the politics has the risk of crumbling your status in the enterprise. Peter: A couple of thoughts. The first, it’s interesting to hear you say that about that idea of your first head of design not necessarily being someone who came up through the practice. It sounds like Claudia was like that. Jesse and I have had that experience, him more directly than I, with the head of design at Capital One, which was the company that acquired Adaptive Path, was Scott Zimmer, who… his background was in brand and marketing. But he was design mature. He understood the opportunity that design delivered, and this was, you know, over a decade ago, better than almost any design executive I ever met, he knew how to communicate up. He knew how to get senior leadership excited about what designers could do in a way that designers often struggle articulating their own value. So I’ve seen that. I wanna go back though to the design in decline conversation. ‘Cause in order to decline it had to have risen… John: yep. Peter: …before then. And you explain the P and G story where a very savvy CEO invests in this function, makes it strategic. Like AG Lafley clearly had a plan. With Claudia had a kind of lieutenant who could realize that plan. But that’s likely an outlier, Right. Whereas in these other organizations where design was elevated, I’m curious what you see. ‘Cause you know, you’re, coming at us from a consumer packaged goods, maybe more in the advertising, marketing side compared to where Jesse and I live. But my concern for those design leaders who were elevated is that they had not been set up for success by their leadership. Their leadership didn’t know what they were doing, elevating them into those roles. Say we’ve taken a director or senior director of packaging design, we promoted that person into a VP role that had broader design mandate. But this person with a packaging design background knows packaging design. They don’t understand design for innovation, design for new product experience, all of those things. Maybe they tried, maybe they didn’t, doesn’t matter. But at some point, like, because this person hadn’t been set up for success, it would almost be inevitable that there would be a decline, regardless of broader economic conditions. I’m seeing you nod your head. So I’m curious how this could have been handled better by everybody, you know 10 to 15 years ago instead of like, oh, you have a title with the word design in it, so we’re gonna give you more authority, but we’re not gonna necessarily understand the implications of what it means for you to be an executive. We’re just gonna all of a sudden give you that title. it just feels like, this was bound to happen. John: You’re exactly right that it is in fact bound to happen because the vast majority of the companies that I’ve worked with and or studied, where the company chose to make a deliberate attempt to elevate design with a higher title, a new person that they perhaps brought from outside. The first observation I’ve made is most of the senior leaders, the C-suite leaders in those companies they don’t think somebody at a VP, SVP, EVP or Chief title needs to have somebody around them to protect them. Jesse: Mm. John: No other chief or SVP in the company, you know, they’re navigating the politics themselves. The head of R&D, the head of finance, the head of marketing. The most successful of those, where it was elevated, Proctor is one where AG Lafley was, in essence, the protector for Claudia. When Indra Nooyi at PepsiCo, she also was the inventor that design was gonna make a difference at PepsiCo. First elevated somebody internally. Didn’t work so well. There was a big packaging fiasco with Tropicana. But, I give her a lot of credit by not walking away from it after that fiasco and she continued to lean into it. Ultimately hired Mauro Porcini. Peter: Mm. John: David Butler, when he was brought into Coke, there was an influencer behind him that planted the seed that design could be more strategic. Mark Mathieu, who went on to Unilever, then Samsung but in those organizations there were people that were aligned with and connected to those people to help provide some business interference. Jesse: Mm-hmm. John: And in those organizations, they had a longer run and a more strategic run for design. Where the newly appointed head of design steps in, I’ve seen 10 or 15 of these where they were promised access to the CEO and the CMO but that access turned into, oh, I need to prepare three weeks ahead of time and send the deck one week ahead of time in order to have a meeting with the CEO. Whereas the example, and again, I’m super spoiled by this AG Lafley role model. Claudia had a design board on which Ivy Ross was on the board at the time. She was at the Gap or Old Navy. She’s now at Google. Tim Brown was on that board. AG never missed a board meeting. So the relationship that design had with the CEO at P and G was a casual one. Jesse: Right. John: It wasn’t surrounded by formalities and PowerPoint decks and, you know, six weeks lead time. McKinsey did an amazing study on the business value of design in 2018. DMI did something where they created a design value index with 16 or 18 companies, although I think they cherry picked 16 companies that were performing well so that they could track the commercial value. The UK Design Council did it before DMI and then my own observations, I’ve kind of developed this notion of six attributes of what I call design engaged companies, one of which is advocacy. That the senior most people in the company see that design is a critical component of the company and they support it appropriately. There’s access, there’s meetings, there’s, you know, public recognition you know, titles and all those other things that come with advocacy. But it’s just not the two humans. It’s just not a CEO and the head of design. it’s advocating that design needs to touch other parts of the company. Jesse: Mm. John: You know, when I step into a C-suite conversation, I often say, so, you know, how does design play a role in your company? Oh, you know, packaging or product or innovation. and I often touch on things, well, do you have any design talent looking after employee engagement, trying to create a place that more and more people have a passion for wanting to work here? Oh, well, that’s our HR organization. It’s like, you know, with all due respect to the talented human resources people, most of human resources is built to protect the corporation. Peter: Right. Jesse: Indeed. Yeah. John: … to inspire more loyalty to the enterprise. Jesse: So I find myself curious about this notion that there’s a skillset that is needed in order to really drive design at this executive level, that these design leaders have not been able to cultivate within themselves. I work as a coach with lots of design leaders at different stages in this process. And for some folks, they get to that executive level and they realize that like, oh, everything that I’ve learned up to this point is almost completely irrelevant now. John: Right. Jesse: And so I’m curious about like, what are the corners that you’ve seen leaders have to turn as they kind of ascend out of simply overseeing design as a function to actually being an active participant in executive level leadership? John: Well, design leaders recognize that virtually everything they do is part of a team sport. Jesse: Hmm. John: And, it inhibits their ability to articulate what it is we’ve contributed to the enterprise… Jesse: mm-hmm. John: … because it involves so many other people to get a product to market or to create a new experience or whatever those things are. And in most cases, rather than trying to step up and say, we had this impact, they often acquiesce and say nothing. Jesse: Mm. John: And so somebody else often steps in, you know, the ad agency is notorious for stepping in to say, Hey, we, completely repositioned this brand and we did this. We created new experiences, but it was the ad campaign that helped drive a 40% lift in sales. And part of it is, he or she who has data, has power. And design, there’s so much that design does that isn’t measured by data. And so it’s super hard… Jesse: yeah. John: … and to me one of the abilities is, how do I talk about impact? It doesn’t have to be a mathematical calculation or effectiveness. And then the other is, creating a vision. As much as one of design’s superpowers, in my opinion, is creating the future for a product or service or experience. We do a terrible job doing it for ourself and our own organization and how we’re gonna fit in, in an organizational context. Jesse: Mm-hmm. Peter: Yeah. In my coaching and in my masterclass I stress the importance of, I call it having an agenda, just because the word vision can mean multiple things. And so I call it having an agenda, and it’s something that so many design leaders, yeah, lack, like, they don’t realize they need to have their own point of view. Jesse: Point of view, right. Peter: Their own perspective, their own change that they seek, or if they don’t, they end up just getting in a reactive mode. They end up simply responding to whatever’s coming at them because there’s nothing that they’re trying to drive. One of the reasons Jesse and I were interested in having you join us is your background is consumer packaged goods, P and G, more on the marketing, brand, quote unquote consumer side. Our experience is more on the digital side. And I think it’s interesting to consider what’s different, what’s the same. Something that you’ve been touching on, A designer’s and design leader’s ability to connect their work with value and feeling like they need to have every link in the chain specified or they can’t commit to any ownership of it. But I think related to that, you’ve touched on this, but I’m curious what you see in your world, Jesse and I have talked a lot about the primary value of design is in facilitating or multiplying other functions’ ability to succeed as opposed to design delivering direct value. Jesse: Yeah. Peter: You’re nodding your head. So it sounds like you’ve seen something similar, but how do you counsel those leaders to navigate that conversation when their leadership is like, well, what has design done for me lately, and design can’t say I shipped this thing. ‘Cause they didn’t, but they worked with these groups, and through that work, they helped those groups improve what it is they’re doing. What is your approach to telling those stories better? John: I think you’ve struck a nerve on one of the big opportunities for design, because design often is a curious source of questions. What