Designers have big egos. There, I said it. An ego is a sense of self, and creative people need strong ones to have faith in their ideas. But ego is dangerous and can get in the way of just about everything else. I chose to make the first part of Why Design Is Hard directly about the designer ego trap, and how blind designers are to our self-defeating behavior. We spend too much time with other designers who have similiar egos and personalities which means we’ve spent decades sharing our complaints into an echo chamber of learned helplessness.
The reason CEOs ignore design leaders is simple: CEOs ignore almost everyone. That’s their job. Can you imagine what their schedule looks like? VPs ignore almost everyone too. Why? The entire organization is competing for their attention. Every person in every job has their own agenda and wants to influence the VP to get it. To be a good executive means intentionally limiting who can influence you and how they can do it.
If you feel ignored, here is the best advice: be curious, not judgmental. Judgement keeps you where you are but complaints alone are not effective arguments. Remember that curiosity is your superpower as a designer and it will find you a way forward.
You are being judgmental and egocentric if you say:
My CEO is an idiot (even if it’s true, so what? This can be an advantage)
Why I am not involved more?
Why do they hate designers?
Why do they dislike me personally?
Why I am an always on the outside?
These are all EGO centered questions. These questions are entirely centered on YOU. And it’s no surprise that when you raise complaints like this you are probably seen as being self-involved. CEOs hear selfish complaints all day long from directors and other executives and it’s exhausting. As much as you’re rightfully frustrated, much of your peer group in other roles are frustrated too and voicing similiar complaints for more power. No department head shows up and says “Hey CEO! Cut my team in half please. We’re just not that important.” They are always demanding something. CEOs and VPs tune out much of the complaining as static. They have to. Design culture has normalized the belief that these complaints have any effect and it’s a terrible mistake.
To be more effective you must act on curiosity and instead ask:
Maybe there are good reasons great design is not a strategy where I work?
If I’m left out, who is on the inside and how did they get there? What can I learn? How can I partner with them?
What is a better promise I can make to solve important problems for powerful people?
What do I not understand about how things really get done where I work?
What am I willing to change in myself to have more influence without my workplace changing?
Or what do I need to accept about the limits of my role?
One major hypocrisy of designers is we claim superiority at understand people, but then fail to study our own coworkers to better understand them. We just let our egos focus on blame instead, which leads nowhere. The above list is simple, actionable questions, but design culture does not embrace them yet.
Good questions lead to discoveries. Simply by reaching out to people with curiosity you will get more useful responses. For example, to say “Hey Sally, as the VP of engineering, I can help your team be more efficient, but I’m not involved early enough to help. What advice do you have for me?” Is a request for involvement combined with an offer to help solve a problem. This will always be more effective than demanding involvement in anything because of your job title (which designers have a long history of doing).
But these ego habits are hard to shake. The response this book and the dozens of talks I’ve given on it is often, “why should I have to do this?” And my answer is you don’t! But if you are miserable it is you who has to change something. No one is going to do it for you. It could be to accept how organizations tend to work and stop dreaming of design nirvana. It might be realizing you are competing for influence with powerful people and it’s a skill to learn. Or perhaps it’s to reevaluate where you expect creative satisfaction to come from and seek it somewhere outside of your job. But all three require moving past the limitations of ego and to open your eyes.
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