I often describe my teaching agenda as on the One Hand,
Helping managers understand the criticality of design and
Innovation perspectives. And how important it is to truly
integrate that into how they do business and help designers
understand organizations in a better way, that was the voice
of Rodrigo. Canales associate professor of
organizational behavior at the Yale School of Management.
Rodrigo is also the faculty Director of Business,
perspectives for Creative leaders and Executive Education.
I am from aiga in partnership with the Yale School of
Management. As usual, I'm Li Shan Wang
director of design, content and learning here at aiga.
And on this episode of the AIG design podcast, we'll hear more
from Rodrigo on some of the challenges designers face as we
advance as leaders in our careers and some of the learning
opportunities that can help us navigate.
Those challenges will also hear from pentagram partner, Michael
be root, a former participant of business perspectives for
Creative leaders, And what makes the program?
A unique learning experience. Now back to Rodrigo you know the
way designers operate in what makes designers unique and
effective is their ability to empathize with the people who
they're solving problems for and to bring in a problem-solving
ethos and methodology that allows for discoveries that are
they woven into innovative solutions, right?
So that's the magic of design but with in the process of
design designers, just haven't usually don't have to and they
I've been trained to understand that whatever it is that you're
producing needs to live within an existing organization and a
business model that has to make it sustainable and that has
right? And so there's another set of
factors that are going to determine whether your design
ever sees the light of day that may have nothing to do with how
effective your Innovation is, or your work is for solving the
problem that you're analyzing, but we'll have a lot to do with
how well that's solution that you're proposing.
Rates with a set of existing structures and systems and
decision processes. If you want to be a truly
effective designer, you need to make sure that whatever it is
that you're designing is also designed to reside within a
broader and more complex organization and its not just
solving for the problem that you're analyzing, which is what
designers are. Excellent are, that's one aspect
of the teaching, right? And so it's helping designers
understand how their work integrates into a broader
organization and set of This models, I would say that a
second aspect of this course in particular, which I particularly
enjoy is you start as a designer.
And as you say, you invest in your craft and in your Insight
and in your intuition, and all these things at some point
precisely because you become so good.
All of a sudden you are in a position where you're no longer
the one necessarily doing the work, but you actually have to
supervise other people and craft teams and you become a manager
of an organization. Of designers.
And so I think it's a natural path of any career, but I think
it's especially Salient in the designer career that what got
you here is not work. Done.
Is what's going to get you there?
Meaning all the things that allow you to be an amazing
designer are not the things that are going to make you an
effective manager of designers. And so there's a set of blind
spots that designers have because of their training and
their craft that we help them. We want to help them kind of
illuminate through a basic training on.
On management and organizations and business processes and
business perspectives. And so I would say those are the
two big motivations behind the, the work that we do partner with
the IGA, on this program. Next up, we have pentagram
partner. Michael be roots and Alum of
business, perspectives for Creative leaders and what makes
the program and Yale University. So unique, I haven't gone
through the program myself. I can really testify to how
enlightening it is. To get a highly condensed but
still really, really effective window into the world of
business and business strategy as his practice at the highest
levels. If you're a designer, you have
talent, you have insights that have gotten you into a room, but
the room you're in, you're surrounded by people who are
often not designers. And in fact who have their own
goals that they're trying to advance their business goals or
other kinds of goals and your ability to succeed.
Your ability to have your work realized in that context has a
lot to do with how you connect. With those people designers are
always like talking about how we need to educate the client.
Maybe that's true occasionally, but I find that the best
relationships that I have with projects and engagements.
With clients are when I'm on the receiving end of the education,
the degree that you're curious that you can kind of make those
connections in the room. When you're talking about
design, not on your own. Personal terms would be able to
translate those terms into things that actually resonates
With people who are there because they represent the
interests of the context into which you're plugging, Your
Design work in to that's something that most of us, pick
it up on the job along the way, if we're lucky, we have a mentor
to or have an encounter with someone that we can learn things
from. But I think if you want to
consolidate that learning and to do it in a really impactful way,
this program delivers, it way out of scale to the time.
You're investing the investment of time, the investment of money
that you're putting into it. It's repaid over and over again,
in ways that I would even be, I find difficult to calculate,
except to reassure people, that it's a multiple of what you put
into it. In the beginning, there are a
lot of different is the schools around the country, but I
consider the Yale School of Management really special.
And one of the reasons is special, is that when it was
founded, it was deliberately called the school management
versus a School of Business. That is found in, which is in
the 70s, as a fairly young institution, one of the younger
graduate schools, add Yale University, one was founded.
It was conceived as a place that could educate.
People not simply to go out there and make a lot of money.
But but to really be highly, conscious of the role that they
would play as Citizens as members of society.
And in fact, the mission statement of Yale School of
Management is educating leaders for business and Society, most
designers that I talk to. I find that a really resonant
idea and that has been there from the beginning and we're at
a moment in time now where most of the clients that you have
probably have some sort of corporate responsibility Mission
or some sort of commitment to ESG or some sort of other
Transcendent principles that represents a stakeholder value
versus shareholder value. Yale, was there at, the very
beginning, Yale has been extolling that as the reason
that that business, you know, the raison d'etre for business
and business people to be active.
The world has asked you to make the world a better place.
Not simply to make money when you connect with Yale, it's in a
context where it's not simply going into this foreign
territory learning or learning a wholly.
Foreign language that just is all about dollars and cents or
Euros or a ends or RuPaul's or whatever your trading.
And it really has to do with how we create long-term meaningful
value for each other as human beings, Yale University has a
context, the design commitment. And the humanist commitment is
really there. And the AL School.
Bart is basically where a lot of the Teaching and thinking around
graphic design as a profession, got Consolidated in mid 20th,
century first course, I believe that use graphic design as its
descriptor, and the AL School management is like very much
design and caring about design. Understand the value design
isn't some sort of add-on or some recent discovery.
I would argue that it's been really inherent in the mission
of the school and the way that people teach and learn there for
decades, the clips you heard of Rodrigo cannolis.
And Michael be rude were recorded at our Only 22 open
house for the business perspectives for Creative
leaders program. If this conversation has piqued
your interest and you'd like to learn more.
Join us for our upcoming open house on Thursday, February 16th
at 3, p.m. Eastern RSVP, Link.
In the show notes, we'll also post a link to the recording
after the event. In case you get this or listen
to this, after the live open house and you can find a link to
learn more about business perspectives or creative leaders
in the show notes as well. I'm leash on Wong.
Thank you for listening. Listening, until next time.