CEOs Must Be Designers, Not Just Hire Them

Not my title.

I don't know what a CEO must be. But with experience, I'm learning what a CEO can be. Nussbaum's speech to the Royal College of Art in London is convincing and compelling, but then it was intended for an audience of practicing and aspiring creative professionals...so, of course I'd dig it.

CEO's need force of will. They need to be able to sell. They need to be able to manage. They need to be able to attract and retain really smart people and motivate them to do seemingly impossible things. CEO's need to know how and how far to put a foot in someone's ass. Sales culture can produce people with those skills. Product development and marketing can produce people with those skills. What I find interesting (and affirming) about Nussbaum's speech was not just that creative services can also produce people with those skills, but that those folks have a unique advantage--one born of the influence semiotics, anthropology, psychology have all had on user experience design (UX).

Money Quote:

Designers are the sherpas of culture, the guides to community, the empathizers of the odd and foreign. Globalization and the spread of the market into each and every traditional village at the bottom of the pyramid opens up ancient communities that we now need to understand. Social networking creates entirely new communities, each with a distinctive new culture, that we need to understand as well. The empathetic tools of design can bring business people, educators, urban planners, hospital managers, transportation developers-everyone-- into these communities to understand their values and rules, their needs and wants.