Turn the Ship Around: How to Apply Design Thinking Across Your Organization
Summary
Chances are good that every department in your enterprise already uses some design thinking tactics in their work. Helping these other partners and departments understand the power of this design thinking is a key to scaling the influence of the design organization and infusing the entire enterprise with more creative problem-solving, collaboration, and purposeful fun. Define design thinking for your design org and also understand how it applies to product management, engineering, marketing, and other departments. Hear about tactics for sharing design thinking and its positive results with partners across your organization. See how design thinking can be built into the systems that fuel design, product development, and critical business processes such as planning.
Key Insights
-
•
Compass organizes design teams around customer workflows and end-to-end journeys, not isolated features.
-
•
Design thinking at Compass is viewed as a mindset everyone can practice, rather than an exclusive skill.
-
•
Breaking silos is a core benefit of design thinking by aligning all roles on a shared customer problem.
-
•
Design systems enable fast prototyping and iteration, essential to effective design thinking.
-
•
Direct involvement of customers (agents) in the design process speeds up feedback and reduces recruitment pain.
-
•
Artifacts like personas, journey maps, and affinity diagrams preserve alignment and decisions across teams.
-
•
Balancing collaboration involves starting with small-group alignment then surfacing ideas to larger teams.
-
•
Building trust with leadership unfamiliar with design requires relationship building, data-driven decisions, and starting small.
-
•
Using approachable language and inclusive facilitation reduces barriers for non-designers in design thinking.
-
•
Cultural traits at Compass such as low ego, patience, and shared ownership help embed design thinking successfully.
Notable Quotes
"Design thinking is a mindset everyone can do, not a mystical, exclusive club."
"Our teams focus on entire customer outcomes, not just features."
"Breaking down silos requires aligning people around a singular customer problem so they have to talk to each other."
"Design systems allow us to wrap up a prototype quickly, test, fail fast, and iterate."
"Having agents as part of the team makes customer involvement much quicker and easier."
"Artifacts capture our decisions and give us a place to point back when misalignment happens."
"Start with small groups to get alignment and then bring ideas to larger groups carefully."
"Trust is hard to find but essential; we hire smart people so let’s all trust and move forward."
"We do a lot of work to avoid design jargon and make conversations accessible to all."
"Patience, low ego, and shared ownership are key cultural factors that help roll design thinking out in big companies."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"You have to go from being able to deliver a message in three bullets and then turn around in the next moment and deliver a massive service blueprint or customer journey."
John CutlerOxbows, Rivers, and Estuaries: How to navigate the currents of change (without burning out)
December 3, 2024
"It takes at least one member of a team to choose to set healthy standards for collaboration."
Darian DavisLessons from a Toxic Work Relationship
January 8, 2024
"Tools are a blessing and a curse; they’re not people and they can’t replace the relationships you need to get the work right."
Dave GrayGroup Activity: Making Sense of DesignOps
November 7, 2017
"A story lets people assign the meaning that's powerful to them and then think about the decisions they need to make and align."
John CutlerThe Alignment Trap
November 29, 2023
"Providing alternative content is often a kinder gesture than any lengthy alternative text could be."
Abby CovertStuck? Diagrams Help
October 27, 2022
"Side-pav proposals answer what’s going on, why it matters now, what you propose, what action to take, and what benefit comes from it."
Mark InterranteCollaboration Flows in Product Development
June 9, 2017
"Afrofuturism shows us the future must reckon with the past and center difference and diversity."
Devon PowersImagining Better Futures
March 9, 2022
"The best teams I know are a quarter ahead of the product roadmap, seeking out impactful strategic research projects themselves."
Prayag NarulaHow to Empower Your Designers to Do Good Research – And Why You Want To
June 10, 2022
"Trust the user and trust the model are the two lessons I’m getting over time."
Peter Van DijckHands on AI #3: Claude Code for UX people
October 22, 2025
