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How do you stay competitive and a step ahead of your peers? How do you add perceived value to your clients? How do you become a better problem-solver? You can accomplish all of this by gaining a better understanding of your clients’ businesses and then using that knowledge to improve your services and land more high-value work.

In our traditional design role, we used our creative problem-solving skills to address design issues and created pieces that communicated well. But in today’s marketplace, design is increasingly seen by business as a competitive advantage and a way to differentiate. Design is now thought of as a resource on the strategic level. That’s good news for design and great news for designers who are interested in expanding their role. The industry has changed, so we need to change as well.

Unfortunately, a traditional design education does not provide students the skills necessary to be “strategic business designers.” Granted, I’ve met many designers who are also great business people and have picked up these skills over the course of their careers. And there are young, smart designers who have potential to do the same, given enough time and real-world experience. Yes, their traditional design education has taught them to be problem solvers—but on a creative level, not a strategic one. As designers we must look beyond our traditional training to better understand the issues our clients face, and thus be able to better apply design and design thinking to those issues. So how do we do this?

BOOKS & CLASSES
There are many options available to pursue some business education, and the right choice for you depends on your career path and time commitment. Minimally, there’s self-taught. There are lots of business books out there if you’re willing to venture beyond the design section of the bookstore. Additionally, you could subscribe to business publications such as The Wall Street Journal. The point is to familiarize yourself with current business issues and see what your clients are reading.

Ready for a class? Most colleges offer continuing-education courses. You could take a marketing class or, better yet, take a finance class. If you desire a more structured learning environment, thrive on classroom discussions and are willing to forego some sleep, then perhaps you should consider seeking a graduate degree in business. These two-year programs are not for the faint of heart, but they can be scheduled around your full-time work schedule and can give a boost to your career.

AIGA & HARVARD
You might also look into the intensive one-week program “Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders” hosted by AIGA and the Harvard Business School. The goal here is to learn some of the same basic business principles your clients learn, and experience it in much of the same way they do. Think of it as walking in your client’s shoes for a week: What metrics and information concern them? How do they make decisions? Or more to the point: What keeps them up at night?

Business Perspectives is a unique experience. It’s an intense week of learning through the Harvard case-study method but, unlike a conventional Harvard classroom, you experience the program with other creative individuals from the design community. The personal connections you make by experiencing this program with peers can strengthen both your personal and professional networks. Having attended the program myself in 2003, I observed that the conversations both in and outside the classrooms were some of the most insightful and engaging discussions I’ve participated in. These conversations enriched the learning experience and were a refreshing change from the usual shoptalk conversations you might normally get in such a group.

THINKING LIKE A CEO
Do you remember the first time you heard someone utter the word Pantone and wondered what it meant? Now, you can picture each PMS color exactly just by hearing the numbers. That type of knowledge gives you the confidence to specify colors and know exactly what you’re going to get. Learning about business issues follows much the same process. Seminars such as the AIGA/Harvard program give you greater confidence because, armed with new knowledge, you’ll feel better equipped to solve your clients’ challenges. It’s the difference between knowing just enough to be dangerous and truly being a force to be reckoned with.

Learning to think like a CEO and understanding the “C-level” thought process really does help you to be a better design partner for your clients. At Savage Design Group, we routinely work on brand strategies and identities for large corporations, and this business knowledge is essential. Our advice and recommendations for these types of assignments go beyond visual communication materials to include strategy statements and messaging. Yes, they hire us for great design, but it’s our deeper understanding of the client’s business and our ability to better link its business strategy to our design strategy that really sets us apart. Programs like AIGA/Harvard, along with other business education avenues we’ve pursued, help us help our clients.

ALUMNI
David Burney, VP Corporate Communications at Red Hat, attended the AIGA/Harvard program in 2005. He sees programs like these as an important step in “a journey I had already begun.” Thinking like a business person is nothing new to Burney, as he had already begun work integrating “design thinking” within his organization through a formal program to help other departments “think more like designers” when they’re redesigning processes and solving business issues. His approach is to demonstrate to business colleagues that design can be more closely integrated within a company to its advantage.