if, how might we, did we look into that,who said that? You know, who are we trying to reach for what purpose? And the business is about, let’s go, I don’t have time for these questions. You know, we gotta get something out the door. And especially in tough economic circumstances, the planning horizon becomes this quarter, next quarter, which isn’t a boundary space that design is very good at. Design is much better… they want to talk about the future of the brand, the consumer, the experience. And somebody at the conference used this rubric of the now, the near, and the far. Design tends to want to talk about the far. The capacity of the business leaders and the business, especially, the more dire the circumstance, the more they want to talk about the now. Jesse: Right. John: And so a CEO might only have capacity for 1% of their time on the far, even though that should be a part of what he or she is really thinking about for the corporation. But design wants to spend their time beyond the near and into the far, and so there’s, a misalignment of planning horizons. Jesse: Well, it’s a tricky place that design leaders find themselves in, too, because I think that often they feel like they are like standing on the dock with a stack of life preservers, watching these executives flail in the water, going, “Hey, I can, I can throw you this thing at any time. And you’ll be good.” And they’re like, “No, no. Focus on your current work.” Right? And so like, how do, how do you strike that balance of actually activating the real value proposition of design as a function, actually, you know, maybe rescuing some of these C-levels out of the water before they drown, while also making them feel like they’re getting what they want from you. John: Well, let me, continue your metaphor of the executives flailing in the bay. Jesse: Mm-hmm. John: When an an executive is in that circumstance, who are the likely people or the likely functions they are likely to go to first… Jesse: mm-hmm. John: … in the attempt of trying to save the ship or save themselves? Design is often the last one, Peter: They will go to marketing, they’ll go to sales, they’ll go to whomever. Yeah. John: They’ll go finance, they’ll go to supply chain, they’ll go to regulatory, you know, depending on the business and where the stress is. and that’s where I think design needs to learn how to lean in to show that they’re a business solver, not a creator of an artifact… Jesse: mm-hmm. John: …you know, code or a device or something. One of the best examples, and I use this example all over the place, is Logitech. Bracken Darrell, the former CEO hires Alistair Curtis. And everywhere Bracken went internally and externally, he said, I hired Alistair to help create Logitech 3.0. And so advocacy. Bracken set the vision for Alistair, and much of that continues now under Haneke Faber and Molin. Peter: Hmm. John: And, to me, part of it is, how do you empower the design lead so that the rest of the business expects you to be invited to the important business stuff. Jesse: Right. John: And in fact, lead some of the important business stuff. If the senior most people continue to see design as a creator of artifacts and implementer of execution, then it’s super hard for that person leading that function to elevate beyond. Peter: Well, this begs a question that I have been asked for 25 years, So we know that design seems to need executive sponsors. You’ve stated that your research has shown it, in a way that other functions don’t need executive sponsors, right? You mentioned that advocacy role is one of your six indicators of a kind of a design mature, design ready environment. That begs a question, how do you realize that executive sponsorship, someone like Bracken, someone like AG Lafley, someone like Ginny Rometti at IBM, someone like Carl Bass at Autodesk, these CEOs knew that design could help solve their problems, so they didn’t need anyone to educate or evangelize. Jesse and I, and I’m sure you do as well, but Jesse and I, the vast majority of the design leaders we talk to or work with, their leadership are not advocates. They might not be hostile… Jesse: yeah. Peter: … right? They might be even curious, but they’re not advocates. And so the challenge that, so many design leaders face is how do they turn those executives into advocates? Can you even do that, right? There’s some commentary over the last 15 or so years that, like, if an executive doesn’t get it, there’s very little you can do to help them get it. Like, it’s not like it’s a hidden mystery. It’s not that no one knows that design can help business. McKinsey’s written about it. HBR has written about it. Roger Martin wrote about it like AG Lafley proved it through the P and G success. And so is it a fool’s errand to try to convince or persuade that executive to advocate for you? Or is that worthwhile? And if it is, what have you seen, at least in the organizations that you’re looking at, that starts turning that tide so that executives who may have been, again, not hostile– if they’re against design, there’s almost nothing you can do–but, are you aware of mechanisms that, have helped turn that corner. John: There are some things that I’ve seen. There are some things I recommend. One of the underlying reasons that I believe design is being dismantled and diminishing, is what I call C-Suite ignorance. Part of that is there are new C-suite members being minted every week. Many of them have never been exposed to the idea that design could be anything but… Jesse: right. John: …a decoration station. So they just don’t know. And, the other reality that often occurs is the genetic makeup of people that reach C-suite status or senior executive status, they get to a point where they can no longer admit they don’t know something. So they can’t admit that they don’t know that design is or isn’t something. So they lean in to whatever they believe or perceive or have experienced design to be in their past. Jesse: Yeah. John: I mentioned earlier that I’m often hired by heads of design trying to articulate up. The other group that hires me are the C-Suite people who want a discreet advisor who’s gonna whisper in their ear about, tell me the things I should know about design. Jesse: Mm-hmm. John: They’re not gonna publicize broadly that they don’t know, then, and, you know, they ask me to be discreet about the relationship. And it’s a Cyrano de Bergerac kind of thing. I try to tell them what they ought to know, and how they ought to play that out to their organization. And some of it is just purely an exploration. Why should I care? I keep reading that design is something I should know about, you know, why don’t I know more about it? Why isn’t it more prevalent? And I think part of it is, nobody questions the existence of a chief marketing officer. No one questions the existence of a chief financial officer. But design is a confusing word. It’s a confusing concept. It’s a noun, it’s a verb, it’s an outcome. It’s an organization. And most people in the business context see it as the participation or creation of an artifact, not necessarily a way of thinking or a mindset so to your question, Peter, small wins is a big successful pathway. But oftentimes, if you read marketing publications, the typical CMO has an 18 to 22 month time window of their credibility and existence in a company. Jesse: Mm-hmm. Right. Peter: That’s it. Not even two years. Jesse: Yeah. John: Not even two years. So they’re not looking at things that are gonna be three years from now. They need to go prove and deliver now… Jesse: mm-hmm. John: … which again impacts the ability for design to help influence and be a partner in that, delivery. Something we did at P and G, Claudia Kotchka, in the very early stages, brought in IDEO to run a hands-on work session for the top 50 executives in the company. And it was very much a hands-on exercise, that had nothing to do with P&G products, but more about how do you rethink and re-see, and how do you stay focused on the user and the consumer, and how do you build better experiences? It was a half day workshop and, you know, imagine 50 high performing type A’s sitting in a room being led through a workshop, but there were varying degrees of impatience, I would imagine. But a part of it was, then they translated it to a business opportunity for each of the businesses that were in the room. So, okay, we did this generic thing altogether. Here’s how we do this. Focus on the consumer, how might you create something. Now, and they literally handed things out to say, we’ve looked into most of your other businesses, and here are some things that could be, as we look at consumer behavior, things you might be interested in looking at. Now it probably was a great commercial for IDEO, too, inside of this group to say we’ve already thought about some opportunities. But, the economic circumstances were more positive. They weren’t belt tightening times like they are now or 2009. Capital was very cheap to acquire. So there were circumstances that I think accelerated our ability to do things like that. Jesse: Right. I feel like all of this connects to a question that I often ask my leadership coaching clients when they are stepping into a role for the first time, which is, what are you inheriting? And yes, you’re inheriting a team and you’re, yes, you’re inheriting a product and you’re, yes, you’re inheriting a legacy, but you’re also inheriting a whole bunch of expectations. Expectations that maybe were set by the leader before you, maybe were set by leaders that these executives, to your point, had other exposure to, that may have nothing to do with what you think the value proposition of you and your team and design as a function actually is. And so it then becomes this game of resetting expectations, and in a lot of ways listening. Just simply listening for what these executives think you’re there to provide and figuring out how to start to lay out the stones on the path that will take them to the value proposition that you actually feel like your team has to offer. But that’s a time consuming process. It is not something that happens overnight. And to your point, in a lot of these cases, 21 months is the horizon. So how do you balance those things? John: I think you touched on something really important, Jesse, is the idea of, a design leader that might be interviewing for a gig inside of a company, are they asking the right questions about what does it look like today… Jesse: mm-hmm. John: …because one of the things that I’ve seen is most internal talent acquisition teams inside of companies have no clue how to hire