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Article – McKinsey Quarterly
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McKinsey research correlated design capabilities with financial performance. Top-quartile design companies outperformed by as much as two to one.
Doubled by design
Companies that excel at design grow revenues and shareholder returns at nearly twice the rate of their industry peers. So why aren’t more companies joining their ranks?
Leading by design
In this edition:
A quick briefing in five—
or a fifty-minute deeper dive
Clarity and ambition
To get better at design, give design leadership what it lacks.
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The business value of design
Unfulfilled
Yet only 10 percent of respondents say their company has realized design’s full potential.
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Measured
Then craft an effective design-metric system focusing on three primary areas.
The business value of design
Article – McKinsey Quarterly
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Responding to the great acceleration requires companies to experiment with and invest in new digital technologies.
Are you asking enough from your design leaders?
Article – McKinsey Quarterly
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Are you asking enough from your design leaders?
Article – McKinsey Quarterly
New-breed CDOs
Also ask chief design officers to up their game—by balancing analytical and creative, business and design, and directive and empathic approaches. Four challenges are critical.
Made to measure: Getting design leadership metrics right
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Made to measure: Getting design leadership metrics right
Article
Getting started as a newly appointed design leader
Interactive
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CAGR, Dec 2012–Dec 2017, %
Revenue
Total returns to shareholders
21
10
Top-quartile
McKinsey
Design Index
performers
Top-quartile
McKinsey
Design Index
performers
3–6
Industry
benchmark
12–16
Industry
benchmark
McKinsey Design Index company score curve
Average score
0
25
50
75
100
The business value of design
Article – McKinsey Quarterly
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Clarity
Fewer than half of design leaders feel their CEOs
fully understand their role.
Only a third of CEOs and their direct reports can state confidently what a head of design is accountable for.
Ambition
Only 1 in 10 CEOs says
their senior designer plays a meaningful role in strategy development.
Only 1 in 6 design leaders believes they are positioned to deliver their full potential value to the company.
Dream
Agree on your ambition for design and how you will measure it by setting your North Star metric.
Detail
Build a system of cascading metrics that measures journeys rather than touch points, using a mix of qualitative and quantitative metrics that matter to the business.
Drive
Ensure that you can visualize and share design’s progress, and that you properly incentivize action.
Expectations
Relationships
Risks
Insights
Insights
Develop critical insights to demonstrate the value of integrating physical, digital, and service design. Then, for each customer pain point, challenge the organization to create at least one physical, one digital, and one service solution.
Insights
Risks
Develop a shared language to help reduce overall project risk and cost as part of flexible, iterative cross-functional processes. Test concepts and prototypes early and often with users and other functions, before costly decisions are committed.
Risks
Relationships
Overcome “us versus them” dynamics by fostering collaboration across the organization, ensuring that the customer-experience and design requirements get married to requirements for project management, finance, R&D, and marketing and sales.
Relationships
Expectations
Don’t expect C-suite peers to already understand the commercial power of design. Establish authority and credibility through clear and understandable metrics and goals, coupling business objectives with the passion and drive of your designers.
Research
Expectations
Getting started as a newly appointed design leader
Interactive
