As a result of the work we do in helping develop brand strategies and designing customer experiences, we are increasingly being asked to assist in the task of instilling a culture of design thinking into an organization. As we continue to build our own competencies in the areas of design management, it only makes sense that we should endeavor to share our own best practices and lessons learned with our clients. The task however, has consistently proven to be more difficult than it would appear to be at first blush.

A few years ago, we wouldn’t have even expected to field a request such as this from a client. They (and we) were content to settle for a relationship that strictly adhered to the classic client/agency model. A model that works fine when addressing short-term, well-defined challenges, where responsibilities are neatly delineated and innovation is catalyzed and managed from the top of the organizational hierarchy. But as organizations increasingly look to Design as not only a product and marketing differentiator – but as a system-wide tool for driving value throughout the entire organization, the need to ingrain design thinking into the very DNA of the organization becomes paramount.

In response to our client’s requests for assistance in making this transition we have staged branding workshops, hosted experience design forums, and spent time one-on-one with staffers in an attempt to transfer our collective design ethos into the culture of the organization. And although these exercises have been successful in very particular ways, they have failed to yield what I would consider to be substantive changes to the culture writ large.

What I have come to understand is that the effective installation of a culture of Design (that’s Design with a BIG D – think systems, not graphics) requires a fundamental shift in the way companies are managed. The shift must be precipitated by a mandate from, and participation by, the executives that reside on the top floor. It really requires a wholesale rethinking of what we’ve come to expect from discipline of management. Of course I’m not advocating a total shift from the status quo, but I am suggesting that in order to become a brand-led, customer-centric business that some foundational changes will have to be made. Starting with sacrificing the quest for efficiency at the alter of growth. Real change will be messy and we will have to learn how to walk (again) before we can run.

The problems that dogged twentieth-century managers are not the same that we face today. As our economy continues to shift from products to ideas, the tools and methodologies that once were the engine value creation, via incremental improvement, are no longer sufficient to full continued growth. Managers have spent the last century making minor tweaks to the same basic management principals in an attempt to squeeze just a bit more margin, or production, or market share from their businesses. One of the highest profile examples in this quest for continues improvement was Six Sigma – yet the Wall Street Journal cited a 2006 Qualpro study showing that of 58 large companies that announced Six Sigma programs, 91% trailed the S&P 500.

Efficiency and quality does not offer a sufficient platform for differentiation. And to be clear… it’s all about differentiation. Innovation drives differentiation. And this is were the introduction of design thinking throughout the entire organization yields it’s richest bounty.

Marty Neumeier recently wrote a compelling article for the Design Management Review in which he said:

Imagine a crazy wonderland where most of what you learned in business school is either upside down or backward – where customers control the company, jobs are avenues of self expression, the barriers to competition are out your control, strangers design your products, fewer features are better, advertising drives customers away, demographics are beside the point, whatever you sell you take back, and best practices are obsolete at birth; where meaning talks, money walks, and stability is fantasy; where talent trumps obedience, imagination beats knowledge, and empathy trounces logic.

If you’ve been paying close enough attention, you don’t have to imagine this Alice-in-Wonderland scenario. You see it forming all around you. The only question is whether you can change your business, your brand and your thinking fast enough to take full advantage or it.

The management innovation destined to kick Six Sigma off its throne is design thinking. It will take over your marketing department, move into your R&D labs, transform you processes, and ignite your culture. It will create a whip action that will bring finance into alignment with creativity, and eventually reach deep into Wall Street to changes the rules of investing.

So the logical question is what does this have to do with design and branding. I would argue that in order to fully integrate design-led management into the culture of a business we have to redefine how we define business. Historically brands have been built around the enterprise. I believe that in a design-led world the enterprise is built around the brand, and when brand lives at the center of an enterprise – so does design. This is true whether we acknowledge it or not. Design drives product development, it enables communication with customers, it serves as the language of innovation, and is the most powerful tool we posses to envision possible futures.

To be clear, I’m not postulating that a better designed PowerPoint presentation, or business card, or web site, or even product interface is the silver bullet. But rather, a corporate culture that recognizes Design’s value and places an emphasis on its cultivation and management is better equipped to apply the same principals to an entire range of business challenges.