In recent years, design practice has increasingly shifted to a tool-centric practice. It is true that tools like Figma have helped executing tangible design outputs with more speed and more precision — while making that part of the process more accessible at the same time. The resulting sleek UIs and design systems bring surface-level consistency that can at best lure in at worst fool the most seasoned stakeholder.
Don’t get me wrong, tools like Figma are invaluable. But they have made us focus too heavily on the final stages of the design process: executing and delivering.
Important strategic work - thinking deeply about the real business problems and the connected user needs - often gets sidelined in favour of moving fast.
We see it time and again: shiny products built quickly, launched with great fanfare, only to fall flat because they didn’t address any real users needs or pains. Why does that keep happening? Because too often the human-centered, strategic design work that should come first is skipped.
Designing strategically starts with understanding the problem deeply, by engaging with users AND stakeholders, and iterating on a genuine shared understanding of what is required. Only then can and should the team move forward. This approach allows for a meaningful iterative path to a successful execution phase.
Yet, this essential work often gets overlooked as organizations rush to deliver results. It’s easy to get caught up in the hype of speeding up — building quickly, iterating faster, and hoping something sticks. Without a robust strategic foundation of alignment, most efforts will lead to failures masked as progress.
How do we then embed strategic thinking into our design processes? It begins with shaping and nurturing a culture of alignment.
Creating a Culture of Alignment
The key to designing strategically is to ensure that all stakeholders—from team members to top-level decision-makers—are aligned. This means:
Engaging Stakeholders Early and Often: Identify every key decision-maker and stakeholder upfront. Keeping anyone out of the loop leads to misalignment and conflicting priorities down the line.
Building Shared Understanding and Vision: Make the process open, transparent, and collaborative. Establish common ground where everyone understands and agrees on the problem, the goals, and the priorities. This alignment creates a shared sense of purpose and direction.
Embracing Constraints Together: When constraints arise, address them collaboratively. If pushback comes, work through it by highlighting why certain steps are necessary or adjusting the process in a way that acknowledges these constraints without compromising the strategy.
Maintaining Alignment Through Communication: Keep the conversation going throughout the design process. Align continually to ensure that decisions are made with the collective strategic vision in mind, rather than being driven by external pressures or isolated viewpoints.
The Role of Leadership
Strategic leaders play a critical role in fostering this culture of alignment. The challenge isn’t in convincing teams—they often understand the importance of strategic design thinking and doing better than anyone. It is about ensuring that this understanding bubbles up the chain to the top, where the focus tends to be on results and speed. Leaders need to champion this approach, resist the urge to jump to execution, and create space for teams to do the necessary upfront work.
Ultimately, it’s not about slowing down but about ensuring we’re on the right path before we speed up. A culture of alignment empowers teams to "think slow and execute fast" (1), delivering solutions that are not just well-designed but also strategically sound.
By investing in this alignment, organizations can avoid the costly trap of building the wrong thing beautifully— and instead, build the right thing thoughtfully.
(1) for a much deeper dive into the reasoning to think slow and execute fast I highly recommend Professor Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner's book on "How Big Things Get Done".
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