“Investing in the AIGA/Harvard program is a smart, quick, deep dive into understanding the language, culture and priorities of corporate business leaders,” Burney says. “If you truly seek a ‘seat at the table,’ do it. For yourself. And for our profession.” After attending the program last year, Craig Welsh, principal at Go Welsh!, says the feeling of being energized and more confident is still with him. Welsh says that finding ways to incorporate specific Harvard case studies into current projects is appreciated by his clients. Through this, he is able to better demonstrate where creative solutions have solved business issues, and show he’s thinking about the issues important to his clients. He was even able to connect a client to one of the companies featured in a case study, which solidified his relationship with that client. I’m not sure how many other designers would have taken that extra step.

“We are now better communicators of how we are creative problem-solvers—not just problem-solvers for creative issues,” he adds. “Our goal is for our clients to hire us because they agree with the way our thought process works, and good design will follow.”

Robert Fabricant, executive creative director, and Sabah Ashraf, business development director, both of frog design in New York, attended the program together. Ashraf, who is not the typical attendee because she already has an MBA from the Columbia Business School, noticed an advantage in attending the program with a coworker, since now they share a base of understanding. Both she and Fabricant found discussions with other participants, both in and out of the classroom, to be among the most rewarding aspects of the program. Ashraf notes that designers are collaborative by nature, and the program’s environment fostered their ability to build on others’ ideas to come to new conclusions that might not have happened otherwise.

“The program was like ‘camp’ for designers,” Fabricant says. “It was truly fun to be in an environment where you are working together with other designers on the case studies and learning from the shared experiences of your team. Using the case-study method is like brainstorming around a scenario, which is a practical way for designers to imagine an issue. With us, the combination of business people and designers tackling issues together is very powerful, and something we’ve used effectively after the program.”

While working at Sterling Brands as chief creative officer, Marcus Hewitt was looking for ways to match his business knowledge to his brand knowledge, so he turned to the AIGA/Harvard program. Having never experienced Harvard’s case-study method before, he found this experience to be an amazing way to learn. For him, the program was a real “injection of inspiration” and, again, not unlike a summer camp for designers. While it may seem surprising to say that you can get energized and inspired from a business program, Hewitt found that the learning methods and thought-provoking discussions did just that. A useful outcome of the program was the ability to shift focus and look at the bigger picture, which was reinforced by reading a follow-up “letter to himself” six months after the program.

“I was prepared to be challenged by the AIGA/Harvard program. I was also prepared to think about the design business in new ways,” Hewitt reports. “I wasn’t prepared for the stunning level of teaching, for the beautiful campus, for the camaraderie, for the noncompetitive ‘pooling’ of experience or for the sheer joy of learning! It was so good, my wife Susan, also a designer, is going this year.”

Sam Shelton, principal at KINETIK, always knew that, in general, designers and business people follow different thought processes, but the program experience turned this knowledge into action. It proved to be so important and eye-opening that Shelton’s business partner, Jeff Fabian, attended the following year. From that experience, Fabian incorporated the communication techniques taught in the program and restructured the way the firm does proposals and pitches.

“The way we present to clients has completely changed based on this program,” Shelton says. “Now, we’re more strategic, we dig a little deeper and we provide information that improves the clients’ understanding, thus better influencing their decisions.”

THREE MORE REASONS
If these examples are not enough, just consider these three compelling reasons why you should think about adding some business education to your own background:

1. If you have greater confidence in your business skills, you’ll feel better equipped to solve your clients’ challenges. Additionally, you will become a stronger designer when you’re better able to view, digest and make meaningful connections with the information around you. Learn about business, and not just your own, in order to create the best possible solutions that fit both visually and strategically.

2. Stand out and speak up. Why say the same things as your competition? When you learn to speak to your clients in a way that shows you understand their issues, you’re more apt to win them over and get your ideas across. Otherwise you’re stuck trying to educate them on design-speak, and isn’t that what everyone else does?

