Balancing empathy for executives with critique

Show Notes

For more about The Future Of… Design conference: https://www.thefutureof-conference.com/.
Use code FINDINGOURWAY for 26% off the registration price.
Find out more about Jesse James Garrett and his upcoming live session on AI Transformation at https://jessejamesgarrett.com/
Find out more about Peter Merholz at https://petermerholz.com/

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, it’s our first ever live broadcast on YouTube. Recorded April 3rd, 2026, design consultant and industry analyst John Gleason returns to the show to explore the ideas behind his forthcoming design leadership event: Are you ready to lead? We’ll talk about the role of boldness and vulnerability in design leadership, how leaders can position their teams for greater strategic impact, and how to advocate for a larger value proposition for design. Now here’s our unedited live conversation with John Gleason.

Peter: Hi everybody. Welcome to an experiment in, for us, at least in podcasting, not that others don’t do this already, and, that’s what we’re doing right now.

Jesse: We are finding our way in more

Peter: We are finding our way with live streaming and get, kick us off here. Just a quick, introductions. Most of you will know Jesse and myself as the hosts of your podcast, finding Our Way, and we have with us our returning guest, John Gleason.

John is a, I think of you as a, you can change this, if you choose, but I think of you as a design and business consultant. You have a background, primarily in business, but you were at Proctor and Gamble during their design revolution. And we got to know you because about a year ago this time, you hosted an event called, the Future of Design, where you posed the provocative question is design dead?

Jesse and I didn’t attend that event, but we heard the things that came out of it, were intrigued, and we had you on our podcast last June to talk about it further.

And we know that you are planning a new forthcoming event, for the future of design in, mid-May, but now you’ve got this subject, are you ready to lead?

And so we thought this would be a good opportunity to dig into what’s going on with design leadership, what you are seeing with your background in packaging and brand design and industrial design, what we’re seeing in the worlds of UX and digital product design, and see where this conversation takes us.

We are live. I will be checking the chats because, you know, at some point we would love to engage some audience involvement. John, anything else you want to say, before we dive into the conversational part of our discussion?

John: Part of the context that I wanna offer I’ve known about the two of you for a long time and then became a long time listener, first time caller when you invited me to join the podcast last June.

Peter, if recall, part of it started with, oh, I’m glad those things don’t happen in our world. This idea that design’s dead and declining, a decoration station, and then you and I talked and chatted and we both had some revelations and realizations that maybe there’s more commonality across the types of design activity, than differences, because the activity is different or the outcome or the artifact or the thing being created.

So I’m delighted to be here in part, to open up some dialogue for me to have a chance to continue to learn, but also expand the dialogue and the discussion around the ability for design to influence growth and culture and other things.

Jesse: So John, I’m curious about this year’s event and the direction that you see the conversation heading.

Here in the tech space, it continues to feel like a lot of bleakness, a lot of uncertainty, a lot of doubt about what the future holds. And I guess I’m curious about where you see the conversation headed that helps to resolve that.

John: I think one of the, I guess it’s an aspiration that we had last year when we, the three founding partners for the future of conference, decided to do the silly, crazy, stupid thing of, let’s produce something that gets people together, was born out of observations that I’ve made as I’ve had a chance to peek inside 150 or so big companies in the last 15, 20 years.

And that is… most design and business leaders, and this is true of marketing or supply chain or finance, they’re in their world, inside their company solving problems and managing challenges. But because they don’t often get a chance to get out and meet with their peers they think that those problems are unique to their own circumstance. And then because they think it’s unique, they think it’s confidential and sensitive, so they can’t talk about it. And then because they can’t talk about it, they have to go try to solve it themselves without help, without guidance, without a roadmap. So part of the original ambition was, let’s create a forum that gets people together first to build awareness that their problems are probably not as unique as they think they are.

And then use the power of the community to help solve for some of those things collectively, to accelerate the ability to change the trajectory or direction or arc of where and how design contributes to business impact, to career development, to cultural dynamics.

So that is a foundation. One of the things that came up during the conference last year many times, which led to the theme that we have this year of, are you ready to lead, is there’s all kinds of training in schools and university degrees and the like for the craft of the businesses that any of us are in.

Jesse: Right.

John: But there’s generally nothing that teaches those people how to navigate complex organizations, how to influence people with more power and more stripes and more influence than themselves.

How to set a vision for something and get alignment for that vision. And so part of that is let’s use the forum that we started to create with the future of and begin to use, step two or round two of this as the opportunity of people sharing what they’ve learned on their journeys. The hard knocks. The things that that maybe they did really accidentally or on purpose. Again, as a way of trying to accelerate the ability for people to use some of those tools and frameworks and roadmaps and checklists and principle what, whatever that people are willing to lead with as a way of trying to arm the industry more broadly as a way of trying to elevate design more strategically and more profoundly.