for this role or even for the whole function. Jesse: Mm-hmm. John: They think they need a portfolio, they think they need, you know, these things. And if they’re not getting help from a recruiter who knows this space, especially for a critically important role like the head of design or a VP of design. One of the things that I coach the design leaders is, every meeting you have with your colleagues and counterparts in the company, you should be planting the “what if” seed somewhere in the organization to say, What if it looked different? What if it could be here? It’s a super inexpensive way to try to get them to bite, you know, to lean in and say, you know, why would you say that that’s something we should look at? Then you can lean in with consumer data, or you can lean in with trend data, or you can lean in with economic circumstances. The other thing that I advise every design leader I coach with is, put a gigantic bogey in the ears and the minds of your senior leaders. You know, hey, I think I could help get us a billion dollars of incremental revenue if, you know, and then lay out, have your hostage list there. I need a team of this size. I need budgets. I need, you know, advice, I need your advocacy. I need these things, but I think I could help lead us toward an incremental billion dollars in revenue. And, almost none of them actually do it because they’re scared to death to be accountable for a number that they don’t have full responsibility of, How do you go deliver it? Jesse: The big, hairy, audacious goal. John: Yeah, exactly. Part of it, Jesse, to your question, keep planting seeds, keep leaning in, keep pushing, keep challenging, keep questioning, so that the business eventually sees… One of the things I often see, especially in consumer goods, is the business leader saying, we don’t have the time and we don’t have the budget to go do that ethnography study. Jesse: Right. John: We already know what we need to know about the consumer. And, here’s the idea that we’re gonna launch. And oftentimes it’s not a bad idea, but it’s not gonna be the disruptive category-changing domain-creating idea. It’s gonna be a conservative… in most cases, consumer goods companies are notorious for calling flavored line extensions, a massive new innovation. Jesse: Hmm. John: And it’s like, I don’t think the consumer thinks cinnamon is particularly innovative. Peter: The time dimension’s an interesting one. And I had a realization as you were talking about the 21 months, as you’re talking about how design often succeeds when it’s able to look far, and the results of truly impactful design take more than 21 months to be realized. But on the flip side, what I also see with design leaders is an impatience that things aren’t as they should be now. Like, they know what that change should be. They know we should be doing more ethnographic interviews. They know we should be running projects in this different way. They have a sense of, it’s evident how this should be all operating, why aren’t we just doing it that way? And so in some areas there’s this impatience that gets in their own way. You know, you’re talking about every conversation, move things a little bit, a little bit, a little bit. Design leaders are like, why? We know what we should be doing. Why aren’t we just doing the thing? And so I’m curious your thoughts on squaring that designerly impatience and frustration that we’re not doing the thing that is evidently the right thing to do now, with this kind of two- to three- or however many -year time horizon for design to actually be realizing an impact and what you see in your world. John: Well, if I use the concept of A/B testing Peter: Sure. John: out of the UX/UI space… Jesse: hm. John: … if a courageous, and maybe insane, design leader would say, okay, we’ll do it your way and not do this research, but I’m gonna secretly go figure out a way to get the funding to go do the research and I’m gonna create a parallel project and then compare the outcomes of what it is that is created, or envisioned, from it, to begin to show the business. Because the astonishing thing that I see from more and more big consumer goods companies is they spend a lot of time doing what I call the CYA research. “I’m gonna do a test of the package just before I launch it. Not to say we’re gonna kill the project or change the project, but I just wanna make sure I don’t get fired if it goes south.” Whereas if they just spent half that money on the upfront curiosity side, the impatience of the business to go deliver something this quarter, next quarter, now, doesn’t provide the ability for design to go do the alternative explorations. Which is why, the safe flavored line extension and those things become kind of the standard fare of consumer goods companies, and not terribly different than the software digital space where, you know, I’m gonna do a live A/B test. And the user of this travel website’s not gonna know that this set of people are gonna have these buttons in this place and this set are gonna have this button. But part of that gets to, how do you truly affect change? And I, think there needs to be a, if we do it this way, here’s the outcome, here’s the likely outcome. If we do it this way, it can be a bigger payout. The challenge is, if I’m a marketing director or a CMO, am I really gonna fund something that isn’t gonna launch for three years? Jesse: Mm-hmm. John: It might cost me $5 million between now and then to launch it and have no results and it could die along the way. Or am I safer delivering that line extension that is good. It, you know, it’s gonna, it’s gonna drive something… Peter: 10% improvement is better than zero. John: Correct. Jesse: You mentioned affecting change and change is something that we talk a lot about over here on the digital side and design’s responsibility for and toward change, and I’m curious about your point of view on design and its relationship to change. John: I believe design should be a catalyst for change. I believe that design should be an arbiter of culture inside of companies. One of the other of the six attributes I talk about is, Is the enterprise people-centered? Because one of the things I often see is most designers and, even UXers talk about being centered around the user… Jesse: mm-hmm. John: …and having an empathy for the people that are gonna buy my product, use my product, you know, use my service, experience the thing I’m creating. But then they say, oh man, but John over in supply chain, that guy’s a jerk. He’s a barrier to me. He’s always getting in the way. So the idea of empathy only seems to apply to the work you’re doing for the thing you’re creating. Peter: Right. Yep. Jesse: Right, right. Right. John: One of the big opportunities for design is having empathy for the senior most leaders in the company. Do I understand the pressure they’re under, and what they have to deliver? As opposed to feeling like they don’t understand me and they’re just laying unreasonable mandates on me. So a part of it is, this idea of change, this idea of culture, I think a lot of designers, when they’re creating that vision for the future and, potentially that next big thing, they’re not really thinking about what has to change to drive it. Jesse: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It puts the design leader in such an interesting place too, because especially if you’re fortunate enough to be at an executive level, at a C level or a VP level, when you’re closely engaged with a larger executive team around the executive level decisions that drive an organization, it can often feel like your job is to create alignment, right? Your job is to align and be aligned, and find the alignment somehow in the room to create the harmony and the unity across the executive team, to genuinely deliver on a strategy for the organization. But if your mandate is to be the one person in the room who is like, ” Hmm. The way that we’re doing things is not good enough,” your strategy needs something more. It can feel like it really puts you in an awkward position, right? As an executive level leader, how do these leaders deal with that? John: Using the life raft example of the executives flailing in the harbor: is design the voice in that room that people are gonna listen to and believe? Jesse: Right, right, right, right. John: When they say something has to change. Jesse: Mm-hmm. John: You know, there’s a gentleman that I count as a friend in the design industry, Chuck Jones, who is a multiple-time chief design officer. And he’s very candid about the things that design doesn’t do very well, but he’s also very candid about, you know, when you walk into that new job as the head of design, you need to walk in with a point of view and a vision. And he told a story at the conference where he walked into one of his roles and he said, within some short period of time, four, six weeks, he said, I think I’m reporting to the wrong place. Jesse: Mm. Mm-hmm. John: And he made the case to say, this is the outcome if design continues to report as current, here’s the opportunity by changing it. And of course he had to have a few other meetings with important people to go make that change. The challenge is, if you can state the need for the change in the context of the business, not, not just an opinion, critically helps your case. If you can bring a champion or an advocate along with you, ideally a peer that’s in another function, Jesse: Yeah. John: ” Hey, I agree because this needs to change.” Otherwise people are gonna take the path of least resistance. I mean, human nature is to avoid conflict, avoid change, complain about change, especially if it’s difficult. It’s like the old adage. Practice how you play. And if you can’t practice in difficult circumstances when it’s game time, you’re not gonna play in them. Jesse: Right, right. Peter: So Jesse and I, and it sounds like you as well, John, think about this idea of design as an organizational function. it provides clarity into the real role of design. Not to make things, not to artifact, whatever, but, like, it is a function that engages in a set of activities to realize some value to the business. The challenge is design, as the three of us would like it to be understood, conflicts with the quarterly culture, quarterly requirements, needing to report to Wall Street, all the things we’ve been saying, right? That quarterly mindset that so many companies embrace constricts design, so that it’s no longer design, it’s basically production. Someone else has told you what to do and you’re executing on it. That makes me wonder, is that true of other