Where have all the great leaders in design gone? There are some effete international architects, and one or two pompous international product designers, too; but people of the stature of Raymond Loewy, Saul Bass, Paul Rand or George Nelson – such giants are missing.
They had a vision of design as a force for progress. They felt a sense of responsibility to communicate. They refused to moan on about being not being appreciated enough by business or government.
Cynicism about leadership
Today, by contrast, much of mainstream management, let alone the world of design management, is swept by cynicism about what leadership can do.
In Europe Shell chairman Sir Philip Watts overstated his company’s reserves in Nigeria and had to resign. At Disney, underperforming chairman Michael Eisner lost his title. In Tokyo, losses at the carmaker Mitsubishi led to the departure of Rolf Eckrodt. WorldCom’s Bernie Ebbers still faces trial. Closer to designland, Martha Stewart has fallen from grace.
Since Jim Collins inveighed against CEOs as superstars in his bestselling Good to Great (2001), critics of Wall Street’s führerprinzip have gone further than making cheap points about executive pay and executive corruption. We live, they insist, in an unknowable world of global outsourcing. Takeovers are on the rebound and employee ‘churn’ is a trend that has come to afflict top directors, too. So what price the omniscient, omnipotent corporate leader?
Brilliant managers, weak leaders
Well: it’s true that, when ‘kicked upstairs’, brilliant managers of design can become weak leaders of design. The rule doesn’t always hold – some people can unite both management and leadership capabilities in design. But the rule often applies. On the other hand, today’s fears about leadership are overdone.
Indulging in emotions and ethics
Guru theorists of leadership fret about the demography and work-life balance of both leaders and led. They fear that successful young leaders have what leadership expert Warren Bennis calls affluenza – wealth but no meaning in their lives. Successful young leaders, Bennis observes, are prone to ask: ‘Is this all there is?’
As for the older generation of leaders, their own kids are not alone in telling them to indulge in their emotions and in ethics. The same sermons are delivered by thousands of powerful coachers, authors and consultants in the human and environmental sides of corporate social responsibility (CSR).
In design, design management and elsewhere, the results of CSR for the arena of leadership are dire. Everywhere we find professionals beating their breasts about the fact that their design programmes are not therapeutic or naturalistic enough. In this sea of liberal relativism, where only big corporations and macho attitudes can be criticised, there is a remarkable commoditisation of thought. Everyone is very nice to each other in debate. Few rigorous challenges are mounted, though there is plenty of plain gossip behind the scenes.
Inspiring the troops
Today, mainstream corporate leadership buffs say it’s more about sensemaking than decisionmaking; more about saying ‘I don’t know’, to establish credibility, than about setting a clear direction. Worse still, derring-do leader ‘narratives’ are meant to inspire the troops; indeed, animating people is regard as an end in itself, regardless of what ideas you are trying to animate them about.
I don’t buy all this. The idea of leadership may sound a bit fascist, and we have all met leaders from The Office. But the concept of leadership pioneered by Tony Blair in the speech he made after being elected in 1997 – of serving the people, who are the masters – seems to me an abdication of responsibility.
The true design leader
Design managers might find it fashionable to prostrate themselves, in the modern egalitarian style, in front of an oh-so-playfully-creative, participative, empowered and personally autonomous workforce. They may dupe themselves that everyone can be a leader. But the true design leader will be remembered for the progress won, the new businesses established, and for the insights developed, tested in action, and communicated in unambiguous words, numbers, graphics and presentations.
Any other concept of leadership is just fluff.
Tags: business leader, champion, design guru
