| By Frans Joziasse and Tim Selders,
PARK advanced design management
 Ever since Richard Florida’s publications
about the creative class,1 a renaissance
with respect to creativity
and also to creative leadership has
evolved. CEO’s of companies, governments,
and even cities increasingly stress
the need for creativity in order to get a
long-term competitive advantage.Most
recently, the city of Amsterdam2 and the
UK government3 have recognized this
and have published reviews of creativity
in leadership.
It is interesting to note that this is
really a global issue. Countries like China
and India are quickly developing education
systems that strongly focus on raising
competencies to compete globally in
the fields of creativity and innovation. In
the West, as well as in the emerging markets,
creative leadership is the new buzzword.
So what is it really about? And
where have the good times of managerial
leadership gone? Is it true that routine,
managerial tasks will be off-shored as
many authors, such as Daniel Pink, suggest4?
And, most important, are the concepts
of creative leadership and managerial
leadership paradoxical?
It makes sense to briefly explore the
two kinds of leadership in order to
understand them and to discover
whether they are, in fact, paradoxical.
Managerial leadership
Coming from the “old” school of management,
this kind of leadership focuses
on the rational. It is about logic and analytical,
formal, fixed rules. This kind of
leadership tends to be consistent and rigorous
and the development of strategies
is regarded as a science. Managerial leadership
is understood to be foremostly
about exploitation. Many design leaders
will recognize this model.
Creative leadership
Schumpeter5 was probably one of the
first to acknowledge the need to develop
the creative thinking capabilities of a
corporation as part of its business cycles.
He recognized that creative leadership is
more intuitive and imaginative than
managerial leadership, promoting as it
does innovation and lateral thinking in
the organization. And one could say that
it encourages the understanding of business
strategy as art. Creative leadership is
foremost about exploration. This is the
design leader’s territory, where she or he
discovers the soul of the business.
Duality thinking
The two ways of thinking about design
management seem contradictory, but
they are, in fact, complementary. Evans
and Doz6 proclaim that opposing forces
in companies can and have to be balanced
in order to survive. Leaders must
start thinking in dualities and to stop
regarding these types of leadership as
paradoxical.
Design management challenges
What does this mean for design and
design management?
As design managers, most of you are
familiar with the following issues:
1. Design is increasingly seen by CEO’s
as a core competence of their organizations,
meaning design is no longer
considered merely a black-box with
some artists. Quantifiable results,
uniqueness of processes, and competencies
are the new paradigms.
2. Globalization of markets and companies
means that design management—
finding the right design resources and
their organizational equivalents
throughout the world—becomes a
complex issue.
3. As design links creativity and innovation,
design management must be in a
leadership position to build cross-disciplinary
teams in business, engineering,
technology, marketing, and market
research.
4. Educating creative people should
require courses on management and
business as part of their curriculum;
the education of business people must
include creativity and design as part of
their curriculum.
These challenges can only be tackled if
we stop thinking of us and them as distinct entities.Many of you would say
that this duality has already begun in
your organizations. Still we hear many
design managers continue to complain
about their budgets, their peers, their
CEO’s, and the fact that they are always
misunderstood.
We advise you to start thinking more
as a managerial leader. The creative
(leadership) part is already in your genes.
It is all about balancing your right and
left brain capabilities!
Get started!
Get your processes, your methodologies,
and your measurements done.Make
your design organization effective and
efficient. Inform yourself about your
corporate strategy, as well as the interests
and needs of your peers.Make an
appointment (stop dreaming about it)
with your CEO to show her or him how
design will contribute to your company’s
success. Stop talking about the why, your
CEO already knows. It is leadership time,
but now with a dual thrust—creative
and managerial!
Curious about what works and what
doesn’t? Join the DMI Conference in
Amsterdam and find out, with our client
LEGO and with us, what design leadership
is all about and what it isn’t about.
Does design take the leadership or is it
just a wishful dream? Has design leadership
so far been nothing more than the
application of some design tools in nondesign
areas such as business planning?
Together with Paal Smith-Meyer (creative
director of LEGO), we will self-critically
explore some of the theories, definitions,
and case studies of design leadership,
including examples from LEGO.
References:
1. Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class
(Basic Books: New York) 2002.
2. Diana Krabbendam, The Amsterdam Index
(BIS Uitgevers: Amsterdam) 2005.
3. Sir George Cox, Cox Review of Creativity in
Business: Building on the UK’s Strengths,
November 2005.
4. Daniel Pink, A Whole New Mind (Riverhead
Publishers: London) 2005.
5. Joseph Alois Schumpeter, Capitalism,
Socialism and Democracy (Harper & Brothers:
New York) 1942.
6. Evans, P. & Doz, Y., “Dualities: A paradigm for
human resource and organizational development
in complex multinationals. In P. Evans, Y.
Doz, & A. Laurent (eds.), Human Resource
Management in International Firms: Change,
Globalisation, Innovation (MacMillan: London)
1992.
This article originally appeared in the Winter 2006 issue of DMI News & Views. |