functions as well, or are other functions perfectly happy operating in a quarterly mode, and design is different? And, I think it very well could be. But then, in that quarterly culture, things become more acute depending on the health of that business. And so the next thought is, is design only available as a kind of luxury function for those businesses that have already realized some success and some stability and don’t have to be as quarterly minded, and can have a longer term point of view? Are they the only organizations that are really able to embrace design, ’cause they’re the ones who can allow design the space it needs to succeed. But then that kind of conflicts with, again, what the three of us know that design could be doing to help struggling companies, right? Like it’s a set of tools that can be useful in a lot of different contexts. The interesting story is how can design help a company that’s struggling, succeed? But those companies aren’t willing to spend the time to allow design to have that change. So the only companies that are really embracing design as fully as they could are those that were probably doing okay already. Jesse: You need to be successful to have design, and you need to have design to be successful. John: Well, you’ve got it, podcast over. Thank you, Pete. Thank you, Jesse. Peter: As someone who’s, you know, more of a business background than Jesse or I, operating perhaps at an altitude or with a set of companies that are different than the ones that Jesse and I, more traditional organizations say, how do we change the conversation then, so that design is not simply seen as a luxury? Jesse: Where is the traction for design leaders within this context? John: One of the interesting corollaries to what you laid out, Peter, is a design community inside a corporation, if they can create a cadence of a longer term pipeline, then it makes it easier to accelerate things inside the quarterly dynamic. Jesse: Mm-hmm. John: So, if I do have the luxury of having a very small portion of my portfolio that’s a five or 10 year lighthouse project to say, you know, where could this company go in the future and have a, you know, a slightly larger one that’s five years and a slightly larger one that’s three. And then the majority of the things we’re working on are inside of two years, then it becomes, you can play to the acceleration needs of the business to play the quarterly game. The challenge is there isn’t often appetite at the C level to suddenly create that pipeline if it didn’t exist.. Jesse: Mm-hmm. John: …before and the monthly, quarterly, you know, this quarter, this year, kind of dynamic. If that becomes the exclusive of the portfolio I’m working on, you can almost never get to that longer term. ‘Cause somebody above you has to approve the budget and the time and the resources to focus on this thing. I’ve taught a four-day design thinking class in an MBA program in a university. And I bring a brand partner in. I get the students into a consumer’s home based on the product. And the dynamic when I’m selling this to potential brand partners, the way I sell it is, I want the project that you think is important, but you haven’t been able to fund it for the last three years. The company hasn’t seen it important enough to put official funding behind it. And I’m gonna show you how design thinking can help you accelerate an opportunity. And of course, they’re, you know, what can you do in four days and, you know, all these other things. We show them that, hey, two consumer visits can be better than none. And two consumer visits can be better than all of the quantitative survey data that you might collect that isn’t watching a human do something or not do something. Jesse: Right. So, you know, I feel like there’s a lot within the stories that you’ve shared with us and the research that you’ve done that suggests diminishing opportunity for design and for design leaders, in a lot of ways, and increasing obstacles. And I find myself wondering, where is the bright spark within all of this, and where is the opportunity that maybe design leaders ought to be giving more attention to right now? John: Coming out of the conference event that we held, we had three kind of principles that founded. The first was the question, Is design dead? The second was, you’re not alone and you don’t have to do this alone. The third was, “so what.” We wanted to have a “so what” component to every session. You don’t have to do it alone is an observation that I’ve had, and no doubt you all have seen it as you’ve poked into different companies and met with a myriad of leaders. Everybody thinks they’re fighting a historically unique battle because they don’t get out and talk to their peers. As a result, they end up fighting it themselves without a roadmap. And almost everybody that attended the conference used the term therapy. This was great. I realized I’m not alone. But then the, “so what” thing kicked in? And we said, okay, so what are we gonna do about this? And so I do think that letting people learn from each other, not just from people like the two of you and I that might drop in for a period of time, and then we drop out, and get people comfortable with: What have you done? What have you tried? And use the massive community of design as a way of trying to help revive and resuscitate the opportunity to carry it forward. I’ve got a great deal of passion for trying to see design change the trajectory and try to help drive that. And I do think that we need more examples of where design created an unexpected outcome. Jesse: Fantastic. I love that vision. I love the call to design leaders to be those examples and provide those examples that inspire the community. John Gleason, thank you so much for being with us. John: Jesse, Peter, thank you so much for the invitation. A amazing conversation, and obviously we could talk for three or four more days. Jesse: Yeah, absolutely. Peter: Yes. Thank you so much. Jesse: Where can people find you on the internet if they want to track you down and learn more about what you’re up to? John: Well, my LinkedIn profile is there to find me or John at GetaBetterView.com. Jesse: Fantastic. John, thank you so much. John: I enjoyed this. Thank you. Jesse: For more Finding Our Way, visit findingourway.design for past episodes and transcripts. You can now follow Finding Our Way on LinkedIn as well. For more about your hosts, visit our websites, petermerholz.com and jessejamesgarrett.com. If you’re curious about working with me as your coach, book your free introductory session at JesseJamesGarrett.com slash free coaching. If you’ve found value in something you’ve heard here today, we hope you’ll pass this episode along to someone else who can use it. Thanks for everything you do for others, and thanks so much for listening.

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In this insightful conversation, Audrey Crane, a partner at Design Map and a seasoned Silicon Valley consultant, shares her expertise on the evolving landscape of design. She highlights the changing mandates for design, explaining the unique power consultants have over in-house teams. Audrey discusses the intersection of creativity and constraints, the evolution of design leadership roles, and the urgent need for better collaboration between design and product teams. She also addresses the concerning decline in design investment and its potential industry repercussions.

Transcript Jesse: I’m Jesse James Garrett,  Peter: and I’m Peter Merholz. Jesse: And we’re finding our way,  Peter: Navigating the opportunities  Jesse: and challenges  Peter: of design and design leadership,  Jesse: Welcome to the Next Phase. On today’s show, we’re joined by Gaurav Mathur, VP of Design for Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart. He’ll share with us his perspective on the big issues facing design leaders in India today, including hiring and training for junior designers, as well as design leaders making the case for the business impact of design, and the opportunities for design-led startups in the Indian market. Peter: Thank you so much for joining us today. Gaurav: Thank you, Peter. Thank you, Jesse, for having me here. I’ve been a follower since Adaptive Path, and it’s wonderful to be speaking with both of you. Peter: Oh, awesome.  Jesse: Thank you so much. Peter: It would be good to get a sense of who you are and what you do. So, how do you introduce yourself and how do you talk about your career? Gaurav: Sure. So currently, I’m the VP of Design at Flipkart. So Flipkart is a e-commerce company in India. Before Flipkart, I headed design for Myntra. Myntra is also an e-commerce company, but focuses on fashion and lifestyle. And it also happens to be a Flipkart Group company. So I have been in the e-commerce domain for probably, like, nine years or so now, and before that I worked with the SaaS division of Citrix. The SaaS division used to make products like GoToMyPC, GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, et cetera. I also had a brief entrepreneurial journey where I was the co-founder of a design company and we were providing design services, to get our bread and butter essentially, but also building some educational products on the site. I studied design and architecture a long time ago. So I have been a designer at heart. Peter: Excellent. Let’s focus on your more recent experience, both Myntra and Flipkart. One of the reasons we were interested in speaking with you is, you know, our viewpoint is very North American. So, I sometimes work with companies that have design teams in India, cause they’ve got some development teams in India, but they’re usually still like doing design for a North American or European audience. And I know with Myntra and Flipkart, you’re really focused on working within the Indian market. So , tell us a little bit more about these businesses and what your role is, specifically let’s say with Flipkart, leading design there. Gaurav: Sure. So Flipkart is a horizontal e-commerce platform, and it’s a marketplace that allows sellers to come on board and sell all kinds of products. We categorize these products under categories like fashion, beauty, electronics, mobiles, large air conditioners, refrigerators, et cetera. And Flipkart also manages the supply chain, warehouses, logistics, and the last mile delivery of products so that we can deliver a better customer experience overall. So the design team at Flipkart has the product designers, or UX designers essentially, that work across all kinds of products. We also have a visual design team that works on visual merchandising for various category stores. This team also manages the design of sale events. We have a UX research team, and we’ve recently integrated the market research function, so that we are able to create a unified research and insights op for the company.  