Commit to Design

I know. ‘DESIGN’ is the rage, the new buzz word, the new black.

However, I have been all about DESIGN since Tom Peters made such a big deal of this idea 15 or 20 years ago.

DESIGN is not the color of your logo. It’s not the texture of your stationery or business card. It’s not aileron chairs and fancy office furniture.

DESIGN in our world is about the big stuff:

• Your BUSINESS MODEL!

• Your PROCESSES and SYSTEMS!

• Your WORKSPACE (for Productivity and Culture)!

In our company, we make a pretty big deal of EVERYTHING’s A PROJECT (EAP). We have just added A/D at the top of the EAP checklist. This stands for Architect/Designer. Someone has to take responsibility for ‘designing’ the outcome of the project, the solution to the problem, the team, etc.

DESIGN is the ‘in’ thing because it’s actually the ‘right’ thing.

Check out IDEO or Rotman Magazine or Nicholas Felton, the new design guru at Facebook or Edward Tufte who has showcased amazing ways to design information and graphics.

If you really want to get into this, here are 3 great books on design.

• 1.

The Design of Business

by Roger Martin. One of my favorite authors, thinkers, Dean of the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.

• 2.

Change by Design

by Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO.

• 3.

Business Model Generation

, Osterwalder & Pigneur.