The Risks of Retreating from DEI with Catalyst’s Alix Pollack & Doug Powell Redesigns Design Thinking

In a time where it’s hard to feel hopeful, a new study has left leaders who value DEI aflutter with tentative optimism. It’s called The Risk of Retreat, conducted by Catalyst and the NYU Meltzer Center of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging, it compiled data from surveys of 2,500 employees from across the U.S. on their thoughts about workplaces backtracking from their DEI policies. The study found that retreating from DEI poses significantly MORE business risk than keeping those policies in place. 

In this episode of DB|BD, Catalyst’s Head of Knowledge Transformation and Solution Development Alixandra Pollack sits down with host Ellen McGirt to discuss the four categories of risk companies face when retreating from DEI and the study’s recommendations to leaders for a non-reactive approach to maintaining inclusion and trust.

“What we would say and what we promote in our research and in our program, learning programs, is that it’s not in addition to, it’s part and parcel of,” Pollack says. “The more that you can integrate inclusion into those small moments that matter, those little everyday interactions that can really add up to a make or break of employee experience, those are the things that are actually going to help you be a more adaptable and resilient leader, for one, and then also create a team dynamic that is more adaptable, more engaged, more, has more safety so that people can speak up and call out the risks when they are emerging and if you want to get the best out of your people, these are really critical leadership strategies.”

Next up, McGirt chats with a design leader who is really living and breathing one of Alix’s recommendations “walk the talk and talk the walk.”  Doug Powell is a designer, educator, facilitator, and host of the podcast This is a Prototype. He pioneered human-design centered practices at big companies like IBM and Expedia. In this conversation, Doug shares with Ellen his experience of learning to be a leader on the job, getting a big company on board with design, and why design thinking needs a rebrand. 

“As I reflect on both my time at IBM and then at Expedia, I remember that every time the word ‘design’ left my mouth, I then had to follow that with an explanation of what I meant by that. And that’s not a very elegant way to tell a story,” Powell shares. “If I could wave a magic wand and go back 15 years and sort of replay all of those moves, that might be one that I would really rescript is what words we use. I try to pay attention to what was that sentence or what were those two sentences that I would say after I said the word design. Like, what were these words? And oftentimes, usually, it was around how can we create a better experience for a person? How can we build or envision a better future for each other, for the planet, for the world.”

On this season of DB|BD, we are Designing for the Unknown. Host Ellen McGirt asks visionary designers how they navigate uncertainty- whether it be technological disruption, global crises, or shifting cultural norms.

Read The Risk of Retreat in full.

Doug’s website and tune in to his podcast This is a Prototype

Transcript

Ellen McGirt Hey, everyone. We are kicking off today’s episode with about as close to breaking news as we get here on DBBD. In the middle of June, a study broke that sent ripples through the very nervous Zoom rooms of leaders from communities I care about. And I know you do, too. These are people and leaders who have been worrying about and working to maintain the DEI policies and values they worked so hard to build. And in a time where it’s hard to feel hopeful, this study left these leaders, and myself, aflutter with tentative optimism. It’s called The Risk of Retreat, and it compiled data from surveys of 2,500 employees from across the US on their thoughts about workplaces backtracking from their DEI policies. The study found, as you may have guessed, that retreating from DEI poses significantly more business risk than keeping those policies in place. This is a very big deal. But let’s get a little bit more granular about the specifics of the study, just so that you know where the data is coming from. It was conducted by Catalyst, a consulting company that is an expert on advancing gender equity in the workplace. Catalyst partnered with the NYU Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, which is part of NYU’s law school. Of the 2,500 employees they surveyed, 1,250 were rank and file folks, 250 were legal leaders, and 1,000 were executives. Now, 57% of the sample were men, 43% women, with a range of races and ethnicities represented. Participants came from a wide variety of industries, including energy, tech, media, and telecom, consumer goods, financial services, life sciences, and healthcare. The surveys were administered in January and February 2025, and it refers to workplace DEI policies broadly, but encompasses specific things like inclusive hiring practices, ERG groups, and flexible working arrangements. But all of this info is just a primer for what you’re about to hear. On today’s episode, we have one of the co-authors of this study here to talk about all of its finding and its recommendations. Her name is Alixandra Pollock. She’s the Head of Knowledge Transformation and Solution Development at Catalyst. That’s a big title. She spearheaded much of the study’s research. And she’s going to tell you everything you need to know about why retreating from DEI is so risky. And then stay tuned. After my conversation with Alix, I chat with Doug Powell, an award-winning design leader and host of the podcast, This is a Prototype. Doug is really living and breathing one of Alix’s recommendations “walk the talk and talk the walk.” And he’s a dear friend, but you’re about to hear about all of that. I’m Ellen McGirt and this is the Design of Business, the Business of Design. This season, we’re designing for the unknown. In this episode, how to save the world. 