Peter: And that’s within your team?  Gaurav: Yeah, that’s all within the design team. We call it the One Design Team at Flipkart. Besides this, we also have a small content team, because Flipkart is available in 11 other languages, 11 Indian languages besides English. So there’s a bunch of content work that we do, and I feel that my primary role is essentially to act as an orchestrator for this multidisciplinary org. And I also engage with product and business leaders in the company to achieve org goals. Peter: How many people are in your org? Gaurav: We are about 100… 110 people across UX, visual design, research and content. Peter: So you have a little over a hundred folks in your org. It sounds like you’re designing for all the audiences in this marketplace, the merchant side, the seller side, internal.  You mentioned this one design team. Has that always been the case or, has it kind of evolved to this single unified design organization over time? Gaurav: Yeah. That’s a great question. And I think it has evolved over time. So when I joined, for example, the team that works on the seller platforms was not part of this team, and we eventually integrated it. And that’s been a process, I think, it’s been a journey of integrating different parts into a single One design org. So we think of users in three broad buckets. The first is shoppers that come on Flipkart to buy products. And the experience that we give to our shoppers is primarily on mobile devices because that’s where most Indians shop. They shop on mobile devices, not so much on the desktop website. So that’s a large, large base that we cater to.  The second set of products that we build are for sellers. And this is essentially our seller platform where sellers come and manage their listings, their catalog. They’re able to place ads, configure offers, et cetera.  The third set of users are essentially the partners that work in warehouses, in the logistic space, and the delivery partners that manage the last mile delivery. So we create a lot of products that get used in the warehouses also apps for the delivery agents. So these are products that get used across the supply chain. And in terms of the teams we have a part of the product design team that focuses on the B2C experience. So it builds all the features and products in our mobile apps and on the mobile website as well as on the desktop website. And then we have a team that works on the B2B or the enterprise product. So these are products that the sellers use and our partners use.  So my time is split across these teams. I just love to get into the details of what we are building. And the design details, so I’m really passionate about solving navigation, interaction design, and visual design. So I have time set up in my calendar review all the key projects that are happening across all these products. Jesse: In such a complex environment, what do you think is important for design to advocate for? Gaurav: Yeah, I think both these areas have slightly different kinds of goals. So when we think of shoppers, I think we want to deliver a very, very delightful experience to them. We want to ease their shopping journey. We want them to find the products fairly quickly, and get to the right set of products with ease, and people come with very specific requirements. Sometimes a person may have a very specific requirements and sometimes they may just be window shopping. So we need to cater to all these kinds of users.  When we think of enterprise products, I think the primary goal is to just make them really, really efficient. So think of someone whose product’s at the warehouse, and putting the label and then just getting them ready to be shipped. Now, this is a very repetitive task, and if you’re able to shave off even those few seconds for this person, we just make the whole process very efficient. Jesse: What do you see is your role as design leader in creating the environment where these kinds of experiences can be delivered? Gaurav: Yeah, I think, building a really competent design team, I think is the first goal that I have. And also growing this team. It’s not just enough to build a team, but then to grow this team and grow the people in this team as well. Also, to facilitate or to kind of bring together people from different domains together. So, for example, if you’re solving for grocery, we may have a product designer looking at grocery. We may also have a visual designer looking at grocery we’ll also have a researcher looking at grocery. So getting this pod created and facilitating this journey with the product managers and with the engineers so that we are able to build and deliver a really high quality product. I think my job comes into play in different kinds of forms. I also want the design team to do a lot of innovation, and I call it design-led innovation. So I believe designers are at the right intersection because they are able to understand user needs fairly well and then they’re also able to visualize what the product could be. And so therefore, they could be these facilitators, or the catalyst for driving innovation in the org. And therefore, as one of the north stars that I’ve set for the design team, design-led innovation is also one of them. We also want to build our reputation within the org through the work that we do and through the impact that we create. So I think, just like I said, like just orchestrating and facilitating some of these becomes a very critical area for me to focus on. Besides this, obviously, like engaging with the product and business leaders is the other area that I kind of spend a lot of time. So we have product leaders that work across these products and just within the app we have multiple product managers looking at, for example, how do we acquire new users, retain them? How do we facilitate journeys across categories? How do we optimize our core shopping funnel, et cetera? so just working with them, understanding their strategic areas of investment and aligning the design team’s work with these strategic areas becomes a goal. Jesse: So it sounds like you’ve been able to build up this really operationally robust design function, this really fairly mature design function. You’ve got a range of different design capabilities from visual design through to research. Those capabilities are being integrated in meaningful ways that are kind of driving this broader impact. It feels like what you’re describing is a fairly mature state for a design team. I wonder about what it took to get to that place to bring the business along with, or maybe just to capitalize on, the opportunities that presented themselves to demonstrate the value to make the case for a robust mature design function like this. Gaurav: Yeah, I think I have to give credit to a lot of consumer apps that kind of exist out there. And they’ve set a really high bar for design in the industry. Specifically, if you look at the consumer Internet industry, the design bar is fairly high. And so design is today a very well recognized function in these orgs. So the role of evangelizing is kind of come down for me. I don’t have to really sell design. We get requests from product managers, from business teams to go and dig deeper into specific areas and solve for them in a better way.  But I think why that part has been easier, I think, influencing some of the decisions from a very customer centric view has been the focus area. And I think within the tech function, if I look at, for example, product management and engineering they are very familiar with how design operates and they collaborate with us day in and day out in building and shipping products.  But as I move away from the tech team, I feel that the awareness of design kind of slightly goes down. And specifically, when I talked to some of the business leaders they may not be as aware as, for example, a product manager about the role of design. And for awareness building, in the past I’ve just put the work out there and we’ve done it in different ways. We’ve done it in a format of a road show, for example, we’ve also done it in the form of just a UX open house where we would transparently share the work that we are doing as the design team and let people come in view this work, comment on it, critique it, give their feedback and in the process we are able to build partners across the org, and once they see what design can bring to the table, and how design could impact their objectives, how it could enable their functions, they’re fairly eager to cooperate and collaborate, and also invest in both design and research. Peter: Where are you located within the organization, within the org chart? To whom are you reporting and who are your partners? Gaurav: So I’m part of the larger tech team at Flipkart. I report to the chief product and technology officer at Flipkart, and my peers are some of the other product and engineering leaders in the org. So there are different views that look at different kinds of products that we’re building, like for shoppers or sellers for partners. And my stakeholders would primarily be the product managers and engineers, but also the business leaders. And these business leaders primarily drive category functions. So they could be leaders leading one or more categories. For example, fashion or mobiles and electronics.  