What makes a good design strategist?

Yesterday, I attended a meeting convened by the Parsons School of Design regarding their Design Strategies program. Bringing together a variety of design and business luminaries from across the world, the event was designed to better understand how to reframe one of Parsons' more unique undergraduate degrees, which allows students to obtain a business degree in a design school.

As a part of the discussion, the facilitator of the meeting asked the attendees: What do you look for when you are hiring designers?

In answering this question, I had to reflect upon my experiences as an MBA from a very traditional business school (Wharton). I also thought about my experiences working with designers (good and bad) at various Fortune 500 companies. And I had to consider the successes and failures of Peer Insight’s own hiring efforts, which have included McKinsey consultants, investment bankers, and young talent straight out of design school.

What I realized was this: whether it’s someone with a business background or a design background, the fundamentals of a successful hire are the same when it comes to this niche world of design and innovation.

First and foremost, the potential hire has to demonstrate the hard skills that are associated with his or her educational and professional background. Someone with a business background has demonstrate facility with numbers, understand common business frameworks, and complete a basic competitive analysis. If it’s a design person, they have to know the basics of observational research, have some inclination toward human factors, and have a working knowledge of communication, interaction, or product design.

But the extra “special sauce” that a hire has to demonstrate is a potential for whole-brained thinking, or allowing “design to speak business, and business to speak design”. This is at the heart of the challenges we at Peer Insight are asked to engage on, which are often multi-disciplinary, cross-functional, and new-to-the-world.

Candidates who provide the special sauce often demonstrate three characteristics:

1. Communicate Effectively: to audiences from business and non-business backgrounds, at junior and senior levels, through oral, written, and presentation methods
   
   
2. Think Integratively: beyond the core frameworks and foundations they were taught to create new ways of thinking and new models of proof
   
   
3. Lead Amazingly: Show potential to be a change leader in challenging environs, where resistance is common, and the burden of proof is high
   

Effectively hiring for these types of people can be challenging. Despite intensive case methods used by consulting firms and design portfolios reviewed by agencies in interviews, the practical reality is that these three characteristics cannot be easily discerned.