Journal of Business Strategy

Design and business: why can't we be friends?

Roger Martin

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Roger Martin, (2007),"Design and business: why can't we be friends?", Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 28 Iss 4 pp. 6 - 12
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Design and business: why cant we be

friends?
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Roger Martin

Roger Martin is Dean,

Rotman School of
Management, University of
Toronto, Toronto, Canada.

The color of your skin dont matter to me

As long as we can live in harmony
Why cant
Why cant
Why cant
Why cant

we be friends?
we be friends?
we be friends?
we be friends? (War, 1975).

In 1975, the soul band War released this plaintive song that repeated Why cant we be
friends? for 47 of the songs total 61 lines. (War, 1975) It became a Grammy Award nominee
but, more importantly, a timeless cult classic of the Vietnam era. Over three decades later, it
feels like the right theme song for designers and business executives. Even as design has
emerged as a key business theme with business executives broadly wishing for the type of
design successes achieved by Apple, Jet Blue, or Herman Miller, the relationship between
designers and business executives has remained distant if not downright frosty.
Designers make executives nervous by combining what appears to be a lack of interest in
rigorous, quantitative analysis with the inclination to propose, with apparently reckless
abandon, radical departures from the past. While executives love the promise of creativity
and greater attention to design, they find designers hard to take. From the opposite side,
designers find executives strangely wedded to mediocre status quos and inclined to apply
impossibly high standards of proof to design ideas to make sure they do not go anywhere at
all. While designers long for access to the purse strings that executives control, they find
executives almost too conservative to tolerate.
While it is true that some designers and executives engage in love-fests that extend far
beyond the friendship that War asked about 47 times, the dominant mode is a messy
shotgun wedding. Why, when executives need designers to revitalize their businesses and
designers need executives to bring to market and leverage their design ideas, is it so tough
to be friends?
The answer lies in a fundamental schism between designers and executives that is poorly
understood by both sides but drives all involved to engage in behaviors that make the other
side nervous and worried. When designers and executives finally understand the sources
and nature of the schism, they can take five steps to overcome the schism and become
productive friends, outlined below.

The fundamental schism

The reliability orientation of business executives versus the validity orientation of designers
creates a fundamental tension. Because the orientation of each is natural and utterly implicit,
neither executives nor designers understand the nature of the schism; they only understand
that the other side makes them nervous.

PAGE 6

JOURNAL OF BUSINESS STRATEGY

VOL. 28 NO. 4 2007, pp. 6-12, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 0275-6668

DOI 10.1108/02756660710760890

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The reliability orientation of business executives versus the

validity orientation of designers creates a fundamental
tension.

Reliability results from a process that produces a dependable, consistent, replicable