Ellen McGirt Alix, I am so glad you’re here. You are one of the authors of a study that was published this month that is making real waves in the communities that I care about. Literally, we’re talking about you in every Zoom room of nervous leaders. So congratulations and thank you. 

Alix Pollack Well, it’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you for those kind words. And yeah, thrilled that we’re able to make an impact with this research because I know it is desperately needed in this moment.  

Ellen McGirt It really is. So let’s just dive in. Can you can you tell us about the research and why it was necessary now? 

Alix Pollack Yeah, so, you know, the landscape around inclusion work, whether you call it diversity, equity, inclusion, DEI, or any other name, it’s been shifting for some time now over the last couple of years in the wake of the affirmative action Supreme Court ruling, for example, but in particular over the past six months with the drop of several executive orders that are very anti-DEI coming out of, you know, this administration. It’s leaving a lot of people feeling really uncertain about the path ahead and wanting to understand what other organizations that are similarly positioned are doing in response to this, what the path ahead looks like for them or should look like for then, and in particular what impact some of those decisions might be having both internally and externally. And so we really wanted to cut through some of the noise of the media headlines and some of the fear and uncertainty and get down to what is the real sentiment for one, and the true strategies that are being deployed within medium to large size organizations that are actually grappling with these real-time decisions around their own DEI strategies and initiatives. 

Ellen McGirt I have to say there’s a lot of good news in this study that I didn’t expect to see. The title of the report is the big clue. It’s called Risk of Retreat. And I was very glad to see it because it really is the risk associated with the really complex and often very earnest investments in understanding corporate culture and understanding inclusion and all its systemic forms that happened before the magic moment when a new administration came in, and made the legal risk the one thing that people were talking about. Can you dig in a little bit on the risks associated with abandoning the work? 

Alix Pollack Absolutely. So, what we found in our research is that there are four principal categories of risk. I’ll actually start with legal because you just named that and it is very front and center in the conversation right now that there is new and heightened forms of legal risk that is driving people potentially to either move away from or reimagine their DEI work. But the pre-existing risk of not doing DEI from a legal perspective did not go away. It didn’t change in this landscape despite those new variables, right? And so the risk of discrimination suits, for example, from traditional plaintiffs, from women, from people of color, from LGBTQ plus employees, for example is still considerable. And what we saw in our research is that executives and legal leaders agree that those legal risks of retreat are just as, if not actually stronger, than the legal risks on the other side of that equation, and that it would actually be more legally risky to move away from DEI than it would be to maintain their DEI efforts. We also see that there is talent risk when it comes to retreating. We know that there, as I was saying before, extremely high support among employees for not only the values and principles that underpin the umbrella of sort of “DEI” in quotes, but also a lot of the programs and strategies that are used to bring those values to life. So they support fairness initiatives in hiring practices and in promotions, and they support employee resource groups, and they want to see that belonging is a central feature of their organizational culture, not just in name, but in practice. It’s not only that they believe in those things, but what we found in our research is that they’re actually going to be making decisions based on whether or not they are seeing that come to life in their organizations. So they are more likely to apply to work in a company that has DEI initiatives. They’re more likely to stay at an organization that has the DEI initiative. They are less likely to leave if the organization maintains their focus on DEI relative to if they pull away from it. So across the whole spectrum of talent life cycle, employees are making decisions based on their organization’s choices around DEI. And it is a considerable risk for companies that they face the potential of a talent drain, certainly in the medium and long term, if they retreat. And in the short term, just to be real, we are not seeing, nor do we expect to see, a mass exodus of employees from organizations, right? So despite the fact that our data does suggest that a lot of employment decisions are likely driven by DEI, there are other factors, personal factors, the macroeconomic environment, right, so people may not be leaving their organizations at the drop of a hat. And yet, they make decisions about how they show up every day. 