Peter: You mentioned how you’re wanting to show impact, build a reputation and showing impact, but a challenge that design teams often have is demonstrating impact of their own accord, right? Because typically design’s value is realized through partnership and collaboration. So I’m wondering how you navigated that. If your boss, the CPTO has specific expectations of you and design that you are held accountable for, like, you know, this is something we hear from a lot of design leaders, which is around, how do I demonstrate value? How do I show my impact? Like what has that journey been like for you and clarifying design’s distinct impact? Gaurav: Yeah. So I’m accountable for certain common company level metrics, for example. And these metrics are around customer and engagement. And also some new growth areas. The second area that I’m accountable for are a number of product metrics. And I kind of co-shared metrics with the product team members who are running some of these strategic initiatives and experiments. And then third are like the people goals that include just the team health, how are we growing and retaining people, things like that. I also have some like more inward looking goals as part of the design team. And these tend to be around like driving more efficiency within the design team with the design system that we’re building, getting the design system adopted across different parts of the product. And since it’s a fairly large product, the adoption is not a very straightforward activity. So we look for opportunities, you know, whenever we are updating a part of the product, we also adopt the new design system. There are also responsibilities around enabling research. And getting research to influence some of the key decisions in the org. So there are different kinds of activities that the research team does and kind of leads ahead. We evaluate our products, but we also do some formative work, and influence the product roadmaps. Jesse: Influencing the product roadmaps is one of these things that we hear from design leaders over and over again, that they are desperate to try to find some way to create in their organizations. And I’m curious about your thoughts about how to create that influence over the product roadmap, where is it appropriate for design to be leaning in and contributing toward these strategic decisions that, in a lot of people’s minds, technically sit outside the domain of design. Gaurav: Interesting question. So, I don’t think there is one way to look at it. I think different products are at different points in their journey. And there are different kinds of opportunities to influence them. So, for example, if you are making incremental changes on a product, I think a lot of influencing happens in the way the designers and product managers collaborate and shape it together.  If you’re looking at something that’s fairly new, a new initiative, something we’ve not done before, I think a lot of influencing can be done through research work and through some of the early prototyping work that we do and validate with our customers. So I think there are just different kinds of models that work in different situations. But broadly having this thought of influencing and representing the customers in every discussion. Having that thought at the back of your minds, as a designer in these discussions, really.  Another area that I’ve often found where designers play a key role is kind of safeguarding the customer interests and also safeguarding the design to some extent. We, we often get into discussions about where all can we highlight the offers that we have on different products? What’s the right space? What’s the right kind of tonality for it? How large should it be, et cetera. And that’s another area where I feel designers play a key role, in safeguarding the experience Jesse: I think one of the challenges in that is engaging with audiences who don’t necessarily have design as a language, and helping them see, honestly, sometimes just see the difference between two different design directions and to be able to help them see the potential impact of that. How do you support and elevate your teams in their ability to build those bridges with people who don’t necessarily share the same language, so to speak, of design? Gaurav: I don’t think we’ve done anything special here. I think a lot of the design awareness gets created through the discussions that we are part of, and how we present the designs, how we present the customer viewpoints. But we’ve not looked at special workshops, training programs or design thinking workshops, anything of that sort, in the organization. It’s just the collaborative style of working that kind of leads to this. Jesse: So you keep, kind of, keeping it alive day to day, rather than kind of making these big bold statements with these big training programs or initiatives and so forth. Peter: But kind of to that point, something I’ve been wondering is the purview of design. You know, you mentioned it’s a unified design team, one design team, product design, visual design, both UX research and market research, which to me suggests there’s a potential for design to be even broader than your boss’s organization. Like, there could be touchpoints outside of product and technology. Maybe I’m mistaken, but, given the complexity of the ecosystem that Flipkart is operating in, there’s a lot of potential for design as a practice to influence all kinds of things, to influence… you mentioned last mile, it could be even potentially real world customer facing interactions or something, which might not be part of, you know, a product and technology group. And I’m just wondering how you see the scope of all the things that design could touch. Are you fairly circumscribed within technology, or are you, you know, working on things outside of what would be considered typical product and technology? Gaurav: Yeah. Well, I think if you look at purely from a product perspective and the kind of products we are building, then they tend to remain in the tech space largely. But if you look at some of the interactions that we have with our customers, so, for example, researchers and designers together often run researches with our CX teams, and we reach out to customers through them. We go and look at how the warehouse operations work, how the delivery partners are delivering, the kind of challenges that they have, when they are operating in different kinds of environments. Tier Two cities are very different from metros in India. And what kind of challenges do these people have in navigating through the day? So designers do go out and interact with a varied set of users. All the three sets that I mentioned earlier. But when it comes to building products, I think it still remains in the purview of what the larger tech team does at Flipkart. We do interact heavily with our business teams. We understand how they work with some of our suppliers, sellers as well. And, what are their goals? How are they meeting their P&L goals? And we figured out innovative ways of kind of working together in this journey. Peter: Earlier, you mentioned design-led innovation, which was a goal for you, an objective that you’ve set for the team. And I’m wondering, like, literally how that works in terms of what is necessary to make a space for your team to propose, new opportunities, new solutions, right, that might not be on anyone’s roadmap yet, right? Are you able to peel away a group of people for two or three months to have them work on something?  Like, there’s an investment there that has to be made, right? If people are working on design-led innovation, they’re not working on the next iteration of the product experience. So like, how do you make the space to enable that and, get whatever approvals you need from your boss or whomever in recognizing that, that is a worthwhile effort? Gaurav: Sure. So I actually feel that a lot of innovation comes when designers actually spend a lot of time with the problem at hand. So for example, if I’m a designer working on a specific project at Flipkart. And if I’m able to wrap my head around that problem together with the researcher, then I may have unique insights that will help me innovate much faster than what the rest of the org is kind of thinking about at this time. We do create some special time as well for designers. We do what we internally call as a design jam. So this is just, it’s like a hackathon, but for designers. We give time and space to designers to come up with new ideas. We ran this one year and then we also realized that there is also like a tech hackathon that happens at Flipkart. And so the next year, we ran this before the tech hackathon so that some of these design ideas could then feed into the tech hackathon. With that kind of a process, we are able to see something end to end. We are able to see something that got started in the design hackathon, but also got carried forward in the tech hackathon, and we were able to build a POC out for people to play with. And once it’s tangible, people are able to react to it a little better and it also has a higher potential to to see the light of the day in the hands of the customers. So that’s an activity that we’ve been doing every year now. And it’s been quite successful so far. Jesse: So, you know, it’s interesting what we’ve been hearing for the last couple of years from design leaders especially in North America and Europe, but I would say also to some extent in South America and in Asia as well, we’ve been hearing a lot about kind of a shift in the way the design is valued, a shift in the way the design is perceived in these organizations, and a shift in the way the design is approached in these organizations. And it’s interesting to hear you talk about innovation, reflecting a point of view that, honestly, I think has been a mainstream point of view within the user experience community at least for a long time, which is the idea that the people who are really deeply immersed in the use cases, the people who are really in there, sleeves rolled up, crafting the interfaces are going to be your best source for insight for new opportunities to serve those audiences, because that immersion gives them a view on the problem that an external, you know, innovation lab jumping in for the first time is never going to have.  However I feel like what I’m hearing from a lot of people is a shift away from that as a value proposition, and toward a scope of the design role that stays much more focused on delivery. And I’m curious about what you’re seeing in the landscape in India right now, in terms of approaches to design, ways that other organizations are managing design, and where are things going these days in how design is being framed among Indian companies. Gaurav: Great question. So when I look at the landscape in India, I, I see designers working in three kinds of companies  The first would be companies that are building products for India from India. These are essentially product-led organizations, building core products. The second would be what are called as GCCs or Global Capability Centers. And these are essentially multinational orgs, large companies that have setups in India to tap into the rich talent pool in India. And the third would be tech and design service orgs. So these traditionally provide services to other companies. And they also employ a large set of. Designers.  