While the market is disrupted by AI, unstable economies and overall uncertainty about the future, companies need Design Leadership more than ever. Today's business challenges cannot be solved with a purely business-as-usual mindset. They require imagination, creativity and different approaches to problem-solving.
Companies like Duolingo, Cisco, Google, JPMorganChase are already investing in Chief Design Officer positions, seeing the impact they can have on the business and how a design-led approach can help outperform competitors who don’t invest in design.
A design-led approach has direct and in-direct impact on every part of the organisation and brings unique values to a boardroom - which include, but are not limited to:
► Revenue Growth. E.g. improving e-commerce flow to increase the number of sales and/or average order size or building a strong brand that increases market share
► Cost Optimisation. E.g. building and maintaining a robust Design System that reduces errors and inconsistencies or creating intuitive UX and CX that decreases customer support inquiries
► Cross-Functional Collaboration.
E.g. implementing joint ceremonies like shared review sessions, or creating co-located workspaces/shared studios to promote day-to-day idea cross-pollination.
►User-Centricity
E.g. mapping the full customer journey connecting the work of different teams, or bringing customer stories to the boardroom.
►Culture of curiosity and creativity
E.g. using facilitation, gamification, or creative tools in strategy sessions, or organising company-wide guest talks, inspirational sessions, and lunch-and-learns.
►Sustainability, ethics and planet-centricity
E.g. rethinking the production process to reduce environmental impact, or developing ethical design principles for the entire organisation.
►Innovation and future-proofing
E.g. hosting speculative design workshops and creating future-focused concepts, or building products/services that add new value.
After establishing a Chief Design Officer position, Duolingo's design team grew to become the company's second-largest department (14% of the workforce). This bold move led to Daily Active Users jumping 54% in Q3 2024, with user retention climbing through carefully designed features like leaderboards and streaks.
Source:
Ryan Sims, Chief Design officer at Duolingo
Duolingo’s shareholder letter Q3 2024
According to LinkedIn, about 548 companies worldwide now have a Chief Design Officer position. Looking closer at established companies (those with 200+ employees), 150 have created this role, and the numbers keep growing. Tech companies are leading the trend with an average of 34 Chief Design Officer positions. Retail follows, averaging 28 CDOs, with real estate following with 23.
Chief Design Officers are spread across companies of all sizes:
● Big players with over 10,000 employees, like Nike, Cisco and JPMorgan Chase, have an average of 36 CDOs.
● Large companies (5,000–10,000 employees), including Zoom and Logitech, have an average of 11 CDOs.
● Mid-sized companies (1,000–5,000 employees), such as citizenM and Roblox, have an average of 33 CDOs.
● Smaller companies (500–1,000 employees), with Duolingo among them, average 26 CDOs.
● The smallest company size (200–500 employees), featuring companies like Strava, leads with an average of 44 CDOs.
We talked to Chief Design Officers at Zoom, Cisco, citizenM and JPMorgan Chase to find out what changes when you move to the C-suite - from learning new skills to taking on different responsibilities and adapting to a completely new environment.
A Chief Design Officer’s responsibilities go beyond execution and leading design teams. It’s about shaping the company’s future by working across every department and showing how design can solve their challenges.
Claudia Abt, CDO at citizenM, reflects on this: 'As I moved to C-level, I stopped reporting to design and started reporting to the business. Now, my first team is a group of people who have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about and why I care so much about certain things.'
Throughout a traditional career path, designers usually rely on fundamental skills that make them great at their craft like visual design, research, empathy, creative problem-solving and facilitation. While excelling at these skills is effective in producing outstanding products, it alone isn't sufficient to reshape the company's strategy or boost revenue. As a Chief Design Officer, you are expected to understand finance, legal, business strategy and marketing to have productive conversations with the rest of the leadership team.
Travis Isaacs, CDO at Cisco, shares: 'I had to learn a new vocabulary and a new set of tools to understand what are the needs of the business, who my first team is and who that person is who will listen.'
Mark Kawano, CDO at Zoom explains: 'I do have to spend a lot of time thinking about the business side of things. What is our strategy? Do I understand it clearly? Where does design fit into each of these areas? What matters to me is how I can help them win as a business. That's what a lot of people should be thinking about when they're at that most senior head of design role.'
The path to becoming a Chief Design Officer takes time. A review of 150 LinkedIn profiles of Chief Design Officers from companies with over 200 employees reveals that most individuals in this role have at least 15 years of design experience, including more than 10 years in leadership positions. The findings highlight:
● 39% of CDOs earned their position through internal promotion
● 45% of CDOs stepped up from design leadership roles at other companies
● 17% of CDOs brought previous CDO experience from other organisations
In Conclusion: There's no fixed path, but experience is key.
Janaki Kumar, CDO at JPMorgan Chase also adds that by showing empathy to customers, she earned a place at the boardroom table: 'I started to work in a small area. And then slowly my mandate grew as senior leaders, the CEOs of the organisation started to see how we are using empathy, understanding our users, building jobs to be done, doing storyboards and driving design outcomes based on customer insights. Slowly but surely you start to get a seat at the table.'
Most design leaders spend their days ensuring design quality, growing their teams and cultivating creative culture. Their scope typically stays within the design function.Most design leaders spend their days ensuring design quality, growing their teams and cultivating creative culture. Their scope typically stays within the design function.
At Future London Academy, we interviewed Chief Design Officers from some of the top organisations and identified 8 core impact areas that CDOs have, which can be grouped into 5 layers – Human, Product, Team, Company and World.
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