A Seat at the Table: Inviting Design & Innovation into the Board Room

In a typical board room meeting all the decision makers are present. You have your executives, accountants, lawyers and managers. Occasionally you'll have somebody from marketing. Very rarely will you have somebody to represent design.

While this may have worked for the old way of doing business, the new model requires businesses to consider design in order to stay ahead of the competition.

There are seemingly legitimate reasons why design departments have been relegated to the lower level in a building instead of the executive floor. In the mind of your average business executive, design has more to do with art than it does with business. For innovation to happen, mindsets need to be changed.

First we need a new definition of what is design. It is not just making something pretty. Design is creating something from nothing—or rearranging something unexpected. Instead of going from point A to B to C, you're going directly form point A to C. And the brilliance in that is that something can be created that was not there before—something unexpected—something innovative!

I think we can broaden the scope from mere design to design thinking. You can have design-type thinking in the graphic design department. You can have design thinking in your engineering department. And even, believe it or not, in management.

Good design thinking in management would be creating new processes which save time and money, which haven't been written down in books and nobody has thought of before. Good design thinking in executive leadership is making decisions which are possibly risky but may yield ground-breaking results. Design thinking can't always be measured, and that's why the process is messy and unpredictable. And that's also why it has been left out of the board room.

Great companies have learned to welcome design thinking into their culture. Take company Google, for example, they encourage their employees to spend 20 percent of their work week to pursue special projects. The company claims that many of their products in Google Labs started out as pet projects in the 20 percent time program.

Panera Bread also uses innovative ways to turn tables. The fact is, they don't "turn tables." You can stay at a table as long as you want—and they'll throw in free wifi as well. This eatery has created a new class of cubical-less business professionals. My favorite meeting spot!

Of course, you may not want a company totally run by the design department, because you would go down too many rabbit trails. If all the creative engineers were running things, maybe there would be too many test products. So I suggest there be a collaboration between design and business, design thinking and executive management. This involves discussion, going back and forth. But the end result, I believe, yields tremendous fruit. And through this, going from point A to C you can have tremendous company-wide innovation.

Design thinking—inviting creative into the board room, I believe, is the key to innovation.

Marketing and Branding—All the Same, Right?

What's the difference between marketing and branding? A lot of people running their own business get these confused. Someone once said, Marketing is getting the word out; branding is creating the word.

It's often tempting for business startups to start marketing, i.e. get the word out about the business, before a thorough and thoughtful visual brand has been established. I suggest a good visual brand identity be established first, and then the marketing and advertising can flow naturally out of that concise and on-target brand message. So often we think, that just bombarding enough people with messages about our company, that we will get through. We may get through to some, but will they be confused about our company if we haven't crafted a strategic and visually engaging brand identity that makes sense?

Here is a great illustration about the difference between marketing, telemarketing, public relations, advertising, design and branding (by Marty Neumeier, in his book ZAG):

Your Business Card is CRAP!

"Infotainer" Joel Bauer lays it out for us. Hope you enjoy this kind of humor.

Day at the DMV

In my State of North Carolina, the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) is notorious for it's bad customer service. Having lived in the state for a few years, I've developed a strategy for surviving the bureaucracy.

Even after arriving early on a "slow day," Tuesday morning (notably not Monday or Friday), there was already a line snaking outside. Once you reach the inside of the building, you wait in another queue, actually more like a coral. Everything is faded—walls, floors, old dog-eared posters. Even the demeanor of the workers show every lack of enthusiasm. The walls are plastered with signs on what not to do: No Smoking, No Cellphones, No Public Restrooms. There were also reminders that only cash and North Carolina checks were valid forms of payment.

Once you reach the counter, a DMV employee gives you a ticket with a sequence letter/number combination—mine was A111. Next, I sat down in a second holding tank—having luckily found a seat, and waited for my number to be called. Once a number is announced over the loudspeaker, it is repeated incessantly until the "customer" arrives at the designated desk.

Number B113 had to be called half a dozen times. I was having a hard time concentrating on my book, with the repeated barking of letters and numbers. I was reading the book, Emotional Branding, by Marc Gobé. He believes we live in a consumer-oriented marketplace, where brands need to connect with the customers on an emotional level in order to be effective. Ironically the only emotion I was feeling about the DMV was annoyance. After my number was called, I took a small drivers license road sign recognition test, and took a seat in yet another waiting room.

