Introduction
Introduction
By Denis Weil (MDes 2001)
When we first embarked on the work that manifested in Lead with Purpose, the shorthand reference for our project was Pathways.
That’s because this work first set out to define the future roles, or pathways, of designers. We wanted to know what design roles would look like in three to five years, and what skills individuals will need to fill those roles. This pursuit is of course germane to our own interests in higher education, as the Institute of Design (ID) houses a graduate school. But we are also known for our pioneering work in demonstrating the value of design to businesses, organizations, and communities. So, true to our roots, we extended our line of questioning to better understand the larger organizational picture and design’s roles within it.
Nearly all professionals today recognize the burgeoning popularity of design thinking and generally accept that successful organizations—genuinely forward-looking ones—need design. Yet most organizations have yet to make a place for design that engages its full power, not only at the initiative level, but also at the enterprise level. And most organizations have yet to determine everything they need to do to generate and sustain that power.
So the following report answers questions for designers, to be sure, but also—and perhaps more importantly—for executives and HR leaders. You know that you should be leveraging design; this report will show you how. And you know you will need to hire accordingly, so this report will tell you what to look for.
The Intent-to-Effect Pathway demonstrates that design and designers are uniquely qualified to take responsibility for certain outcomes at the organizational level. The issue of responsibility, or accountability, is an important one. Until now, design has been tasked with outwardfacing responsibilities—making an offering or experience serviceable to an audience or customer.
But, fortunately, design is coming of age at a time when its humanist, future-oriented focus, as Jessica Helfand has put it, is sorely needed. Purpose is more than a buzzword; organizations everywhere are being asked what they exist for as they shift their attention from shareholders to stakeholders.
In design we liken purpose to intent. A popular definition of design is to create or construct according to intent, or to devise for a specific purpose. Or, as Jared Spool defines it, the rendering of intent. If you can be clear about your purpose, or intent (and this is the job of your chief executive), design can help make that intent tangible at all levels and steward the organization in realizing its intent. More simply, design can take you from Intent to Effect.
But back to design coming of age—how do we know it’s happening? Because what is happening in design now has happened in other disciplines and functions in key stages of their development.
Take finance. Over time, finance moved from a transactional function to a C-level critical enterprise function. The finance discipline originated in antiquity with bookkeeping, formalized in the Middle Ages as a trade function, and then evolved into the discipline of accounting in nineteenth-century Scotland. Then, in the 1980s, the advent of computing led to the appointment of the first CFO, indicating that the role had become a strategic, value-generating, and critical function for any enterprise.
Design is moving considerably faster—consider Bauhaus our bookkeeping stage, design thinking our accounting stage. Today design is following the pathway of any professional practice, moving toward taking responsibility for a function at the enterprise level. Its function, as you’ll see, is stewarding an organization’s “purpose balance sheet”: the Intent-to-Effect Pathway.
Denis Weil
Dean, Institute of Design
Chicago, Illinois
January 2020