Peter: It’s interesting you say that. I’ve been having a similar thought where… So as Jesse suggested, in, in the field that we’re primarily in, this UX and digital product design, there’s a fair bit of consternation and uproar. AI is feeling like it’s being imposed on people as opposed to them organically adopting it.

And that’s causing people to feel like they don’t have autonomy or agency in their own work, which causes people to stress out. There’s layoffs, there’s a whole bunch going on that leads to anxiety or even fear for some folks.

And the realization I had was, I think everybody is dealing with this on their own.

And we need ways to enable folks to deal with it collectively. So my, my initial thought was, I’ve been writing a little bit about this, for design leaders to, I think, we, we need design leaders to be more vulnerable right now. I keep coming back to that.

People look to their leaders for answers and solutions.

But this is a moment where many leaders just don’t have that. They’re figuring it out like everybody else. But I think those leaders aren’t comfortable acknowledging their lack of awareness or their lack of understanding of exactly what to do. And so they’re pretending like they’ve got it together.

And, but then they ask me, my teams are anxious and frustrated, and what would you say to help unlock those teams? And I’m like ,you need to unlock, right? You need to show that you don’t have all the answers, that you’re figuring it out, so that you’re modeling for your teams that they can be open and vulnerable. I have the Brene Brown book here, ’cause I’ve been thinking about this.

So that they can be open and vulnerable and so that you are all operating with more full information about one another.

And then once you do that, once you share that, or once you discover you have shared kind of challenges, now you can work together to address them instead of everyone feeling like they have to do it on their own.

And I’m wondering, John, how, what you’re seeing in your world when it comes to some of these kind of more existential crises, like last year, even pre AI, you were asking, is design dead? Now in this, not, maybe not specifically pre AI, but AI has definitely accelerated since then, what are you seeing? What are you seeing that’s working maybe in terms of, kind of, leadership approaches that you’ve witnessed that are causing, maybe the temperature to come down a bit?

John: Let me take a step back and build on the point you just made Peter around vulnerability and consternation and fear and those things, those are feelings that don’t only exist in design.

Marketing, finance, supply chain, CEOs, CFOs, all the people that are supposed to be the proud leaders all have their own set of fears and uncertainty. And part of the challenge, there’s not a school or a training program to teach design leaders or anybody for that matter, how to navigate complex political organizations.

Part of the reality around one, one of the reasons I believe vulnerability doesn’t exist broadly in corporations and even agencies and consultancies, by the time people get to a certain level in their company, they feel like they can no longer admit they don’t know something.

So there’s a lot of faking going on. Oh yeah, we’re gonna go do this and we’re gonna go do that. And, or they’re hedging their bets and they’re waiting to make a decision until, the clouds part and the angels sing. So part of this is if you think about… vulnerability is one of those characteristics that infers psychological safety…

Jesse: right.

John: And design and designers are the pent-ultimate people and organization that, that are wired to experiment. If there’s not the safety to explore, they won’t explore and you’re not gonna get the best of people.

And so part of this is basic psychology, basic human resources. But most companies today, especially today with the economic circumstances we’re facing, are faced with the belief that they can’t fail. And this quarter, next quarter is the planning horizon, which doesn’t play well to a designer’s vision horizon, if you will.

Jesse: Right.

John: And so some of this is, it really does take individuals, unless the culture is so good systemically, and as time goes on, I find that there are fewer and fewer of those that have a systemic positive growth oriented culture, because everyone’s trying to cover their backside.

Jesse: Yeah. I think that’s a big piece of it. I think it’s important to acknowledge the emotional reality of the position that the leaders find themselves in now, because I’ve talked with a lot of people in the last year, since the last time you were on the show, John, who have had to figure out how to cut a third of their team and then be the one to deliver that message, even though it wasn’t their idea.

And then they still have to turn around and justify their value proposition to their executives as well as to their cross-functional partners. And the idea that in a circumstance like that, somebody is just gonna blossom into vulnerability as a leader, I think it’s a pretty big ask.

John: And vulnerability is, and perhaps I’ll be a little bit sharp. Vulnerability is viewed as a weakness in many corporate cultures.

That’s a big thing that reasons why people don’t go do that.

But I’ll talk about one, one point that you make. Again, Jesse you talk about these people who are being mandated that they need to go make these big cuts and then deliver those messages. Again, not unique to design.