I think the work kind of differs in each of these buckets. I think the first two that I spoke about, like companies that are building products out of India and GCCs, have a very similar kind of a profile, I would say. They’re essentially focused on scaling and building product. And very similar kinds of roles exist in these organizations. you would typically have product designers, researchers, UX content writers, et cetera. I feel that the, scope of innovation also kind of varies, with the kinds of responsibilities that each of these orgs have in India. I feel that the largest opportunity for innovation lies with the startups in India, startups that are trying to build new products, grounds up. So these are zero-to-one initiatives. And I think here the designers have the opportunities to work with the founders and the key stakeholders in that organization, and help shape the experience for the end customers. In the process also learn a lot about the business that these companies are operating in, what kind of problems are they trying to solve, figure out MVPs for products and also get into the details of actually building it. Like really, really working deeply with engineering teams because these kinds of setups tend to be small. And so designers end up wearing like multiple kinds of hats in these setups as well.  That’s largely how I see the Indian landscape today. I think historically probably the first companies to hire design talent in India would have been the tech and design services orgs, because they’ve existed for about three decades in India. While the first set of consumer internet companies building products out of India… When we started in about 2008, 2009. And some of those entrepreneurs laid the foundation for building and designing products out of India. The designers that we have today in India also come from varied backgrounds and that’s probably very similar to how things operate in the US as well. We have designers who have a formal education in design, some that are kind of like self taught, and some that kind of migrate from other domains of design into UX. So it could be architecture, industrial design, graphic design, etc. There is a vibrant design community now in India, and, and these platforms and these events are a great opportunity for designers to kind of connect, share experiences, share the work that they’re doing. Peter: What you just mentioned is, one of the values of events, right? The shared experiences, people talking with peers and sharing kind of the challenges they’re facing. And I’m wondering what you see, let’s focus it on a design leadership level, right?  You’re a design executive, a VP of design, leading a decent sized team. I’m guessing that, you know, other people in similar roles whether in Bangalore or other parts of India, what do you all talk about when you gather, or you get on a call, or you’re messaging each other, like what are those topics among the Indian design leadership community, at least that you’re part of? Gaurav: I think there are some things that always kind of remain the center of discussions. Some of these are around hiring and challenges around hiring. While it’s fairly easy to hire at junior levels, I think it becomes extremely challenging when it comes to senior roles and especially leadership roles in India. I think the talent pool that exists at senior roles in India is fairly small. And with all kinds of companies operating out of India, this is a talent pool that gets a lot of attention as well. So hiring and discussing hiring challenges always is a topic of interest for people.  The other one I would say is, it’s just about kind of sharing challenges of influencing stakeholders in different kinds of forms and the kind of challenges that people have around, sometimes, frustrations around what would enable them to do better work at their organizations and what could be the learnings out of different scenarios, different organizations. So that’s another, topic. I recently been involved in a lot of discussions at Flipkart and also elsewhere, where I’ve seen when designers at a certain level of seniority start thinking about how they should grow further. And a typical path that they pursue tends to be the people management role and growing as a people manager. Senior IC roles are kind of missing in India at this moment. And these opportunities also kind of missing. Flipkart, we’ve laid down career paths for senior ICs and build that track as well. But I think many young start ups are not yet aware of them. There are GCCs that have fairly well documented paths for senior ICs. They also have a lot of senior ICs in the org. So that’s another topic of interest that has recently cropped up in conversation. Jesse: I meet a lot of design leaders who say, I’d love to elevate ICs. I just don’t know what I would do with a bunch of principal ICs now. I don’t have a place for them in my processes or in my organization. And then I end up meeting a lot senior level ICs who haven’t been set up for success because the role hasn’t been defined clearly enough. Their influence hasn’t been defined clearly enough. Their measures of success haven’t been defined clearly enough. And I’m curious your thoughts on how you set up a senior IC for success. Gaurav: This was a very passionate debate that happened within the organization while we were defining this path and laying down the competencies for the senior IC track. We leveraged a lot of work and a lot of documentation that exists for senior IC engineers, actually, and architects, as part of laying down the competency for engineers. Engineering being a slightly more mature or… across the world actually has spent a lot of time defining these roles and defining how they differ from the people management roles. So we leveraged a lot of that work.  I see it as a technical mentorship role as opposed to people management role. And that’s the key difference in my head, at least where these people will then lead a lot of technical mentorship and large scale design operations roles as well.  So they would, for example, anchor the design systems. They would make sure that we build coherence across very different parts of the products that we’re building, which otherwise the two designers working on them may not even think about. So helping connect the dots across different parts of design and research is how we frame the role. Peter: Something you mentioned at the outset when you were talking about your vision for the design team was growing the people on the team. And I think that connects with what we’re discussing now. And, I’m just wondering, what are the approaches you are taking to grow people? Is it formal, you know, classes and training? Is it quasi-formal, kind of, like mentorship, that senior ICs could do? But yeah, just how are you operationalizing growing people in your team?  Gaurav: It’s a mix of both. So we do have some formal trainings that are led by the Learnings and Development team at Flipkart. And then we do some informal trainings from within the team. Actually last year, we spent a lot of time figuring out people from within the team who could then train a lot of other people across the team. So, for example we could have a person who’s really good with motion design. And now we want to take this skill set across a large set of designers so that we just raise our bar on motion design overall in the product. And so we’ve identified such people and enabled them to train others and kind of mentor them in this process. Peter: You mentioned earlier the hiring challenge. And I’m wondering if that’s related to your incentive to focus on growth. Are you putting these growth plans in place? Because it’s easy to hire people with less experience, but now you need to train them up. Is this a strategy for kind of addressing this gap in the market of senior design talent that is really hard to hire. And so you’re growing them from within, or is there a different motivation? Gaurav: No, I think we look at both areas. We look at growing people from within, as well as we constantly look at the market as well, whenever there are opportunities to hire from outside. So it’s not one versus the other, I would say, but a combination of both. We do have a large base of designers at junior levels, and a lot of training and mentorship while the senior leaders kind of run on their own, they do need training at different levels.  For example, new people managers need training around managing people, having difficult conversations, giving feedback. Some of the more administrative work that people managers end up doing. You know, performance conversation, stuff like that. So there are different kinds of trainings based on the role and the skill sets of designers that we look at. Peter: One thing I hear all the time, from design leaders I’m working with or design orgs I’m supporting, is they have trouble making space for junior designers, right? They can’t hire junior designers because of the environment that they’d be bringing them in. They wouldn’t be able to support junior designers as needed, right? ‘Cause designers are expected to be embedded in teams, possibly on their own, they might not have a management structure that can bring them up. And so, at least in North America, a lot of companies just have kind of forsaken the junior designer and start, sometimes they start at senior designer, right? You know, five to eight years experience, because they know they can just throw them at problems and not worry about them.  It sounds like you’re taking a different approach, right? You mentioned a decent, you know population of junior designers within your organization. How intentional was that? Like some companies, that’s an intentional strategy to hire juniors and grow them up. So is that part of it?  And, what have you put in place to make sure that you’re setting up these junior designers to succeed, that they’re not flailing and sinking, right, in the sink or swim metaphor, being given too much responsibility too soon, and then they’re struggling.  Gaurav: Yeah, I think it’s also one of the differences between US and India. I think it’s also got to do with the kind of market dynamics and the supply of designers that exist in the market.  So there is definitely a shortage of senior designers in India at this moment, while there is an abundance of junior designers, I would say. There are a lot of design schools now in India with… that has courses in interaction design and UX design. So, I think we are producing designers in great quantities at the moment. So it’s just easier to hire at junior levels. In terms of you know, not letting them sink, we do pair them up with senior designers. So as they learn about the organization, learn about the business. they are able to work with senior designers, with the managers, and kind of learn the ropes, and mature in the organization. But I would say it’s just a factor of the Indian market at this moment. Peter: In the North American market, the complaint that you hear from junior designers is like, there’s a lot of us, but no one is willing to hire us, right? So there’s something different about how many North American companies are approaching hiring because I think the conditions are not all that dissimilar where you’ve got a sizable population of potential talent.  