When the uniformed DMV employee called me up to get my picture taken, he told me to sit down on a stool against a wall. Lights came on for what seemed a long time. There was no warning when the picture was being taken, no smile for the camera—it was just, "You're done. Please have a seat back in the waiting room."

A few minutes later this same employee handed me a newly printed drivers license to inspect for accuracy. Well, the name was right, but the picture was of a guy I hardly recognized, with a strange, half-smile. It was obvious he didn't know when the shutter was being released.

"Can I take the picture again?" I asked. "If you want to retake it, you have to go stand in that line." The man motioned over to the desk and holding tank I had just come from.

"No thanks," I said. Great, now I have to live with a license picture I hate for the next eight years! I think I'm starting to feel the emotion of anger.

Even though I was only able to read a few pages in my book, I learned a lot today.

A lot about customer care. A lot about what not to do.

Thinking Inside the Box

You hear the phrase "think outside the box" all the time. I know what people mean when they say that. They mean, "come up with something innovative and different."

While it's a good idea to innovate, when it comes to design, I don't think it's helpful to abandon the box altogether. In my opinion, the best design happens when there are parameters (or boundaries) present that give the creative process some direction. Otherwise, if there are no boundaries, the final design can be confusing and unnecessarily risky.

A better question to ask, would be, "do we have the right box?" Do we have the right strategy? 

In this scenario, brand strategy is the box which informs the design.

Putting the Brakes on Pontiac

General Motors has announced it is phasing out the Pontiac line. It's too bad. Pontiac started the American muscle car trend in 1964 with it's GTO. Unfortunately, it's the same company that also brought us the Aztek, arguable one of the ugliest cars ever made. Not exactly your "excitement dealer."

Recently they've come out with the Pontiac G8, a rear-wheel drive, hot looking, performer. But it seems to be too little, too late. There's just way to much competition from other well-crafted brands. Pontiac has squandered away it's brand by sending us too many mixed messages. We're a cost-effective performance brand ... no, we're a place to rebadge boring GM cars.

Kevin Smith, editorial director from the automotive website edmunds.com puts it best: "There was a time, a long way back now, when you knew exactly what Pontiac stood for ... [unfortunately] Pontiac's lack of focus as a brand may finally have brought its demise. That's just death in a marketplace where there's so much competition and so much quality."

For years, General Motors has been trying to convince us through millions of advertising dollars that Pontiac is an exciting line of cars. Unfortunately they forgot to check with the customers to see if we really believed the hype.

A Great Name

It's been said, "A good name is more desirable than great riches" (Book of Proverbs). I firmly believe that. While a company reputation means a lot, having a good name can help move a company into a more competitive position.

Of course there are many businesses who do well despite being saddled with a poor name. The regional bank BB&T, though successful, in my opinion has a confusing name. Most people don't know that it stands for Branch Banking & Trust. The acronym BB&T could stand for anything, and Branch Banking & Trust is too generic to be memorable.

On the other hand, the smaller regional financial institution, Bank of Granite has a great name. It has meaning on several levels. When I think of granite, I think of something rock solid. In my mind I envision a granite encased vault inside the bank. My money is safe and secure with this bank.

Good company names are memorable and often have double meanings or invoke the right imagery. Poor names are confusing and generic.

A good name for a plastic surgery clinic: Genesis Anti-Aging & Cosmetic Surgery 

Poor name: Piedmont Plastic Surgery

When I think of Genesis, I think of new beginnings, when I think of Piedmont, I think of a region in North Carolina. What does that have to do with physical beauty? Also there's plenty of Piedmont companies out there: Piedmont Manufacturing, Piedmont Painting, etc. In the final logo, Piedmont Plastic Surgery had to compensate for the poor name by coming up with an elegant swan illustration to precede the name.

Upstream is the name of a high-end seafood restaurant in the Charlotte area. It's a wonderful label, since it has levels of meaning: upscale plus the imagery of stream, perfect for a fish & seafood restaurant.

In my experience working with business people, I have observed that many form their company names with their own initials—JCB Accounting, RTL Capital. That may mean something to the owner, but the customers are left with a company name that has little meaning to them.

When launching a company, it's so important to get the name right from the start. It can be changed later, but why go through all that hassle and expense? It's better to start out strong in people's minds. Here's the bottom line:

Memorable and levels of meaning—good. Confusing and generic—bad.