And so part of that is, is I think because there is the perception and a great deal, the reality that there is a higher emotional quotient among a design community, that there is more empathy and understanding in those circumstances than, somebody that might sit in a in a more linear, numbers oriented, kind of business function, where it’s, okay, these are just numbers. We’ve gotta go do this.

And I think the one, one of the topics that came up in, in last year’s conference was the question was posed: it was first posed as a framing. Look you designers, you play in this empathy space every day. I don’t hear you talking about having empathy for your CEO who has to go deliver some things and the bosses of people who are perceived not to understand what design might contribute. And it, it really was interesting how many people in the room went, oh yeah, could benefit by trying to better understand fears and the pressures and the things that they’re under, even though most of those people don’t seem to openly show and outwardly show fear.

Jesse: Right.

John: And so part of it is, how do we build the tool set so that people have the confidence to be able to stand up and offer okay, we can make these cuts, but here are the likely implications and consequences of those actions.

Just so you’re clear, hierarchy, I’m happy to go be a good corporate soldier and go try to do these things, but if you’re trying to grow, if you’re trying to innovate, if you’re trying to disrupt, if you’re trying to create a culture of curiosity and openness and vulnerability, you probably sever most of those things when you cut a third of your organization.

And I know part of this is about survival.

Jesse: right.

John: About hitting your, the numbers that Wall Street expects. And again I’m being facetious in some of these comments, but part of it is most designers aren’t armed to be able to have that business implication conversation, or they’re not confident in being able to have those things.

And so I, I think it would surprise a business leader if a design leader were to step up and say, okay, here are the business implications if you go do that.

Peter: So generally, I agree with the need for design and user experience leaders to have empathy for the challenges that others are facing and that yes, we’re not alone in this situation.

But a couple thoughts that I’m tying together, one is something you said John earlier, which is like, how it feels like in… Our organizations are decreasingly safe. Like something shifted in, in the last, I don’t know how many years, three, five years where things have become less safe.

And then something that Jesse and I have discussed on a forthcoming podcast, it’s in production, but hasn’t been pushed, is ’cause you mentioned empathy for the CEO, and at least what we’re witnessing is that once you get above a certain level of executive-ness, it tends to select for sociopathy, right? People who do not care about other humans. People who do not see people as people, but as resources, right? I think part of the reason they succeed is they can make a decision, a spreadsheet decision, and they see people cost x and chairs cost y and facilities cost Z and they’re like, okay, let’s get rid of people. That’s a cost we can now reduce or whatever.

And so I want design leaders to demonstrate empathy for their leadership, but sometimes their leadership is toxic and broken and there seems to be a wave of that, like in tech, right? Jesse and I primarily work in tech or tech kind of adjacent spaces, and that those folks have ripped the mask off and demonstrated their toxicity.

I’m curious, again, I’m looking to you to give us a kind of parallel perspective. Are you seeing similar things? Are you seeing different things? Like how is that playing out in, in, in your world?

John: I think the things that you describe are, again, similar if not identical to consumer facing, consumer products, consumer services, finance, healthcare, that the people at the top often that have a letter C before their title or as part of their title.

There, there is this aspect of removing the humanity from the way they make decisions.

And I want to clarify when I say having empathy for the CEO, I’m not necessarily saying you need to go put your arm around them and say, oh man, I feel for you. And but part of this is there’s and for those of out there that might listen to this now or later might, might giggle for those who know me, there isn’t a conversation that exists that I don’t talk about rewards drive behavior and so the rewards of a CEO

Peter: So incentives. Yeah.

John: Or a CFO or whatever are not to make people feel good. It’s a responsibility to drive shareholder value. And for some, a responsibility, I’m gonna be very callousy or a responsibility to drive their own bonus system.

Jesse: Yeah.

Peter: Oh, very much

John: and so part of this is the things that reward them and things that drive them often aren’t values and culture and purpose, unless it can lead to, unless those are things that can lead to other things.

And I say that this isn’t about the way we talk about empathy with users or consumers. Have we walked in their shoes? Do we understand? But there is a need to try to figure out, okay, A CEO that takes over a declining business. Their priority is to turn around the financials the tactical metrics and KPIs of that business, revenue share, profit, shareholder value. There are lots of different ways that to do that.

And I’ll use an example. I had a round table event of corporate side design leaders, and I invited a CEO into the room, and I know this person well, and I said, your job, a, listen to what this group is talking about, what appears to be important to these design leaders, and I want you to chime in when you think you’re ready.

And it was a round table, so it was very organic. When you think something strikes a nerve that they’re helping achieve the CEO’s mandate, or maybe not. And this was back in 2018, 19, so capital was very cheap. Profits were running into the business, quite well, for most companies. Stock market was going well.

