I was fortunate to see a great presentation by Michael Ditullo at Strukur Conference 2017 the other week, where he spoke about the top traits of great design leaders.
Michael is a pretty top notch character in the world of design. With an interesting and successful background paired to a very visionary outlook. His presentation on design leadership referenced key characters in the history of Industrial Design, like Raymond Lowey, Eliot Noyse and Walter Dorwin Teague to name a few.
Here are Micheal’s top 4 traits of great design leaders.
- Expansive Thinking
- Dissatisfaction with the status quo
- A teachers disposition
- The ability to manage up and down with success and ease.
A couple of interesting side words that come up during the Q&A that I wholeheartedly believe in.
“make people feel uncomfortable, if they feel comfortable it means they have already seen it from their competition” – this relates to pushing the boundaries and creating a vision and at the end of the day doing your job, not recreating the old.
“i make it a goal to have that feeling like I am almost going to get fired” – this relates to the aspect of design making a change, challenging the status quo and having the tough conversations that move things forward.
Check out Michael here www.michaelditullo.com
JDB Design 