James Woudhuysen asks himself this very important question.
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.
This is key – if you can’t link designsolutions to bottom line it doesn’t matter at all. Being part of a designprocess – or even the leader of the process – doesn’t mean anything if you’re not able to improve business in the end. Or what?