And the people in the room were talking about identity and equity and brand and long term and all those things. And this person chimed in and said, everything you’re talking about is important and is needed. But what you need to understand is I’m here to drive shareholder value. And in today’s economy, I could go out and borrow a billion dollars and buy back my own stock and add 10% to shareholder value, and I’ve added more value to my enterprise in 30 minutes than… What you are talking about adding value might take five to 10 years, just took the oxygen right outta the room.

Jesse: Oh, man. Yeah. I think this question of where the value comes from is a really important one because we’ve seen this whole wave of change, especially if you look back like 20 years. Innovation was gonna save us all, right? And every big enterprise was gonna have a big mature design organization at the top that was orchestrating insights and prototypes and concepts and design philosophies that were going to drive product development for decades to come.

But instead, after a certain amount of time, the C levels looked at it and saw a bunch of low value activities. Generative ideation… Why are we, that doesn’t sound like something we should be spending our time on.

Or yeah, you’re going out and getting customer insights, but it’s not really actually driving any kind of meaningful product impact.

And so design leaders now find themselves in the place of defending this, like this sinking island, this increasingly smaller value proposition. And I think for a lot of them they’re wondering like, what? What is the stance that I can take with the larger organization that genuinely speaks to design’s value, but also doesn’t sacrifice design’s values?

John: Yeah. In fact, there are a couple of comments that kind of address that, that notion of, how do I stand up, especially if I’m a lone wolf in my organization. And part of this is, I think, some of this is linked to the skill for a design leader to translate and communicate the work they do into the reward systems and the business outcomes that their business partners are expecting. Can you translate a new product into revenue growth or profit growth or new segment of consumer that we’ve not been able to reach.

One of my favorite requests when I go in and I work with a head of design or a head of innovation or marketing or anybody else, is have you put the big bogey on the table for your senior leaders to, to ponder?

And so for example I was consulting with the head of design of a company that is about 18 to 20 billion in revenue. And I said, what if you were to go into the CEO and the, in the executive lead team, maybe the board and say, I can get you a billion dollars of incremental revenue. Here are the things that need to happen in order for me to help go do that.

So A, if they don’t give you the things that you need to go do that, you can say, Hey, I didn’t get, item four, seven, and nine. But part of this is it gives you the ability to start a business conversation and do it on the context of growth. And, some of that plan, some of that billion dollars may be how do I fix some of the leaky buckets in some of the businesses that we have? How do we create some new things? How do we get into businesses that we’re not currently in?

And it forces the design leader to think about what are the levers that I could pull? What are the levers that I own? And what are the levers that I can assist with that, that I’m gonna need the head of innovation and the head of finance and the head of supply chain to go do some of this, and how do I get them on board?

And because I think the thing that I caution anybody that I… ’cause I get to put this out on the table and then I get to walk out the door, and this…

Peter: yay consulting.

Jesse: Yeah.

John: Person has to live with, oh, shoot, John convinced me to do this, but I don’t know how.

But part of it is the senior most leaders of the company, especially depending on the general health of the company at that time, they’re gonna remember the bogey. They’re not necessarily gonna remember all the conditions to get to the bogey.

And so part of that, is, like any good brand, it’s how do you reinforce when every time you show up?

And again, one of my favorite exercises with teams is every time the design person shows up, you should be asking about the consumer. What did the consumer tell us about this? How did we get to this initiative? What’s the line of sight to the insight that caused us to say that cinnamon was the thing we need to do, or move the button to the bottom of the page.

Apple’s most recent update that moved the search bar to the bottom of the screen instead of the top. It still drives me nuts because I’m not used to it. And, and it’s like what caused them to do that?

But part of this is if you can show up every time, the 27th time, the team’s gonna say, oh, shoot, John’s gonna ask about the consumer. So we better be prepared to answer the consumer.

And I think that gets to how do you reinforce vulnerability? How do you reinforce curiosity? How do you show up that way every day?

And part of it is until you wear them down and then they say, oh, okay, we should be poking around at this.

But I think so many design leaders, whether you are new into an organization and into your career or you’ve climbed the ladder and you’re now leading teams and organizations, we forget about the consistent repetitiveness of some of the things we need to do to remind people.

It’s no different than I grew up in Texas and so everywhere I went Drink Coke was on everything. And it’s on billboards and side of cars and trucks and gas stations and grocery stores.

And the subliminal notion of that is at some point I probably drank Coke because I didn’t think twice about it, ’cause it was in my head.

And what’s the drink Coke, the repeated drink Coke version of some capabilities and activities.

Jesse: Right. When Peter and I were running Adaptive Path together, we wrote a talk together that we called our stump speech, because the whole intention of it was to capture the messages we knew were going to need to be repeated over and over again, and then go out and do that, and each of us gave that talk dozens of times.

