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Summary
Steve Chaparro shares his thoughts on design ops as culture design and how his firm, Culture Design Studio, helps creative teams and companies thrive by aligning their brand, culture and environment. He also shares the finding of his recent Creative Leadership Survey.
Key Insights
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Steve’s career illustrates how design principles can apply broadly beyond architecture, including finance and culture design.
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Understanding the ‘question beneath the question’ requires emotional intelligence and deep curiosity to uncover real client needs.
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Culture design is distinct from organizational design; the former is about behaviors and interactions, while the latter is structural.
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Leadership must be willing to change first to enable meaningful culture transformation.
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Creative teams often burn out by over-delivering to clients without taking care of their own internal culture and well-being.
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Effective culture change relies on leadership sponsorship that cascades through organizational layers.
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Communication and decision-making processes are top cultural challenges within organizations, heightened by remote work during COVID.
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Successful innovation in government depends on trust-building relationships and adapting language to audience, avoiding buzzwords.
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Small, iterative interventions and prototyping are key strategies to gain early wins and spread cultural change gradually.
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Creative leaders during COVID identify maintaining focus and managing changing expectations as primary challenges.
Notable Quotes
"I grew restless within the walls of architecture and wanted to apply design methodologies to more than just buildings."
"My job was to uncover the real needs of my clients by asking a ton of discovery questions, not to predetermine outcomes."
"Culture design is the flesh that moves the bones of organizational design; it’s how people actually interact and behave."
"If leaders want their teams to change, they need to be willing to change first."
"Over-delivering to clients by burning out your creative team is not sustainable or human-centered leadership."
"Culture cannot be outsourced; leadership has to own and facilitate the culture change process."
"Design thinking in organizations is messy and ambiguous by design, and we need to embrace that discomfort."
"Don’t tell people you’re doing design thinking — lead them through the process and let them experience the value first."
"Leadership sponsorship at the highest level in your operational circle is critical for successful culture initiatives."
"One of the top individual challenges for creative leaders right now is maintaining focus amidst so many distractions."
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