oxymoron

It starts to irritate me, the more and more I’m confronted with it: the job title ‘design manager’.

And the longer I spin my head around it, the more this title ends up being an oxymoron (Greek for ‘oxy’ = sharp and ‘moron’ = foolish) – next to this, it’s also not clear to me, which part in the title is the ‘sharp’ one, which the ‘foolish’!

Design is the drive within people to devise a course of action in order to change it for the better. (Quote of Herbert Simon.)

This drive is rooted deep inside the human; it’s an intrinsic drive. That’s why designers are people who just ‘feel’ that something has to be improved, and then they want to get going: the ‘designing’ is their tool to articulate this feeling into the tangible, visible.

That’s also why designers generally create a strange impression on hard-core managers, one of being ‘artistic’ and free-spirited, always equipped with pen and paper to sketch up ideas. On top of that, designers are difficult to ‘manage’ by applying the usual measures, like bonuses, targets, and time writing – on the contrary!

Management is also an intervention into the course of action: though here the driver is external, it is extrinsic. Managing comes from ‘taking by the hand,’ and therefore it wants to securely lead the ‘course’ towards a clearly defined goal. Mostly, this driver, which makes those who are managed reach the goal, is based on a reward or punishment. It’s considered the only way to move those ‘managed’ further.

This is why managers generally create a strange impression on designers: they come across as power-driven and as forcing employees to work towards goals that nobody really wants to reach (or can comprehend). On top of that, managers seem to thrive on incentives, bonuses, and targets.

In both design and management, you’ll find occasions when they are working optimally. For instance, if you want to pursue a goal on short notice, and therefore you need the support of thirds, you’re best off with management. It serves as a tool or technology that lets you ensure something happens exactly as planned: if you need to assemble a plane within a given time frame, that’s what you want. The basic notion in management is control, and therefore, it’s best used when there is something to control.

But what if there’s no plan if it’s not clear what should be? That’s when you need design, which deals with ‘what could be’: design is like building a bridge whilst walking over it, without even knowing the other bank. To act like this is nothing for skeptics and control freaks, but for the self-confident and self-determined. And here, management doesn’t work unless it supports. The basic notion of design lies in self-determination and builds on inner motivation; therefore, it’s best used when you are shaping a vision and still need to ‘build the bridge’ to get there. Because of this, design is the tool for the future (designation) – management is one of the past (control).

How, on earth, should design management work? Controlling self-determination? Taking the inner motivation by the hand and guiding it towards set goals? Difficult – it would put both approaches in checkmate…

But in a time when the dominant system in the economy and society still relies on extrinsic motivation and control rather than self-determination and trust to get going, it needs a compromise. We still do not let our inner motivation, which is truly natural,  dominate our actions: we still want security and control; we prefer order and security.

That’s why we need management to embed design in companies and society until all involved finally feel secure with what design can do for them, and then to trust their inner motivation to have design drive their actions. Ultimately, when we have arrived at the top of the Maslow Pyramid – and we are truly self-determined – we can eliminate the word “management” from the job title, leaving only design!

Until then, design management remains an ‘exception to the rule’, which is another great oxymoron!