Peter: Dozens of times. No, and it tracks with, you mentioned Coke and there is that marketing, aphorism. Basically something on the order of, it takes five to 10 times for someone to hear a thing, for it to actually sink in.

And I think your point stands that many design leaders, we still tend, we have an inclination, we have a tendency to believe the work speaks for itself or the case speaks for itself.

And given what you’re saying what’s this bogey and how are you going to help others understand it? And that you do it once and it’s evident and then if you don’t get acceptance, then I guess they’re just not gonna do it.

And you and many design leaders at that point will give up, like, well, I tried.

And that’s not how this works. You have to beat them over the head with it. And start risking, I don’t even know if it’s risking your own kind of social capital, but like you have to put yourself out there.

Jesse: It is a risk. It absolutely is a risk. Yeah.

Peter: Yeah. And which is something that, as you were talking, John, I had another kind of constellation of thoughts, and one is, you mentioned this bogey and the billion dollars, and I was like, is the issue that we’re seeing with design leaders that they’re not being bold enough. They’re not being big enough, right?

Because design, every design leader I talk to understands the basics of how their work drives business value. And can, good usability means that people can move through the funnel more easily and we’ll see more people adopt or activate or whatever, or good usability encourages retention, right?

Like we, we know these things, but I think it tends to be, it’s incremental, right?

And I’m wondering if what you’re saying is, sure, yes, but you also need, it’s not like a branding play the way you’re talking about it. You need, you can’t simply incrementalize your way to the change you seek. You need to have your brand moment, your pitch deck.

Jesse, I think a little bit about what I imagined Scott Zimmer before Capital One acquired Adaptive Path, and he was the chief design officer and the team was 40 people, and he was like, no, it needs to be 400. And what was that pitch deck?

Or John, I know at your event, Phil Gilbert’s gonna be there, right? And somehow he shook a hundred million dollars out of Ginny Rometti for design. I don’t know what the pitch was. Maybe you do, but is that what we’re lacking? Is a big enough story?

John: It doesn’t have to be a big story, it just has to, I think there’s an aspect of it that has to connect with what are the reward systems of the people that you have to convince to make those investments or to behave differently.

And so your example about usability. If there is a relatively constant level of in of investment that needs to occur to improve usability, remove friction, all those things, but all of a sudden you’re gonna ask for three times that. Now you need to be able to convince somebody why you’re gonna get at least three times better business outcome.

Jesse: Right.

John: And I think that’s the challenge that design has, is when many of them do try to talk business impact, they use the verbal story around impact. Everybody knows if we improve usability, then it’s gonna lead eventually to better outcomes.

But it’s not necessarily obvious to the people who are responsible for driving those business outcomes. And John in the chat talked about, is it fair to say that top line revenue is one of, is a way to have financial impact? Absolutely. It’s one of the easy things to measure, but it’s one of the most impossible things to assign what was design’s contribution to that growth.

And I think that’s one of the challenges that design leaders face is there is an ethical reality to where designers play to say, almost everything we create requires other functions of other teams to go make happen. So I can’t go take credit for that, but as soon as they step away and don’t defend the fortress, then in, in my world, in the brand design world, the ad agency steps in and takes credit for everything

Peter: Our world, that would be the product manager.

Jesse: right.

John: And so I think a part of it is and John I’ll add one more thing that even though this wasn’t what you were asking, is if the business is coming to you whoever you are, marketing design, product engineering, to solve a business metric challenge, oh, we’ve got a revenue problem or we’ve got a market share problem or a profitability problem don’t accept that as the problem.

Those are symptoms of something else.

There’s a reason people aren’t buying your stuff, and that’s the, to me, that’s the real impact that design could have in this is, let’s go understand why they’re not willing to pay a premium, or why they’re, they stopped buying our thing, or why competition suddenly saw a bump in there. And that’s the thing that, that I, I think business people in general are too quick to say, oh, we’ve got a revenue problem. Go solve that. And most of the solutions are gonna look like, oh, we’re gonna take a price increase. And it has nothing to do with solving the underlying reasons why

Peter: Right.

John: something’s not happening or a profitability problem often becomes a cost cutting solution. We’re just gonna go lower the expense side of the equation and increase profitability.

And we had a saying inside of Procter and Gamble, despite the pressure every day to, to save money was you can’t cost save your way to greatness.

And I think Kraft Heinz found that when they implemented their notorious playbook, which was all about cost cutting, but eight years in a row, you can’t cost cut any longer ’cause you’ve cut everything out.

