Fortunately, leadership is a creative practice. And as it turns out, designers spend years honing skills that are necessary to be a successful business leader in a rapidly growing company.
These designer “superpowers” include: creativity, vision, storytelling, empathy, and systems thinking.
Since creativity is the cornerstone of design, designers can simply apply this skill to a different set of problems as business leaders. The best designers are known for navigating ambiguity with ease and seeking interesting solutions to the seemingly impossible.
Design is inherently a visionary discipline. Even the smallest design project must envision a world different than the current one, and the largest projects define the direction for entire businesses.
A vision without the means to express it and rally others around it can never be real. Creating a narrative around a vision is what makes it exciting and actionable for the people who are tasked with executing it.
At it’s best, design is inherently in the service of others. Human-centered design, usability and accessibility are all about maximizing ease of use and offering meaningful interactions and experiences for others.
From designing simple interfaces for complex enterprise management tools to defining multi-stream product development process across multiple parts of the organization, designers spend their career honing the ability to turn the complex into the navigable.