Letting Go in Leadership: Making the Familiar Feel Strange, the Hairball and the Little ‘Fires’…
When you think of leadership, what do you think of it? What words or images represent ‘leadership’ to you?
I quite often see and hear these terms across all channels: North American, male, tall, white, powerful and hierarchy mentioned relative to leadership.
Many types of leadership inspiration and discourse surround us daily. Leadership articles can be at the tips of our fingers each morning from Linkedin to the Harvard Business Review. Published articles around leadership increased by 175% within the 30 years from 1970 to 2000. And then, on social media, we have the opportunity to hear daily from the likes of Simon Sinek, Brene Brown, and Adam Grant, espousing new pithy thoughts around leadership.
Yet despite all the varied sources for leadership thought, I am continually amazed that we are seeing ever-increasing leadership issues when our society has such a depth of resources and possibilities to look to for reference or opportunities. We are constantly hearing on the news both bad and good examples of leadership flooding our sensory world…a day does not go by on the nightly news that we don’t hear about new or continuing failures of various leaders. In a recent interview with ‘Frieze’, a comment by the iconic German Director Wim Wenders I feel epitomises our leadership myopia, he ‘… dreamt that societies would become better after the pandemic and that we would take better care of each other… but then the opposite was the case [people seem to live more recklessly than before]’ (Frieze, 2023).
When one thinks of what we have seen in the news, our society was created by one gender, one race and ability for the same gender, race and ability. That is our mould. We are suffused with this perception at all touch points within our lives. In 2020 there was a study done on masculinity in the workplace by Utopia and The Hobbs Consultancy. The study asked about 2200 people if they worked in a masculine culture at work. A majority said no. But when it came to ranking the top traits of leadership, three of the top five were masculine-based traits.
And, sadly, this belief or perception is present in practically every sector....one is promoted or celebrated by criteria that work in a mould-dominated culture so if one doesn't feel they fit the mould, they don’t feel they have a voice. But how can we change our values around leadership and the tide of leadership failures that have contributed to our society’s economic, climate and social catastrophes? Even amongst the failures, there are some glimmers of hope- we have seen some amazing leaders who do not follow the status quo.
Yes, some of these leaders are political leaders, like the former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern who led with empathy, to Angela Merkel the former Chancellor of Germany who championed quiet agency. Others of these leaders are in the private sector, e.g., Lucy vonStrumer, founder of the NGO Creatives for Climate who personally bootstrapped Creatives for Climate and has become one of the top voices in marketing and sustainability per Adweek and AdAge or Jo Barnard and Alexie Sommers the chief instigators for Design Declares which is a growing global group of designers, studios and agencies declaring a climate and ecological emergency. And, in the tech sector Dr. Stephanie Hare, author of Technology is Not Neutral: A Short Guide to Technology Ethics and BBCWorld Artificial Intelligence: Decoded, illuminates the collective on the dynamic changes unfolding around us.
I see these non-mould leaders as little fires dotting our world… they are looking beyond the subjective quick wins and looking toward a holistic perspective that is objective and long-term. They are making the ‘strange’ increasingly feel familiar which supports making the familiar feel ‘strange’ for leadership in our world. And what is encouraging for me is that we are seeing increasing numbers of these fires start and connect.
But, even with these positive gains, we continue to see many decision-makers embracing and being rewarded for leading traditionally which is seen as reductive, extractive and not thinking of the long-term implications for future generations, especially in realms that will change our entire world, i.e., AI. We recently saw Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, visiting the UAE to raise upwards of $7Trillion to rapidly ramp up chip development and production for the expansion of AI– imagine if this came to fruition what an Eco Footprint it would have on the earth and human rights and personal privacy for future generations. This display of leadership is simply an evolution of ‘familiar’ leadership.
The ‘familiar’ leadership behaviour puts value into the here-and-now and does not think of the pain it might be causing society not only now but also for future generations. We are experiencing a leadership myopia. In his 2020 Rieth lectures,
the former governor of the Bank of England, Marc Carney, made a comment that resonated with me, and I feel it supports the discourse around leadership myopia,
and makes the familiar behaviours of leadership sound strange, or, more accurately, tone-deaf.
‘Financial markets rank Amazon the company one of the wealthiest companies in the world, but the value of the vast region of Amazon is on no ledger until it’s stripped of its foliage and converted to farmland’
This harmful dynamic has been curated by diverse leaders, from global to local leaders, from CEOs to boards of corporations. These leaders have led in a manner that has created an obvious mess- I feel like I’m being redundant right now because we hear this all the time, but, more importantly, this mess has pain woven into it.
This dynamic reminds me of the concept of the ‘hairball’ that is at the centre of Gordon Mckenzie’s book “Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace”. The book tells about the journey of a creative within the iconic American greeting card company, Hallmark. The hairball can be seen as the ‘establishment’ -” a tangled, impenetrable mass of rules, traditions, and systems, all based on what worked in the past that exercises an inexorable pull into mediocrity”.
Even if the establishment tries to ‘fix’ things, e.g., organisational change, it is simply another layer added to the hairball. And the mess becomes ever larger. It is obvious that if the collective stays in a reductive, narrow mindset and does not truly embrace new ways of leading and being a leader, the pain will continue to escalate for the collective.