Ellen McGirt Yeah. 

Alix Pollack And there is the real risk of quiet quitting. And employees disengaging from their work and not contributing with the same level of creativity and innovation and commitment as a result of some of these choices. 

Ellen McGirt What are the other two pillars? 

Alix Pollack So there is also financial risk and reputational risk. So in the financial risk space, we see wide agreement among executives that there is a positive correlation between DEI and overall financial performance. And they expect that is a relationship that will continue into the future. We also see that it has an impact on innovation among employees and on customer loyalty and client loyalty. So this, and that’s backed up again in our data by employees telling us, or actually respondents across the board telling us that they would make purchasing decisions based on whether or not that particular organization supports DEI. And then the final piece is around reputation, and this is one of the, I think, most interesting and potentially complex elements of risk. Because what we found is that there’s a real disconnect between what executives believe they are doing and the lived experiences of employees on the ground as they are on the receiving end of those decisions. Basically, executives think that they are making little change to their commitment to DEI, that their investments to the, again, core principles and the values are still holding firm and that if anything, they are maybe making some cosmetic changes. We do see that the majority of organizations are rebranding, changing some of the language that they are using to terms like fairness and belonging and organizational culture, for example. But, employees are experiencing those same decisions and shifts as a substantive retreat. And this can really undermine trust and credibility when employees are perceiving that their leaders are saying one thing and doing another. And what we are really underscoring in this element of the findings is the criticality of communication and being clear not only on what is happening, but why and ensuring that there is consistency and transparency to close some of those gaps in experience. 

Ellen McGirt Well, this is really a leadership problem and opportunity in disguise, isn’t it? Because that’s the basic core tenets of good leadership is exactly what you described. It’s creating an environment of trust through transparency and communicating early and often. And in fact, you mentioned rebranding. In the nervous Zoom rooms I’m in that I mentioned earlier, it’s 78% of C-suite leaders you found are rebranding DEI within their companies. And that got everybody’s attention because it does seem like a fraught exercise. Is it just you’re scraping frosting off the cake and putting a new frosting on it and the cake is the same? Or are you retreating? And have you found any examples where people are really getting it right? Or are just identifying this as something that you absolutely have to think through in terms of your communication strategy? 

Alix Pollack Yeah, I think it’s principally the latter where we’re really highlighting the need here. And I don’t think that there is one right answer, like use this word and that’s going to serve well and don’t use that word because it won’t. And it really is about the consistency and the transparency and I would say also the the humility that is required to ensure that leaders are really meeting employees where they are and mourning what some of what is lost in some of these shifts. And being clear about what is driving the changes that they are making and seeing through the thread of communication not only with the what and the why but also the how. When you are saying as an organization we stand behind the values of x y and z inclusion and fairness belonging and we are living out those values by doing one, two, three, and being really clear about what are the strategies that you are sticking with, what are programs you are implementing, what can employees expect to see on the ground in their day-to-day to understand that those values are being brought to life. We call it walking the talk and talking the walk in our recomendations.

Ellen McGirt Yeah, that is really good to good to know and understand. What are your conclusions? What are you recommendations going forward? I found thess very intriguing. 

Alix Pollack Well, thank you. Yes, so we lay out, and then I should say this is a research project that was conducted as a partnership between Catalyst and the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at NYU School of Law. And together we put out four recommendations, the first of which is to assess risk from all angles. Because we know, as I was saying at the top of our conversation, that it’s really critical that organizational leaders are not only looking at one side of the equation, specifically the anti-DEI side of equation, but that they are also looking at what we call the risks of retreat, right? The pro-DEIs risks. And that they’re doing that in a way that it’s taking into account both the legal risks and the social risks and the business risks. And then from there we recommend taking an approach that balances both mitigating risk and maximizing it. So once organizations go through that exercise of doing their holistic assessment and we offer some critical frameworks, legal and otherwise, for doing that in the report, we want to ensure that anywhere that they have identified risk, they are then making decisions about what modifications might be necessary. And I just wanna emphasize on that point, right? We are not saying anywhere you find risk, pull the plug. 

Ellen McGirt Right, right, right. 

