Category: Leadership

Design-driven companies perform better

The DMI Design Value Index measured design-focused publicly traded companies’ performance against the larger stock market. For a company to be counted as a design-led, it must meet six design management criteria:

  1. The organisation must be publicly traded in the US for 10+ years.
  2. The scale of the design organisation and deployment is an integrated function.
  3. Growth in design-related investments and influence have increased overtime.
  4. Design is embedded within the organisational structure.
  5. Design leadership is present at senior and divisional levels.
  6. There is a senior-level commitment to design’s use as an innovation resource and integrative force.

These criteria assessed whether design was a long term strategic priority, built into the organisation’s structure, and well resourced through hiring practices, facilities, and technologies. Qualifying companies needed a design-focused C-level executive and CEO and leadership team publicly recognising the importance of design in their work and publicity.

Simply put, design is a method of problem-solving. Whether it is an architectural blueprint, a brochure, the signage system at an airport, a chair, or a better way to streamline production on the factory floor – design helps solve a problem.

The Design Management Institute

The DMI, funded by Microsoft, identified fifteen companies that meet all six criteria, including Apple, IBM, Nike, Procter & Gamble, and Starbucks. Results showed that design-led companies outperformed the S&P 500 index by 228% over ten years.

Motiv and DMI developed eight ways in which a company could improve its performance through design:

  1. The Wow factor
  2. Brand expression
  3. Solving unmet user needs
  4. Develop better customer experiences
  5. Rethinking strategy
  6. Hardware/software/service integration
  7. Market expansion through persona development and user understanding
  8. Cost reduction

If you want to know more, view the DMI’s Design Value Index and it’s Design value system that makes use of the Capabilities Maturity Model.  

Daily stand-ups for remote working

From the first day of lockdown in March, I have held a daily catch-up with my team first thing each working day. The main intention was to give the team a feeling of connection and maintain a level of routine. It also helped to get us through a hectic work period moving a university of 33,000 students from campus-based delivery entirely online. 

The daily conversations kept everyone aware of changes, got quick answers to questions, and it allowed emerging problems to get identified and fixed before they got too big. Interestingly, I tested the idea of scrapping the catch-up after planning the new academic year in October, and the whole team rejected it. I wanted to give everyone back a couple of hours of their week, but the team saw it as the best part of their working day. We had a week off the meetings in the end, but they have become the centrepiece of how we plan and run our projects.

A ‘stand-up’ meeting is 10-15 minute informal meeting where attendees stand to force them to keep it short. Queen Victoria introduced stand-ups with her Privy Council in 1861 to minimise her public duties. More recently, it has been adopted by various agile project management methodologies, including Scrum and Kanban. The goal is to increase workflow through collaborative problem solving and signpost things that will soon cause problems. 

How to run a daily stand-up

  1. Book out a daily meeting first thing in the working day. I book mine for 25 minutes to keep some space reserved in the calendar if follow-up conversations are needed. The aim is to have them complete in 15 minutes.
  2. Keep them as conversations but short and to the point. I use the first 5 minutes for social discussion and then a quick update from me including a what I completed yesterday, what I am doing today, and what I need from the team.
  3. Get each member of the group to do a 60-second status update. Ensure each person shares and let some conversation naturally emerge but once it starts to get into detail intervene with “Let us carry this on outside of the stand-up”. Each member should share:
    1. What they are will complete today.
    2. Requests for collaboration.
  4. End the meeting with an opening for questions or issues that the team want to raise. A final opportunity to talk usually brings up a few questions, and so is worth adding. 

We use Microsoft Teams with a reoccurring meeting invite to host the video call. Using Teams allows the chat channel to stay open for social and work conversations to continue for the rest of the day. We set a rule early on that video is needed to make the calls more personal and people stick to it most days. Working from home can be isolating, and the social element of an office is hard to replicate. A short daily call acts as an icebreaker and helps keep the team collaboratively solving problems while having some fun. 

Have a go with your team and let me know how it goes on Twitter.