3. Businesses are starting to understand the competitive advantages of good design and, now that design is more closely linked with innovation, designers have a great opportunity. “Design thinking” is important to your clients. If you can progress from being a traditional “designer” to a “design thinker,” then you’re opening the door to higher-value work, both for yourself and the profession as a whole.

BUSINESS PERSPECTIVES FOR CREATIVE LEADERS
Presented by AIGA & Harvard Business School
July 29–August 3, 2007

Developed by Harvard Business School and AIGA, Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders uses case studies, lectures, guest speakers and study groups to give creative leaders a more complete understanding of business and design through the eyes of business executives (i.e., clients).

Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders examines cutting-edge topics, addresses critical issues and engages top minds in dynamic discussion. This program helps participants to understand the senior business executive’s perspective: the approach to cost-based decisions, marketing, new product development, strategy, brand management, customer relationship and knowledge management. Participants acquire useful tools for communicating with clients, running a business, understanding individual thinking styles and structuring conversations with CEOs and other senior executives. Participants also explore important and relevant ideas for real-world solutions to take to their clients.

Read more on the AIGA website, and view a list of current and past participants, at www.aiga.org/content.cfm/business-perspectives.

THE AIGA/HARVARD FOLLOW-UP PLAN
If you attend the AIGA/Harvard program, what you do afterward is just as important as class time. Below is a one-year plan to help you stay on track, based on suggestions from past attendees.
Immediately: Reach out and contact everyone you want to keep in touch with so you can continue the momentum of those relationships. Write a note to yourself (if you haven’t already done so) of the key takeaways that felt most relevant to you, and the changes you’d like to make in your own business.
One week later: Review all of the materials and notes from your binder. Highlight relevant points, order books and visit the websites you’ve noted.
Two weeks later: Start your follow-up reading. Set goals and deadlines for how you’ll incorporate the program information.
Six months later: Read the letter you wrote to yourself and get back on track.
One year later: Renew your Harvard Business Review subscription. Take stock of what you’ve accomplished the past year and review your next steps.

BUSINESS ESSENTIALS FOR DESIGNERS:
ROBIN TOOMS’ READING LIST

www.NextD.org
At the core of NextD is the belief that the traditional model of design leadership needs to be radically reinvented to better adapt to a radically changed marketplace. The ultimate goal of NextD is to help expand design’s reach.

www.aiga.org
As the oldest and largest membership association for professionals engaged in the discipline, practice and culture of designing, the AIGA website is a trove of information, including business-related essays in the Gain journal section.

Harvard Business Review
Each issue of this publication presents different perspectives on business issues and touches on many of the core areas taught in business schools.

How Would You Move Mount Fuji? Microsoft’s Cult of the Puzzle,
by William Poundstone (Little, Brown and Company)
Don’t let the inclusion of Microsoft in the title scare you away from this book. It’s full of interesting logic puzzles and is a great way to engage your brain when you’re feeling sluggish. I picked up my copy when I saw it in the Harvard bookstore and couldn’t resist.

Marketing Management,
by Philip Kotler (Prentice Hall)
This textbook—yes, textbook—is one that most MBA programs use. Want to know about some of the marketing principles your clients have been taught? Then pick this one up.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team,
by Patrick Lencioni ( Jossey-Bass)
A “leadership fable,” this book is also taught to business leaders and is useful to anyone who needs to work in teams. It also incorporates some of the same communication skills touched on in the AIGA/Harvard program.

Harvard Business Essentials: Finance for Managers
(Harvard Business School Press)
Since finance is a topic that usually strikes fear among designers, this easy-to-digest paperback is a good primer for finance basics.

Michael E Porter on Competition,
by Michael Porter (Harvard Business School Press)
A classic, this book is a compilation of articles that have come to define the core concepts behind corporate strategy.

Also: read some business biographies.
For example, both the Jack Welch and Sam Walton books are good reads.