Alix Pollack We are saying, anywhere you find risk, you have some decisions to make about your particular risk appetite and how that risk balances out against the potential impact of those programs. And maybe the impact makes it worthwhile to maintain that level of risk. From there, we talk about what I was mentioning before, the “walk the talk and talk the walk”. Which is, okay, you’ve made your decisions. How are you now communicating those decisions? What is the rollout? Across your organization and potentially externally look like so that you are giving voice to those decisions and creating space for critical conversations and ensuring that transparency driving trust, trying to close some of those reputational risk gaps. And then the final piece is to take the big picture view. And we mean that in two ways, both geographical and temporal. So this is something that we know has a bit of an epicenter in the US right now, but the US is not the only context at play for organizations making these decisions. They are also managing global operations in many cases where they are making decisions about where the balance is between having a unified strategy across regions is relative to the localization that might be necessary, how do they ensure that they can maintain their in other markets. And also stay in compliance in other markets because something that might be illegal or highly risky to do in the US, might be equally illegal or highly risk enough to do in another context. And so to make sure they’re holding all of that together. And then the temporal piece. This work is not linear. We have been through pendulum swings before, and this is outsized and unprecedented, no doubt, but it is another swing among many swings of that pendulum and this moment will pass and we are encouraging organizations to think about who they want to be and be able to say they were when they look back on this five years from now and to think of the strategies that are not just reactive to this moment but are really setting them up for sustained success in the long term.

Ellen McGirt Well, I sure wish you were in charge of more things, Alix. You paint the picture of a world that actually gets along. Before I let you go, I wanted to just sort of download with you a little bit. I just wanted to share a little with what’s been on my mind. And just from your experience, as opposed to from the data, I’m anticipating this year we’re going to see C-suite leaders, very senior executives increasingly focused on some very urgent problems, geopolitics as it’s unfolding affects everybody, obviously, and also new technology, particularly AI, which is sort of coming in and transforming how we live and work so quickly. So I’m now concerned, or thinking about, where managing the risk of retreat, where managing these kinds of important conversations and reframing conversations lives in an organization. That’s with mid-level leaders, first-time leaders, places where diversity has often languished because people were already under prepared for the new job that they were they were walking into. I was wondering if you had any experience or advice for that cohort of leader, the first time leaders or people who were lower down, touching the day to day operations of the organization, how they can bring the inclusion work forward when we’re struggling to figure out what we’re even calling it right now. 

Alix Pollack Yeah, it’s a great question, and it’s a tough one because I know that leaders who are kind of sandwiched in the middle of organizations, they’re needing to deal with both managing up and managing down considerable task execution responsibilities alongside people management responsibilities. And we hear often this sentiment of where exactly and when exactly am I supposed to fit inclusion in on top of all of the rest of that. What we would say and what we promote in our research and in our program, learning programs, is that it’s not in addition to, it’s part and parcel of, and the more that you can integrate inclusion into those small moments that matter, those little everyday interactions that can really add up to a make or break of employee experience, those are the things that are actually going to help you be a more adaptable and resilient leader, for one, and then also create a team dynamic that is more adaptable, more engaged, more, has more safety so that people can speak up and call out the risks when they are emerging and if you want to get the best out of your people, these are really critical leadership strategies. One of the things that a CEO said in one of our CEO sessions that I thought was super profound is that, as we move increasingly into more and more AI use in our business world and in the world in general, EQ is likely to outstrip IQ as a critical differentiator for success. And the more that leaders can embrace that some of these critical interpersonal behaviors that are about relationship building, about trust, about belonging and empathy as a way to help them build their little leadership toolkit and to help then get ahead in their own careers and maximize the impact of their teams. I think that will be an approach that will serve organizations well as we navigate these increasingly turbulent waters. 

Ellen McGirt My goodness, so more EQ, more moments that matter, and more humility and honesty in the workplace. Alix, if you were in charge, the world would be a better place. Thank you so much, and please come back. 

Alix Pollack I would love to. Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a great conversation. 