But whereas in North America, they’ve just kind of chosen to neglect them in hopes of hiring that senior designer, it sounds like, at least in the Indian market, there’s a recognition like we’ve got to make this work. So… Gaurav: Yeah. And about the challenges in the US, where the junior designers complain about not having enough opportunities, I was also thinking about the organizations and how the organizations are kind of set up.  So the designers in each of these organizations, who are they kind of collaborating with? What kind of seniority of product people are they collaborating with? For example, in my organization, if I have to collaborate with the senior product leader, then it would be really hard for a junior designer to kind of voice a design stand. And therefore, I think it’s also critical to look at the kind of setups, and the kind of stakeholders that are building this product.  Maybe in some of these companies, there aren’t enough junior product managers as well, and therefore, the designers end up collaborating with fairly senior product leaders. So if that happens at Flipkart, for example, I’ll have a senior person, a senior designer or a lead designer or even a manager in those conversations.  Jesse: In so many organizations, design faces a fundamental cultural gap with the people who are in control of the business. The business has its way it likes to do things. It has its way it likes to communicate. In a lot of cases, these are practices that are inherited from legacy businesses, pre-internet businesses that are now entering digital spaces. And I didn’t hear you talk much about kind of legacy businesses and, where they fit into that landscape. But I’m really more interested in how design culture runs up against business culture in the context of your experience. And what you notice about the challenge of bridging that gap.  Gaurav: I think designers are traditionally not great with business, and it’s also got to do with how designers are trained in design schools. For example, business schools have adopted design thinking as part of their curriculum.  There’s very little business exposure that designers get when they get trained. And often this seems to be at odds, business thinking, and the way kind of designers approach a problem. But actually in large companies, I think both need to work together fairly closely. And it’s important for designers to build that business acumen as well, to understand this company in the space that it operates in. What makes a business successful? How’s the company generating revenue? What are the levers for the company to make profit, etc. And I think that background helps designers actually design better and helps designers collaborate better with business folks. If designers only take the user perspective and don’t look at the business, I think that’s where kind of conflicts arise. But if they are able to effectively wear both these hats, the hat with which they are able to think user first and also think about the business, I think that’s where really powerful products emerge.  Jesse: Couldn’t agree more. Peter: Towards the beginning, you mentioned how you like to keep your hand in for lack of a better word, the craft, the details, right? You mentioned the visual design, the interaction design, the research, understanding what’s going on in those details, but given, the conversation we’ve had since and just now, talking about business, business culture, relating to the business, right, you only have so much time in your days and so many days in a week, and you have to figure out where it is most valuable for you to spend your time.  And I’m wondering, particularly you’ve been in this role now for three or four years, right? Almost four years, how spending your time has evolved over these past four years, and kind of what that trajectory has been like, have there been themes or stages of your leadership since starting at Flipkart and, where are you now in that evolution? Gaurav: Yeah, there have definitely been very distinct stages. I joined Flipkart in the midst of the COVID lockdown. And when I joined, it was a very inward-looking journey that I initially took. Inward-looking as in inward-looking towards the design team Fixing issues and gaps within the design team. I also felt that there were certain parts of the product that needed attention. So for example, the core navigation of the product and how we laid out the core navigation for our users, it was kind of in different parts of the screen. And I thought that we were not enabling users to build habit on our product, and not letting them use Flipkart with ease. So these were some of the areas that I focused on heavily.  Also some parts of visual design. So we ended up changing the typeface that we used on Flipkart. We ended up uplifting our visual design language through the design system that we were building. And these were immediate changes that everyone in the org and hopefully our customers could also look at, and reflect that. Just looking at the team, I think they were just areas of, for example, building our competencies, figuring out a track for senior ICs, defining that career ladder, defining how we wanted to use competencies, not just for reviewing and for performance, but also for hiring. So these were some of the initiatives that I took early on. And I think once some of these elementary things, I would say, kind of settled, that’s when I started engaging more deeply with, especially, with the business stakeholders. I don’t think in a product org, you can live without engaging with the tech stakeholders, but definitely with business stakeholders, the engagement kind of increased also, the ending of COVID lockdown had a big role as well because then it was easier to meet people face to face, bump into them and have these conversations. Peter: And so what stage are you at now in your leadership journey at Flipkart? You mentioned starting with, like, managing down, getting the best out of the team. Once that’s settled, you kind of look up and out a bit more and partner with those business stakeholders. Are you still in that phase, or is there almost like a lean forward now, almost four years in, like, are you at a different point in your journey here? Gaurav: Yeah, no, I think there’s definitely a lean forward. We are looking at creating more strategic impact. We are also looking significantly redesigning certain parts of the experience. We’re in a space that’s constantly evolving. So we are also creating new products for our customers. We’re getting into quick commerce and how do we look at these kinds of experiences. Satisfying customer needs in a very short time. So there are different kinds of areas now that we are looking into and playing an active role in building these in a, in a fairly delightful manner, I would say. Jesse: Gaurav, what are you looking forward to in this next phase for design? Gaurav: I think I would like to see the Indian startup ecosystem kind of mature and grow and also design create a larger impact in this journey. Flipkart is a large player in this space, but I think there are also a lot of other companies doing some really good work in India. And I think there is a huge opportunity for designers to design for Indian needs. India is a very, very diverse country. We have a population of about 1.45 billion, but it’s actually made up of many different Indias. We have 22 recognized languages in India, and we have diversity in terms of the affluence, in terms of technical savviness. We still have people in India who are just experiencing the Internet for the first time on their mobile devices, and so their trust levels with the platform are quite different from someone who’s been using lot of digital products for a fairly long time.  For example, there is a small population in India, which is primarily in the urban centers of India, okay, that behaves very similar to Californians, in terms of how they use digital products and the ease with which they use digital products and the frequency at which they use digital products. And at the same time, there is a population in Tier Two, Tier Three, and rural parts of India that is very different in terms of their taste preferences, rootedness in the Indian culture, and trust on the platforms. So it’s a very diverse space. There are lots of problems for designers to really solve for. And I would love to see more digital products built out of India and addressing these needs. Jesse: Love it. Thank you so much. Gaurav: Thank you. Jesse. Peter, for having me on the podcast. Jesse: Where can people find you if they want to know more about you? Gaurav: LinkedIn would be the best place. I do have a website that I don’t update very frequently, but that would be the other word other way to reach out to. Jesse: All right. Thank you so much. Peter: Thank you, Gaurav: Thank you. Jesse: For more Finding Our Way, visit findingourway. design for past episodes and transcripts. You can now follow Finding Our Way on LinkedIn as well. For more about your hosts, visit our websites, petermerholtz. com and jessejamesgarrett. com. Peter recently launched the Merholz Agenda, his semi weekly newsletter. Find it at buttondown.com slash petermerholz And if you’re curious about working with me as your coach, book your free introductory session at JesseJamesGarrett. com slash free coaching. If you’ve found value in something you’ve heard here today, we hope you’ll pass this episode along to someone Else who can use it. Thanks for everything you do for others, and thanks so much for listening.

Leslie Witt, Chief Product and Design Officer at Headspace, brings a wealth of experience from her time at IDEO and Intuit. She discusses her transition from designer to design leader, emphasizing the importance of maintaining creative integrity while meeting business demands. Leslie dives into the ethical responsibilities of design leaders and the challenges of advocating for design in varying organizational cultures. She also touches on the role of empathetic technology in creating deeper human connections, illustrating how design can combat loneliness and foster community.