Jesse: It’s interesting to think about how this, you were talking about, Peter was asking about design leaders not being bold enough. And when we think about how we define boldness in this context it sounds yes, it’s about business impact, but it’s not necessarily about scale of business impact, but it’s more like there is a kind of business impact that design as a function can potentially bring that you’re not gonna get from any of your other functions organizationally.

And I wonder if the boldness here is really about asserting a value proposition for your team, for design as a function, that goes beyond what the people around you think your team actually does or can do.

Peter: And to follow on that yeah, ’cause this is something Jesse and I talked a bit about, right, is, and I think about it from an organizational standpoint, design is a function, marketing is a function, sales is a function. Supply, manufacturing, operations, these are all functions.

And as you were saying earlier John, it can be hard for design to identify the value that it is delivering as a function.

Whereas I think those other functions have a more straightforward story to value, right? Sales acquires a customer, cashes that check, marketing acquires a lead. And, that’s the promise. There, there’s, it’s just more direct.

And so I’m curious with your clients, how you help them frame, pitch, communicate, design as a function that’s driving value. What are you finding are the, either the nouns, the verbs the levers that seem to land when trying to present design as this function that is worth standing side by side with these other more mature functions that they already understand.

John: Your use of the word maturity is an important one here because fewer people question a marketing decision because it’s a function that has existed for a long time and supply chain and operations and finance. And design, as much as it has been contributing to the enterprise for a long time, the maturity in which it’s connected to the business is still relatively new, 20, 25, 30 years tops.

And even then, it’s not systemic. Most companies don’t question whether they need to have a chief marketing officer.

Jesse: right.

John: Most people don’t question whether they need to have a chief human resources officer or a chief supply chain officer. But design is still one of these things that, that in today’s world, based on some research I’ve done, design most often reports to a different function and the majority of those people don’t report to the head of that function. So it just reinforces that design is in service to somebody else.

Jesse: Right.

John: And they’re not able to touch the other thing.

So a design leader that reports to a chief marketing officer probably doesn’t have a chance to influence innovation ’cause that’s another chief somewhere that, that is responsible for things. Or influence employee engagement because that sits under somebody else.

And so the principles that could be enacted across those functions could help drive a different culture inside the enterprise.

But it, but by the, because of the way they’re organized, it takes somebody to have to go sell the chief innovation officer that, Hey, we need to put some design people connected to your organization somehow.

And so a part of this is the other example that kind of sparked a thought in my head, Peter, when you and Jesse were talking, is insights. And I’m probably gonna earn an awful lot of enemies and get some hate mail here.

The insights communities that I have seen and had a chance to peek into are more focused on the methodologies of research than what it is they learn from the research. They too are under pressure to cut budgets and do things faster. So internet surveys are way more popular than in-home ethnography or shop alongs because, oh, we don’t have time. We wanna get, we’re gonna put 12 questions out.

And I’m sorry. There’s no way you can phrase any of those 12 questions that are gonna get meaningful insight into innovation work. You could probably validate some things and confirm some things so that you don’t get fired when something does launch. But the learning opportunity, there’s no replacement to sitting next to a consumer while they’re watching, do it, performing an activity on their screen to understand why did you click there and why did you do that? And what are you looking for when you do that?

There was when Proctor and Gamble was in their very earliest journey to elevate design, the CEO, whose idea it was for design to be strategic, A.G. Lafley, he role modeled the behavior he wanted to see everywhere. So when he went to a new market to visit that market, there, there were two things he wanted to do before he got into a conference room to talk about the business.

He wanted to be in a consumer’s home and he wanted to be in a store shopping with a consumer. And then the third thing when he did get together is, what are we doing to serve those consumers?

And then came the business conversation, how’s revenue, how’s share, how’s growth? And so a little bit like my comment about showing up every day, saying the same thing, everyone knew when he was traveling to a market that they knew they were gonna do these things first. They better have their consumer story together and I just have not seen that level of role modeling from a CEO other than the way they happen to role model around finance and numbers and, oh, we need to hit our numbers.

And then one other thing I wanted to touch on is, and this came up in the conference last year, Ken Musgrave, who is a longtime design leader at Ford and HP and Dell, and is now serving at Whirlpool. He talked about the confusion of time horizons and he said, I think about it as a now, near, and far.

Design wants to work on far, but the majority of the capacity of the organization is working on the now or the near.

Jesse: Right.

John: And so part of that is, how might you align the proportion of your now, near, and far in a way that aligns with those priorities of the business.

And the more dire the financial circumstances that the company, the more that is now.

Jesse: Yeah.

John: than it is far.

Jesse: Yeah, that makes sense. The time horizons narrow, right.