Ellen McGirt Last year, I was lucky enough to help out at a unique event during UN General Assembly Week in New York called the UN Private Sector Forum. It’s an annual gathering of CEOs, heads of state, and other global leaders from the public and private sector to talk about all the big issues facing the planet today. This particular group had been involved in the UN’s Forward Faster initiative, which is dedicated to helping companies take public, meaningful action towards achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Which you probably know, aim to address things like climate change, gender equity, livable wages, water resilience, and the like. In short, this was a room of redesigners, and I was tapped to help facilitate report backs on what work they’d been doing, the wins, the challenges, the insights that surfaced during their lunch meeting. Pretty straightforward, right? Yet, I was still surprised by what happened. Toward the end of our time together, a man raised his hand, so I brought him the microphone, and he turned out to be Bjarni Benediktsson, who was then the Prime Minister of Iceland. And as it turns out, and after an enormous amount of work with the help of lots of people, including UN women, Iceland had just become the first country to ever issue a sovereign gender bond. In this case, it was a $53 million bond issue that is designed to fund projects to help vulnerable women, including initiatives to offer decent living standards and things like subsidized child and elder care. It was a bold idea and a very big win and an even better story. The prime minister shared about collaboration and learning and modeling and getting stakeholders involved. While he was talking, I met eyes with my friend who tapped me for this gig, Doug Powell. He was part of the small but mighty team who had designed this convening and was deep into the weeds of what these high-profile re-designers might need to experience to keep the juice alive as they head back to their constituencies and do the hard work of inventing a better world. Doug has likely forgotten more than most people will ever know about design, enterprise systems, leadership, and how to do what I just witnessed, which is helping teams experience innovation success that scales. To be clear, he didn’t personally write the bond, or cook the lunch, but over his storied career at IBM, Expedia Group, and now as a design educator, podcaster, and facilitator, Doug, like few people I’ve ever met, understands what it takes to get people from different disciplines, needs, strengths, departments, and agendas into the right head space to make something good happen. He was design thinking before it was cool and remains a clear-eyed champion for what design can and must do. I tipped my hat to him then, as I do now. As I said earlier in this episode, Doug is truly someone who walks the talk and talks the walk. 

Ellen McGirt That’s me talking about you, Doug. 

Doug Powell That’s great. Oh my gosh. I’m both blushing and I’ve got goosebumps remembering that day. What an experience we had. 

Ellen McGirt Right? You know, and I think the world has gotten even crazier now than it was then, but it’s easy to forget just how crazy it, it was then and it has been for a very long time. And that was such an affirming moment that this work and these convenings actually do yield amazing things. So I take that moment with me as I become more and more shaky about where the world is going. 

Doug Powell It really is. I mean, it was so, there were there was so many incredible people in that room. And, yeah, it’s so easy for us to just get overwhelmed by what is right in front of our face, you know, every minute of every day these days. And and yet, you know, that was a moment where we had this rare opportunity to just within it with within an enclosed room kind of do this sort of metaphorical stepping back and seeing a broader global point of view and set of beliefs and values. 

Ellen McGirt Well, you are unusually good, I’ve seen you in action for, I’m lucky enough to have run into you at many interesting nodes and points across both our careers. And I wanna dig into how you have learned to bring people together for possibility because it’s, you’re a big D designer and like in the realest sense of the world. But I also wanna talk about what you’re doing now before we get into all of that. You are a very busy podcaster. I love your podcast. This is a Prototype and you just released the first episode of the third season just yesterday. So obviously the world and the world of design are very different than it was when you ended the season just six months ago. As you’re gearing up and preparing and doing all the things that you do, what sort of conversations are you looking to have? What kind of leaders are you’re looking to talk to and what do you want to talk to them about? 

Doug Powell I wanna talk to them about the journey, the journey that they and that I and that we all have been on, this sort of shared journey. Because we’re at a unique moment in time in the broader arc of design as a practice and as a profession. And where we have this generation of designers, myself and others included. Who have gone through this cycle of growth and expansion of the profession over the last, say, exponential growth that really I didn’t see coming earlier in my career. And many of us have found ourselves in leadership roles for which we are, I’m gonna speak for myself, unprepared, untrained, unready to to really take on the uh, the responsibilities of that role and yet there we are. And there is a need for somebody to do the work. So we’ve had to figure it out and learn on the job. And that figuring out and that learning on the job is a fascinating process for me. And so as I’ve been engaging with design leaders, others who’ve gone through different versions of this journey, that’s what I’m curious about. How did you figure it our? And what were some of those moments along the way where you thought. You were never going to figure it out. And then somehow you did. And who were those people who helped you along the way? What were some of those moments where a doorway was opened, a light bulb went on, you know, something was, something inspired you or, or energized you in a certain direction. 