But how can we change the tide of leadership failure? It does not need to be a grand gesture- it is unique to each individual, it does not need to be loud but can be a form of quiet agency. But if every one of us takes a moment to truly and internally reflect on our leadership– regardless of where we are in our life, e.g., a junior designer or a CEO, the little fires will grow and we really can make an impact. In the words of Gordon McKenzie:
‘To be fully free to create, we must first find the courage and willingness to let go:
We need to let go of the strategies that have worked for us in the past.
Let go of our biases, the foundation of our illusions...
Let go of our grievances, the root source of our victimhood…
Let go of our so-often-denied fear of being found unlovable.’
The Question Around Design Leadership
As the underlying aspect of life, design is increasingly becoming critical to modern society, but, how is design leading? And will it be left behind in building the future?
Last Fall, I attended a talk given by the incredible award-winning American industrial designer, gerontologist and author, Patti Moore. In addition to the key points of her robust career (which includes the 2022 World Design Medal™),
what stood out to me the most, was Moore’s comment that, as designers, we need
to become political. However, in a society that quite often views design as an element of beautification, not as a force for change and societal impact, following the talk
I wondered how design could become political and what being political would mean for the design industry. This thread led me to question the role of design leadership and reflect upon the current state of leadership in the design industry.
Over the last several months, the term ‘design leadership’ has, noticeably,
come up consistently in conversations for me- from the increasing numbers of
‘design leadership’ communities/groups forming to the discussion around what the future of design leadership will be in organisations. However, Moore’s talk brought other layers into the discourse for me, e.g., discussion around leadership within the design practice, the power it possesses and, ultimately, its genuine long-term
societal impact.
What does ‘political’ mean for design leadership?
Becoming political in how one ‘leads’ is simply not only about running for office and becoming an MP, a senator or protesting on the streets. It is, in a sense, looking beyond the subjective and thinking about how your practice objectively impacts the wider societal discourse long term. As a design leader, you have the power to be a part of the conversations that will shape the future, e.g., Andrew Knight, the Head of the UK Design Policy with the Commnuntty commissioning 'Public Design Review' is aiming to ensure that “design is creating systems and services that deliver the most public value”, or, the incredible work that the Design Council is doing with their ‘Design For Planet’ strategy. With the increasingly concerning crises escalating across all aspects of society, e.g., from political to climate, design can and should play a key role in helping to solve these issues. As the iconic (and vocal) Austrian-American designer and academic, VIctor Papenak (1971) argued, design is critical to modern society as it is an underlying aspect of the human foundation. Thus it is not surprising that design is political as it is integral to society’s comprehensive progress. But, for the most part, the presence of design leadership in these critical conversations appears
to be limited.
Becoming more vocal
To embrace the political lense and a voice for societal impact, design should
go beyond the cult of personality that appears to be ever-present in the design industry to a contextual awareness of the ecosystem as one practices design and leads; we do not all need to be that loud elevated leader that society celebrates but can embrace a quiet agency. As design leaders, with the ability to shape the future, one needs to embrace this agency and the power that design possesses.
In a recent interview with the design publication, Dezeen, AirBnB co-founder, Biran Chesky, echoes this concerning sentiment, he sees that design needs to embrace AI and not repeat what happened in the 1990s when Design did not engage with web and ‘…gave away a lot of their power’. Though there is criticism around AirBnB and its design, the framing of this perspective is interesting to reflect on. Chesky notes that ‘…either you can be part of the change or the world can be designed without you and then you have to fit into that change. And you're going to be a subordinate."
Chesky’s argument is concerning because as a society we are at a very critical juncture, design is crucial and cannot be a subordinate. Design needs to be a part of the discourse of shaping the future– for the better. As Moore said earlier this year, Imagine if we had ‘design in the Commons or in the Capital we would not be experiencing such extreme societal issues’. But how can design lead to contribute
to shaping the future?
What is design leadership?
I found myself circling back to the question of what ‘design leadership’ really is, how it is defined, and what it stands for; I also re-visited my dissertation on ‘desgin leadership’. Design leadership has the potential to embrace curiosity and a committed interest in human needs and societal norms to strategically respond to contextual changes. But having an ill-defined understanding of what design leadership encompasses or even how it appears to evolve, raises concerns for me.
Echoing Chesnkey, I am concerned that design will give away its power at this point- with AI, with the climate etc. Thus, as an industry, we need to really take ‘design’ and, in essence, its leadership seriously; design can support and drive the betterment of society argued John Heskett, the pioneering British writer and lecturer on the economic, political, cultural and human value of industrial design. However, quite often, even if a design leader speaks about being more socially and environmentally conscious, their priorities can be seen as reductive, subjective and non-inclusive. Regardless of how everything stands, I am incredibly optimistic about seeing more design leaders taking a stand and using its power, e.g. Leyal Argaralou and her recent World Design Organisation presidency run or the Creative Industry’s Alliance’s petition letter to the UK Chancellor before the Autumn Statement whose signatories included key UK design leaders. These types of actions hold on to design’s ‘power’ by embracing a “political” stance around change and impact for the industry as well as society; and ultimately, to be a part of shaping the future. I am curious, how do you define design leadership? How can it maintain design’s ‘power’?