John: And it’s rewards drive behavior. We’re gonna drive all of the short term stuff. And part of it is even in those circumstances, if design leaders and designers know that the time horizon is now, hey, that may not be super sexy work, but design could still use their superpowers of reframing something or problem finding before you try to jump in and problem solve around something that you’re unclear about.

And so there, there are still ways to leverage the design superpowers to go drive value and impact in the business. And it doesn’t have to take a big, bold, courageous move to say, I’m not gonna work on that, or, but part of it is, I think, there are a lot of design leaders I talk to say the short term promotion stuff, it’s just not important sexy work.

It’s what if you use that as the pathway to prove what you can do? Go build champions and let those champions then advocate for the periodic longer horizon.

Jesse: It’s often the wrap on design and designers is that they’re so in love with their own craft, that they can’t be bothered to pay attention to the value that they’re actually delivering.

And there are, frankly, a lot of designers and design leaders whose actions have played right into that perception.

I wonder about those leadership skills that we talked about earlier, what do you think are the things that design leaders are most likely to be missing in terms of their own skillset in order to achieve the things that you are describing?

Let’s paint the community with a broad brush here and just call out the stereotypes a little bit. What are design leaders most likely to need to focus on developing within them, within themselves in order to deliver on this promise?

John: The example I’ll use first, Jesse, in, in framing that is, is in the circumstances where I see a design leader feeling like they are under pressure and overstressed, which is most of us, most of them will recess into the project work and become project managers for the work activity, and to some degree completely step away from the organizational side of their responsibilities because it’s comfortable.

That I, I know how to do this, I know how to create stuff,

Jesse: Right.

John: and I know how to get project plans in place and assign resources and all those things.

And I really don’t wanna have to have a battle with the president of the Asia region because of some business pressure they’re under and they don’t feel like we’re solving it for them.

And those are very real and quite more often than you might imagine.

And if any of you are getting to that point, you may not be in your role much longer because the business expects people at a certain level, if you’re senior director, vice president, SVP, EVP, chief, you probably should be spending most of your time on the organizational, cultural aspects of the work, not on the projects, ’cause you have teams and people and agencies and consultants to go do those things.

I think the challenge is the first thing that I would suggest for design leaders is figure out a way to do a self-assessment. To look in a mirror to try to find ways to say, where do I think I’m missing something?

And if you need somebody from the outside or business partner that is willing to work with you and you can develop some thick skin to, to take some feedback, there, there is a self-reflection opportunity.

I think the other is, so many design leaders in so many companies are trying to solve their problems without having outside points of view.

And I just think whether it’s a paid consultant that’s gonna help or a friend that’s go willing to give feedback, that the ability to have a different point of view and a different lens that is not inside of the politics of the company, ’cause that, that to me is where some courage comes from for design, is people that are fractional and are consultants or contractors and things. I don’t care if I’m gonna get promoted or not ’cause I’m not in your culture. So I’m gonna tell you what you really need to hear.

Jesse: Yeah.

John: And too many people, and I see this with consultants and agencies as well, is they don’t wanna upset the client.

So they often will tell the client how smart they are and laugh at all their jokes and tell them how well they dress. Exaggerating of course, but part of this is many of them are not going to tell the client what they actually need to hear because they themselves have become so dependent on the income that comes from that client.

And so there’s this conundrum. Go outside to get candid input, but don’t go to the people that are likely to become dependent on you because they’re not gonna tell you what you really need to hear.

And so back to your question, Jesse. I think establish a vision for where you think you want to go with this. Test it with some people, trusted advisors, friends, colleagues. Create a board of directors for yourself as a leader.

Is it ambitious enough? Is it too ambitious? Are people gonna understand it?

And then find champions. I think that’s another thing that is under-leveraged in corporate organizations is find the people who you have helped make look very good, and remind them that you made them look good.

And some of them, you don’t have to remind them but part of this is they’re likely to go to bat for you. And then one of the other things that I often see, especially if you’re actively trying to elevate design, is, and this is a controversial one, is do not spend a lot of time trying to convince a significant critic.

Go deliver exceptional stuff with the critics, peers inside the company. Other businesses, other leaders, other regions, other functions, whatever that is. And let then let that business, that leader, come to you and say, Hey, how come I’m not getting this?

You mistreated it.

There’s a famous story inside of Proctor and Gamble where the first head of design, Claudia Kotchka, went into one of our business unit presidents and said, I’m taking all of your designers and design managers. And he said, you can’t do that. I can, you’re mistreating them and they’re all gonna quit, and I’d rather have them in the company than for you to stand on pride that you’ve got them.

And she took them and for six months they had to figure out how to go do that work themselves with agencies and marketers.