Ellen McGirt Let’s start with your journey. Take us back to your early career and when you were beginning to get the kinds of assignments and influence that required you to be a leader. Where did you step into that? Where did your stumble? 

Doug Powell Yeah. Well, I started my career as a graphic designer. As a child, I was the kid who could draw. That was part of my identity and part of what I love to do. And I really sort of followed that passion into the early part of my career where I got to essentially make pictures for for clients, you know, for a living. Barely a living, as it turns out, but that was the early part of my career. And that was a time when the profession of design was really just sort of taking shape as a, certainly design professionally had been around for many decades, many generations. But this was just as we were moving from a very analog practice into a tech, driven practice. It was on the cusp of, you know, the birth of the internet and then digital media and then mobile technology and all of these things that just triggered just massive, massive changes in the way that design was done, in the role that designers were playing and could play in the practice of design. So part of what, what I’ve, part of what has become sort of a core trait of my practice, both as a designer and as a leader, is that I’ve had to sort of figure out the next thing that comes along. And so there’s this pattern of learning as you go and continuing to develop my own skills, but doing that for the most part on my own. And finding a way to do that. So that’s sort of one altitude of the story. Interestingly, and you and I have a shared, one of the threads that we share is back with the organization AIGA. And early in my career, I was living and working in the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. Where I, for the most part, grew up. And I got very involved in an early part of my career with the local AIGA chapter in that area. I didn’t know it at the time, but as I look back on it, some of those moments working with that AIGA Chapter were some of the earliest experiences I had in the professional world to be a leader. And, and I really, uh, now, really cherish those early experiences because I learned a lot. 

Ellen McGirt Take us back to your days at IBM because you grew into a very big job there. 

Doug Powell Yeah, well, this was 2012, 2013. And in 2012, well it was, I think it was the, actually the very end of 2011, IBM had a CEO change and Ginny Rometty took on the role of CEO. And, you know, that was just at a, what a potent moment. Uh, for that company, but really for, for any company, I mean, this was four or five years after the launch of iPhone, which triggered just the, uh, all, all of this, just activity. And every CEO in the world in those years was thinking, Oh my God, everything just changed and how are we going to be relevant? And, and to her credit, Ginny recognized that IBM wasn’t really set up, didn’t have the capability to develop products and services that were rooted in great human experiences. And so she made an investment. She invested in building an internal capability of human-centered design. And I was part of the original leadership team that was brought in to build that idea into a thing. And there was no template for it because the scale that it needed to happen in order to, to deliver on that idea for Ginny and for the company of IBM at the time, a company of 400,000 people globally, uh, you know, was we were talking about minimum of a thousand designers added to the company and that was, you know a number at that time that was just absolutely unthinkable and unprecedented. So we were instantly in uncharted territory. There was no playbook. There was not template. And to be honest, I use the word prototype as one of my favorite words. And, 

Ellen McGirt You made it a lifestyle. 

Doug Powell We had to, we had to simply prototype that on almost a daily basis. 

Ellen McGirt Without calling anybody out who was feeling fear or resistance, you clearly had to deal with all kinds of moods and capacities and stakeholders with different ideas and different agendas and things that people were worried about. How did you begin to help build, I’m going to call it the internal muscle that was required for this change to happen? 

Doug Powell There’s a temptation with design, when design is being sort of grafted onto an organization where it’s not in the DNA, which is almost every organization. And that is to set it up as the other, as a separate organism or sub-organism to have a design studio that’s off on some some other space and it’s separate from, and you can’t really go there. That’s where the designers go, right? Well, we did the exact opposite. And our very earliest design studios were all in existing IBM buildings and existing IBM campuses. Here I’m now based in Austin, Texas, which was and still is the sort of home base of the IBM design, you know, sort of global design program. And it was the home of our first sort of flagship studio. And it was on in, you know, a boring old, you know, 19 mid mid 80s era, BM building corporate building that from the outside just looks like nothing special. And in fact, one of our favorite things to do was to invite guests onto that campus and they would hear about IBM design, oh, you’re doing such great stuff. And then they come to this campus and they walk with us from the front desk to the building and they’re like, seriously? This is the building we’re going into. 

