1. Sees the world in terms of problems and products. Richard Buchanan adopts a broad view of products that includes information, artifacts, activities, services, systems, and environments. All of these can be designed in order to solve specific problems. All of these entities are within the scope of practice of leaders. [5, 6]
2. Views self as product. A leader viewing themselves as a product means adopting a designerly approach to their own attitude, behavior, and outlook. Design-thinking leaders iterate on versions of themselves that will lead to exceptional team performance.
3. Rigorously cultivates the abilities of a designer—especially empathy and optimism. Tim Brown did an excellent job of identifying the traits of a design thinker, many of which have direct correlations to the tenets outlined in the theory of transformational leadership. Once again, these include: empathy, integrative thinking, optimism, experimentalism and collaboration. [7]“Design-thinking leaders know how to act as a catalyst for creativity.”
4. Deeply understands the process of creative problem solving and knows how to act as a catalyst for creativity. Within the creative process, leaders should seek to be conduits, provocateurs, shepherds, and motivators.
5. Collaborates and communicates outside of PowerPoint. Design-thinking leaders think of new ways to engage groups, drawing upon methods from books like Gamestorming[8] and Thinkertoys. [9]
6. Embraces ambiguity and seeks opportunity to use models and other forms of making to tame chaos and create order. It’s not a new concept that leaders should embrace ambiguity and chaos,[10] but doing this with a design attitude empowers leaders to tame this through designerly activities like modeling, sketching, and storytelling. This is echoed in Jon Kolko’s latest Harvard Business Review article, The Evolution of Design Thinking. [11]
7. Prototypes visions, not just products. Prototypes are typically used to test out products in various stages of fidelity in order to get meaningful feedback from stakeholders. Design-thinking leaders should look for ways to prototype and test out different visions for their organization. This could include things like role-playing, or writing magazine articles about the future success of the company. There are always opportunities to “prototype” a more desirable future.

References

1. Richard Buchanan and Victor Margolin, Discovering Design, (University of Chicago Press, 1995); Buchanan, “Design Research and the New Learning”; J