And they realized they weren’t getting the strategic output that design was trying to reinforce and deliver. And, six, eight months later, it wasn’t a full mea culpa, but it was, Hey, can we talk about getting our ball back so we could play

Jesse: Yeah.

Peter: Yeah. A theme here. And it’s something that I’ve witnessed and try to encourage with the leaders I work with, is I think a lot of leaders don’t understand the power that they do have.

I think particularly design leaders, perhaps because they weren’t in an MBA program, they don’t understand necessarily how these corporations operate, wield or have access to more power and influence than they think.

And instead they tend to get very, submissive isn’t quite right, but reactive or they don’t wanna rock the boat. And they feel like because they’re already, because they already feel like second class citizens, any attempt to stand up for themselves, they’ll will only cause them to get hurt more.

And I, we’re getting close to time and so I kind of like to end around the, the human and emotional challenge that I think these leaders are facing.

I kept coming back to a statement that Simon said much earlier, and I’m putting it in the stream. ’cause this is the thing you can do.

John: Look at that!

Peter: “I’m seeing good leaders stretch to the bones, to the point that they don’t take time to do the creativity work, to put humanistic business proposals together that makes sense.”

And there’s a lot there but I think the heart of it is the, what it says to the beginning, I’m seeing good leaders stretch to the bones.

And this is something Jesse and I are seeing. We’re talking about it with the Liminal podcast, where you’ve got the job that you were hired to do, but now there’s all this transformation occurring and now you’re telling me I need to advance and advocate for design, so it’s even greater, so now you’re telling me I need to understand business and make business cases and there’s so much that we’re being, that we’re asking of folks in order to realize this potential. And they’re just trying to get their work done.

And I’m wondering, John, like I’m sure that with your clients as well. Like how do you help them navigate this opportunity without getting overwhelmed and burned out?

John: I think, I, any please out there, anyone out there, take whatever I’ve said as one dude’s opinion about stuff. But I’d like to think it’s well informed opinion.

But part of this is like the old saying, you’ve gotta, chunk the elephant down into smaller pieces.

So part of it is think about what are all the things that are on your plate. Now that can become overwhelming if I’ve gotta coach people and I’ve gotta manage up and I’ve gotta mentor people and I’ve gotta do this and save money and deliver. But until you, you have a view about what you are responsible for and is that scope of responsibility aligned with what your bosses think you’re responsible for,

Jesse: Right.

John: Until then.

And then the third thing is, how does what you are doing ladder up to what the company is expects as a company? Too many people, I find that they can’t articulate how their job ladders to the company’s objectives and strategies and vision.

And as a leader, you are supposed to be the one that helps people make that connection. And if you yourself don’t understand it, then it’s gonna be hard for you to bring your team along to to say all of that.

One comment I want to add to a comment that was made. Roman, It’s 10 o’clock where you are. Thank you so much for listening in. He makes a comment that, that I’m actually gonna use to promote the conference, is the circumstances that we’re living in today are ripe for design to to make a, an impact and for design to step in and reframe some of the things that we’re all challenged with.

Roman, thank you.

Jesse: John, thank you so much for being with us. Tell us where people can find out more about the event.

John: Thank you. The event, you can go to thefutureof-conference.com, thefutureof-conference.com. The conference is gonna be May 11th to 13th in Chicago. Peter and Jesse are both going to be offering a session and participating in panels at the conference.

The other thing I’ll share is I’ve created a discount code for anybody in Peter and Jesse’s orbit that wants to come. The discount code is Finding Our Way, and you get 26% off. And yes, that’s in an intentional 26 for 2026, but it also rounds out to $650 savings if you want to join and come be a part of the conversation.

Peter: Fantastic.

John: Peter and Jesse.

Peter: Thank you for, yeah, thank you for joining us on our maiden live streaming voyage. Thank you to the folks who listened along and participated in the chat. Thank you to Jesse for putting up with all of this. And we’ll continue to try out new ways of engagement, but until then, it is a Friday before a holiday weekend for many.

So happy holidays. Good spring break. Happy Passover, whatever you’re celebrating. I hope it. I hope it’s great. Take care everyone.

Jesse: Thanks everybody. Thanks

John: Thanks everybody.

Jesse: For more Finding Our Way, visit findingourway.design for past episodes and transcripts, or follow the show on LinkedIn. Visit petermerholz.com to find Peter’s newsletter, The Merholz Agenda, as well as Design Org Dimensions featuring his latest thinking and the actual tools he uses with clients.

If you’re looking for help with AI transformation or you just need a private advisor to help you solve your hardest leadership problems, visit my website at jessejamesgarrett.com to book your free one hour consultation.

If you’ve found value in something you’ve heard 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.