Ellen McGirt This is where the magic happens?

Doug Powell We’re getting in the elevator and we get off on the seventh floor where the studio was and then they’d step out of the elevator and it’s like, ah! Like it was just audible, ah! so we realized we’ve got to, we’ve gotta repeat that. We’ve gotta get as many people, as many of those skeptics and those eye rollers and those seen it before, done it befores out there in that company. We needed to get them into that space connected with this new wave of just super talented, super energetic, super creative. Mostly young people connected with that energy. And when we did that, then the magic happened and then we were winning hearts and minds and we were changing culture. And initially it was a, it was a person by person, team by team, getting them in there, it was very high touch, but it was super effective. And we had a nearly thousand percent success rate when we could get individuals, leaders, and cross-functional teams from across that company into a design studio space and connecting with designers and with the practice of human-centered design.

Ellen McGirt Well, you know, so it begs the question, what happened? And I’m not necessarily speaking specifically about your work at IBM, but I’m going to make a broad assumption at this. But at this point I was, you know, I joined Fast Company, for example, a magazine that focused a lot on design, particularly in the business world a year after the great design thinking manifesto dropped, you know, So this was something that people were curious about, at least even to the even even if they were skeptical, it was something that people are becoming familiar with. Maybe not to the degree to which you were successful, but at some point, the use case and the value of this kind of cross-functional work should be made and should start to seep into the culture. But I’m not sure it did, because even as recently as a few years ago, we’re starting to see the retreat, the sort of disappointing retreat from this kind thinking within big organizations and, you know, the loss of major design teams and the chief design officer. So what do you, in your view, what happened and knowing what I know about you is that the underlying value is still very clear to you and certainly to me. 

Doug Powell Yeah, the mission that we had during those years at IBM was a culture change mission to create a sustainable culture of design. And design thinking was how we articulated it. Now, if you deconstruct that, the two key words were sustainable and culture. Sustainable means it’s not something that we’re measuring. In the moment. And it’s not something that we’re measuring in one or two or five years. It’s something that were measuring sort of generationally. And culture gave us the permission. One thing that’s very true of almost every design leader and design team in a big scaled organization is that their formal lane of authority, the scope of authority is very narrow. The thing that they’re actually accountable for is not much. I mean, it’s important, but it’s quite distinct. With that mission, a culture change mission required and gave us permission to go out in the company and touch all corners of that company and that population of, again, early on, it was the company scaled down considerably over those years but early on it was you know, 350, 400,000 people. So, you know. So we had to traverse far, far outside of our very narrow lane of accountability. 

Ellen McGirt I, you know, you, you in the early 2020s, I think you left corporate leadership and went into independent practice. 

Doug Powell Well, I had been a self-employed, mostly solo practitioner earlier in my career, and so I thought, well, I’ll just sort of pick up that and… 

Ellen McGirt Go back. 

Doug Powell And funny thing happens after 10 or 12 years and those muscles kind of atrophy and yeah, it’s taken some time to rebuild those skills to relearn and rebuild those muscles of working primarily as a team of one. And finding ways to build a practice out of the expertise, the knowledge, whatever I’ve accumulated over these years and in the corporate space, kind of taking that, putting it in, you know, my somewhat feeble and diminishing mind and then bringing it back out as something hopefully consumable and invaluable. 

Ellen McGirt Yeah, I’m curious about, you know, we talked about the heyday and the rise of the design thinking and the designer within big organizations and enterprise systems and how challenging it was. It’s a similar trajectory to diversity and inclusion, which was often a bolt-on practice and made people nervous and uncomfortable. You know, there’s sort of like culture change, oh, you mean the culture wasn’t or inclusive, oh, I wasn’t inclusive before. So there’s a defensiveness that pops up in these big systems. And that’s why, that’s why getting people who are, who function very differently from each other into the same room and have them feel welcome and excited is inherently good for everybody. It’s good for the soul. It’s a good for the soul of the corporation, all of that kind of stuff. So I’m curious if you see, given a whole new set of increasingly urgent issues, everything from climate and inequity, and of course, just global craziness, is if you can see a way back to the kinds of fundamental principles that design and inclusion both share, but perhaps maybe using different terms. 

