What does it take to be the leader of a design firm or group? We often assume they have all the answers, but in this rapidly evolving industry they’re forced to find their way like the rest of us. So how do good design leaders manage? If you lead a design group, or want to understand the people who do, this insightful book explores behind-the-scenes strategies and tactics from leaders of top design companies throughout North America. Based on scores of interviews he conducted over a two-year period—from small companies to massive corporations like ESPN—author Richard Banfield covers a wide range of topics, including: How design leaders create a healthy company culture Innovative ways for attracting and nurturing talent Creating productive workspaces, and handling remote employees Staying on top of demands while making time for themselves Consistent patterns among vastly different leadership styles Techniques and approaches for keeping the work pipeline full Making strategic and tactical plans for the future Mistakes that design leaders made—and how they bounced back

Liftoff! is your guide to leveling up as a design manager and leader. Its experience-driven approach--written by designers for designers--will help you hire and scale teams, develop careers, learn why diversity matters to your business, and solidify design's role in your organization. Liftoff! will elevate your skills to lead your team and company to new heights.

The fundamental tenet of this Design Leadership book is that design is a commercial and social imperative and its management and leadership are integral parts of what can make business successful, government effective and society safer and more enjoyable for everyone. The text draws on Raymond Turner’s extensive experience and insights into the effective use of design as a business resource for competitive advantage and social benefit. Raymond brings his experience of working for iconic businesses, projects and consultancies to provide essential, value creating, insights on the interface between design and business. Design Leadership adopts a straightforward approach that will be of great value to those who influence how organisations work - the managers and chief executives of a country’s wealth creating engines. It is also of particular relevance to those with design management and leadership responsibilities as well as students who aim to work in these roles. The ideas at the heart of the book concern all who shape society and have the brief to improve our lives. Raymond Turner’s advice will help all of these readers make design work and so become more effective more quickly.

Design has become the key link between users and today’s complex and rapidly evolving digital experiences, and designers are starting to be included in strategic conversations about the products and services that enterprises ultimately deliver. This has led to companies building in-house digital/experience design teams at unprecedented rates, but many of them don’t understand how to get the most out of their investment. This practical guide provides guidelines for creating and leading design teams within your organization, and explores ways to use design as part of broader strategic planning. You’ll discover: Why design’s role has evolved in the digital age How to infuse design into every product and service experience The 12 qualities of effective design organizations How to structure your design team through a Centralized Partnership Design team roles and evolution The process of recruiting and hiring designers How to manage your design team and promote professional growth

The premise of this book is that managers should act not only as decision makers, but also as designers. In a series of essays from a multitude of disciplines, the authors develop a theory of the design attitude in contrast to the more traditionally accepted and practiced decision attitude.

Great leaders aspire to manage “by design”—with a sense of purpose and foresight. But too few leaders incorporate the proven practices and principles of the design disciplines. Lessons learned from the world of design, when applied to management, can turn leaders into collaborative, creative, deliberate, and accountable visionaries. Design thinking loosens the mind and activates innovation. It creates the conditions for employees to thrive and for all kinds of businesses to succeed. In Designed Leadership, the strategic-design scholar and urban-systems designer Moura Quayle shares her plan for integrating design and leadership, translating processes, principles, and practices from years of experience into tools of change for professional leaders. Quayle describes the key concepts of designed leadership, such as “make values explicit” and “learn from natural systems,” showing how strategic design can spur individual creativity and harness collective energy. For managers at any level, Designed Leadership uses original visuals and field-tested examples to teach the kind of thinking, theorizing, and practicing that result in long-lasting high performance in the workplace and beyond.

By focusing on what students learn rather than what they are taught, schools can redefine their mission and begin the transition to a professional learning community. After interviewing and observing principals, administrators, and teachers, the authors identify seven leadership practices that effective PLC leaders share, along with the techniques that have led them to sustainable success.

Designers are more in-demand than ever, and companies worldwide are creating new leadership roles to manage them. With only a few select institutions teaching effective design management practices, self-taught designers are on the rise, and resources are needed to guide them. Design Management is here to hone your capacity to manage like a leader and magnify your team’s potential, demonstrating how to combine managerial and leadership competencies leveraging neuroscience, psychology, and sociology notions. This book will help eager designers learn the behavioral abilities required to create, lead and manage high-performing design teams using a systemic, context-agnostic, and therefore repeatable approach. While effective design management is vital in these times of complexity and fast change in organizations, the available literature is insufficient, predominately informative, not based on research, and not actionable. Design Management fills that gap by illuminating the skills you need to lead your team to success. Come away from Design Management with confidence about how to manage like a leader leveraging different leadership mindsets to nurture creative collaboration and optimize the design operations. Whether you are a designer preparing for the first leadership role or an already established design manager intentioned to expand attitudinal and behavioral competencies, this book belongs on your shelf. Design Management is here to assist you in the long haul.

This book explores issues in the development of the creative industries in Singapore, with a particular focus on the design sector. It presents case study research into the experiences of design leaders transitioning to leadership positions in the context of the Asia Pacific ‘war for talents’ and Singapore’s drive to become the design hub in Asia. Three in-depth case studies are provided: the case of design managers, the case of design consultants and the case of design entrepreneurs. The case studies reveal complex, inter-related issues and ideals that participants desired of potential designers and future design leaders as part of their transition to design leadership and management roles. The empirical findings of the research led to the generation of a new theory of design leaders’ transition to design leadership and management positions in Singapore, providing a framework for design career and trajectory. This book is significant for design education in Singapore, as well as internationally, because it establishes design leaders’ expectations of designer career trajectories, and the need for a design leadership pipeline. It will be of particular interest to designers and design leaders/managers; educational researchers; curriculum developers; and graduate and postgraduate design students.

Design: A Business Case challenges you to stimulate innovation in your own organization as an ongoing and integral dialogue between complementary skills–to bridge mind and matter, image and identity. Design thinking is a framework developed to ensure C-suite endorsement of the pursuit of design excellence in all actions undertaken by the organization. Design management is a rigorous and strategically anchored mechanism to capitalize on the investment in design as intellectual capital. And design – as we’ve always known it – is the skills, methods and creative capabilities needed to embody ideas and direction. Design thinking inspires, design management enables, design embodies. This book aims to build the bridges needed to reconcile the three, and to encourage organizational and professional environments in which their combined forces can thrive and reverberate.