INTERVIEW:Design as a Core Strategy JOHN ZAPOLISKI

An interview with John Zapolski, national AIGA board member and expert in the design of human-centered products, systems, strategies, and decision-making structures.

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Many have discussed the intersection of design and business, describing this junction as an overlap where the two philosophies come together and collaborate. John Zapolski has been thinking about the intersection of design and business very differently. He asks, what happens if the realms of design and business completely overlap and design is the core strategy of the business? John works with organizations to design human-centered products, systems, strategies, and decision-making structures. He is a renowned expert in digital media design, and is highly regarded for his ability to use design as a tool for illuminating and clarifying strategic choices.

Brandon Schauer: John, from a prior conversation I know you to be pretty passionate about design’s role at the organizational level. You’ve written and spoken on applying a design mentality to create customer-centered organizations. These are organizations that you say reorganize internal activities around the generation of customer value (and therefore greater economic value), rather than just “slapping-on” some user-centered pleasantries as a product or service is heading out the door. But who’s involved in integrating design thinking at this strategic level of an organization? Do you find this kind of strategic role to be that of an individual design leader, a new kind of design department, or something else entirely?

John Zapolski: Let me try to address your question. Art Kleiner wrote a book recently called "Who Really Matters? The Core Group Theory of Power, Privilege, and Success" <http://tinyurl.com/3lg3h> The thesis is that all organizations make decisions based on the perceived wants and needs of a relatively small group of individuals, a core group. Those in the core group need not necessarily mandate something within the organization in order for it to happen; if the great majority outside of the core group sense that the core group cares about some particular thing, they will direct their attention towards satisfying that perceived concern.

Kleiner's theory is an interesting lens through which to perceive corporate design. If you look at organizations that succeed in taking fuller advantage of design as a key corporate strategy, they all seem to have in common a strong design presence within their core groups. In some cases, a very senior person in the organization, often the CEO, implicitly "gets" design, and uses those biases to orient the activities of the corporation. Steve Jobs is probably the most obviously example. While Jobs may not consider himself a designer, I don't think he can talk about Apple for more than five minutes within mentioning design. His passion gets operationalized within the company in a number of ways: in who the company hires and promotes ("great product people" instead of "sales guys"), in which projects it chooses to invest in, in how the company talks about itself publicly. And its a self-reinforcing cycle.

Some companies have functional units that account for significant parts of the core group. At Procter & Gamble, the core group is almost certainly made up mostly of marketers. At Google, it's filled with engineers. And at some companies, design departments find a place inside the core group, as is the case at present-day Samsung.  When designers talk about getting "a place at the table" for design, I think it's this idea they're talking about, getting design into the core group. It's the core group that ends up, explicitly and even more so implicitly, directing the activities of the entire organization.

Now, all of that leads me to the real point I'm trying to make. Companies that are successful exploiting the full potential of design do so because it's present in all of the decisions the company makes. The core group theory helps to articulate some of the political forces that give rise to that, but the point is that these companies aren't choosing to apply design to their respective business strategies, but have chosen design *as the fundamental strategy itself*. Design is the philosophical core of the company. Everyone in the company becomes involved in designing, whether that means creating financial plans or selecting casing materials for an industrial product. Design isn't something that the design department does. It's a way of operating the company. It's an ongoing set of choices about [how] the company is going to exist, to compete, to grow.

Brandon Schauer: I can see how your point would also apply to core strategies other than design—everyone at P&G becomes involved in marketing, everyone at Google is involved in engineering. And there are many more Googles and P&Gs out there than there are Apples. So what are the key tenets of a company with design at its core versus these other alternatives? And how are these tenets and practices diffused through the organization so that everyone in the company becomes involved in designing?

John Zapolski: I think the difference equates to a strategic choice. Companies like Apple have chosen to make design the primary means for creating strategic value. As Michael Porter says, a company can attempt to profit through either lowering its cost of operations, or through differentiation by adding value to its products and services. Design is one way — and I would argue potentially the most effective way — to pursue the latter route. Design creates the emotional value, or certainly the emotional pay-off, to the product or service — that's worth a lot to customers, and extremely difficult to copy. But being successful in that route, as with any strategy, requires a deep commitment. Making the choice to differentiate through product or service design means a whole other set of choices cascade, like that you'll have to get good at understanding the emotions that underlie customers' choices. It's hard — impossible probably — to spend enough time focusing on good design and everything it entails and still focus relentlessly on squeezing out costs from the supply chain (for example). So it's a deeply strategic decision. And it's the leader's job to make sure everyone in the company understands that strategy well enough to execute on it. He/she is ultimately the one who propagates the message, and is held accountable for its results.

Interestingly, though, I think there can be a place for design in companies competing through the first route — through lowering costs. It's of a different and probably less often talked about type of design, but similar methods and processes can be applied to finding ways to improve operational efficiency, too.

Until recently leaving to start his own consulting firm, John was Director of Practice Development for User Experience and Design at Yahoo! Inc., where he led and contributed to organizational design, product development planning, and quality improvement initiatives, and had responsibility for improving corporate-wide design performance. Before Yahoo!, John was Vice President of Customer Research for Wells Fargo, where he planned and designed innovative Web channel strategies that helped the company develop the most successful internet channel in the financial services industry. John is currently a national board member of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, is the national chair of its Experience Design Community, and will be speaking at the Institute of Design’s Strategy Conference.