Doug Powell Absolutely, you just nailed it. And I think one of the traps that we fell into in those years, certainly in building scaled design or design thinking programs and teams and practices, those words were really not, they were confusing. And they were distracting and they, and we kind of painted ourselves in a corner. And that’s not the whole reason for why we’re in the moment that we’re in broadly across the industry, but it’s one of the factors. And certainly we realized that and one of one of lessons, again, lessons, that, as I reflect both on my time at IBM and then at Expedia, is every time the word “design” left my mouth, I then had to follow that with an explanation of what I meant by that. And that’s not a very elegant way to tell a story. And so we, you know, honestly, if I could wave a magic wand and go back 15 years and sort of replay all of those moves, that might be one that I would really rescript is how we, what words we use.

Ellen McGirt Yeah, what words are you using these days?

Doug Powell You know, I try to pay attention to what was that sentence or what were those two sentences that I would say after I said the word design. Like, what were these words? And oftentimes, usually, it was around how can we create a better experience for a person? How can we build or envision a better future for each other, for the planet, for the world.

Ellen McGirt That’s very powerful and you deliver it so simply, but that really is it. And when I think about, and also what we’ve talked about in the past and what I think in terms of my own reporting and work, what are the characteristics that a leader, regardless of their training and background, need to develop to consistently create environments where those conversations can happen and everyone can contribute? I’m gonna help me generate a list. You know, it involves the dreaded E word, empathy. It involves listening. It involves being courageous enough to go off script. You know it involves being willing to actually talk to people where they are. A suspension of judgment, you know. And all of these things, and I’m sure you have better words and different words to add, jump in. 

Doug Powell I would, those are great words, Ellen. You are very good with words. I would add curiosity. I would add humility, perhaps at the top of my list. Because without that, a leader is coming in with all of the answers. So why do I need to be curious? Why do I need to listen? Why do I need to be courageous? I’ve got it all figured out. But when we turn that upside down and we say, my goodness, I don’t know, I don’t know. But let’s figure this out because there’s a lot on the line. And boy, if we do figure it out, that would be really awesome. 

Ellen McGirt So, I know I have to let you go. I’m going to give you an opportunity to end on a humble, open, curious, kind, empathetic, philosophical note. Clearly, we’re in a very tumultuous moment, both nationally and globally, for all the reasons that we know. For designers and non-designers alike, for leaders and nonleaders alike, how would you describe design’s role in this moment?

Doug Powell Well, I alluded to this earlier, but my core definition of design is envisioning a better future. That is essentially what we do. Now we, as designers, do that. We apply that in many different ways. We apply it to envisioning better future brand or a better future building or a future article article of clothing or a better future digital experience et cetera, et cetera. We do that in many different ways, but the key is envisioning a better future. And we need to envision a better future, don’t we, Ellen?

Ellen McGirt We really do. We really do.

Doug Powell So we need to get back to that core of what we do and what is unique about what we, and that’s it. That’s it, it’s tough when our professional world, the professional world that has been so good for us in recent years is now in contraction for a bunch of reasons. That is cyclical. It doesn’t feel like it’s cyclical right now, but it is, I assure you. We are at some point in a cycle, and that cycle, we will move to another point in that cycle at some point in the future, right? We are in motion. And it’s so, again, it’s just so easy to think, oh, this is it. This is where we are, and this is where always will be. There’s one thing that that we know and that is that that is not the case and so we need to be, you know, we need be envisioning and making and prototyping what that better future is doing what we do as designers. 

Ellen McGirt Doug Powell, podcaster, educator, designer, envisioner. Thank you so much for being here. 

Doug Powell Ellen, it was a real pleasure. Thank you. 

Ellen McGirt The Design of Business, the Business of Design is a podcast from Design Observer. Design Observer was co-founded by Jessica Helfand. Our show is written and produced by Alexis Haut. Our theme music is by Warner Meadows. Justin D. Wright of Seaplane Armada mixed and mastered this episode. Thanks to Sheena Medina, Sarah Gephardt, Rachel Paese, and the entire Design Observer team. And for more long form content about the people redesigning our world, please consider subscribing to our newsletters, the Design of Business and The Observatory at designobserver.com.