outcome. If I were to take a vial of your blood, split it into 100 sub-samples and run them
through a testing process for hepatitis, for example, it would be a fully reliable process if it
gave the same answer all 100 times. Validity, by contrast, results from a process that
produces the desired outcome. If I took the entire vial of blood, ran it through a single test
and the test was negative (positive) and you never (actually) developed the symptoms of
hepatitis, it would be a valid test because it provided the outcome desired, which is knowing
whether or not you have hepatitis.
Reliability is demonstrated by past events: we ran the same hepatitis test 10,000 times and
got the same result each time, hence we know the process is reliable. Validity can only be
demonstrated by future events through the passage of time: we need to watch you to see
whether you develop hepatitis in the future to assess the validity of the test procedure.
Clearly, you would like both perfect reliability and validity. You would want the test to give the
same answer every time you ask whether you have hepatitis, and you want the answer to
correctly identify whether or not you have the condition. Therein lies the fundamental
problem: after a point, it is not possible to increase reliability without sacrificing validity or
vice versa.
To enhance the reliability of any process, one has to reduce the number of variables
considered and use quantitative, bias-free measurement. If the process uses many
variables, some of which are qualitative and require judgment to assess, it will produce
different answers depending on who is administering the test. IQ testing is an example of a
highly reliable process. If you take the Stanford-Binet IQ test over and over, you will score a
nearly identical result each time. The test achieves reliability by defining intelligence very
narrowly as the ability to solve simple logical problems, and it measures intelligence via a
multiple choice test that can be evaluated with no possibility of bias in measurement or
judgment. It can be readily evaluated by running the answer sheet through a computer.
The Stanford-Binet IQ test spits out a number that identifies how intelligent you are a
number from a normal distribution, the mean of which is 100. But is the actual desired
outcome of the intelligence testing process a number? No, the actual desired outcome is the
ability to predict your likely future performance. Unfortunately, standard intelligence tests,
while not of negligible predictive value, explain at best 30 to 40 percent of variations in future
performance. (Higgins et al., n.d.) Arguably, therefore, the Stanford-Binet IQ test is a high
reliability, low validity process.
In his best-selling book, Emotional Intelligence, Goleman (1995) argues that EQ makes for a
much better predictor of success in life than IQ. A close look at EQ reveals that Goleman
considers a wider variety of variables that are more qualitative in nature and open to
judgment in measurement. This is the path to higher validity: more variables, qualitative
measurement and the integration of judgment.
IQ testing implicitly sacrifices validity to achieve higher reliability: we can be absolutely sure
that we know your exact IQ but we cannot do much that is useful with the information. EQ
testing implicitly sacrifices reliability to achieve higher validity: it is harder to get a consistent
measure of it, but we know what it means when we get the measure. Up to a point, it is
possible to get more of both reliability and validity by being more thoughtful and less sloppy
about processes. But in due course, more reliability requires fewer variables while more
validity requires considering more. More reliability requires quantitative, judgment-free

VOL. 28 NO. 4 2007 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS STRATEGY PAGE 7

variables while more validity requires considering qualitative, judgment-laden variables.

Hence reliability and validity live in fundamental structural conflict.
The conflict between reliability and validity plays out in the relationship between business
executives and designers because the former are more reliability-oriented on average and
the latter are more validity-oriented. At a conceptual level, the world of business people and
the world of designers can be represented by the two curves in Figure 1. The left curve
places business people at a higher level of reliability while the right curve places designers
at a higher level of validity.

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Business executives live in an ecosystem that rewards meeting budgets, hitting quarterly
earnings targets and proving in advance that initiatives will succeed. Their number one
analytical tool is linear regression because it helps them substantiate reliability on the basis
of past results; if it has always happened in the past, therefore it will also happen in the future.
That is the primary substantiation for reliability. So the average business executive has the
incentive to be more reliability-oriented and will be trained in methodologies that produce
reliability.
Designers possess an inherent bias toward validity. Great designers seek deep
understanding of the user and the context, which entails consideration of many variables.
They do not limit their considerations to aspects that can be thoroughly quantified. They
worry less about whether they can replicate a particular process and more about producing
a valid solution to the problem before them. The only proof that they tend to accept is
future-oriented, a design that is shown to work with the passage of time.
This reliability orientation causes business executives to say to designers: Youve got to
quantify it; youve got to prove it. The designer responds, Prove it? How can you prove
something that can only be substantiated by future events? You cant! But if you insist on
proof, you will never do anything impressive.
While the means of the distributions are apart, the curves are overlapping because some
designers are highly reliability-oriented and some executives are highly validity-oriented. By
and large, all designers long to work with business executives who are the right side of their
curve and business executives like to work with designers on the left end of the designer
curve. However, these situations, by definition, are not the norm in this dynamic; they are the
statistical outliers. So how do business executives and designers need to think and what do
they need to do in order to overcome this fundamental schism and be the most productive
friends they can be?

Advice for designers and executives

I have five pieces of parallel advice for each side.
Figure 1 Reliability vs validity

PAGE 8 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS STRATEGY VOL. 28 NO. 4 2007

Designer advice no. 1. Take inattention to validity as a design challenge

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While designers generally love nothing more than a tricky and complicated design challenge
to create a marvelous solution where one does not currently exist, their reaction to the
organizational challenge of dealing with the inattention to validity by corporate executives is
often quite unproductive. Rather than taking this organizational issue as a design challenge
and working on designing a process to solve this problem, they are inclined to simply
complain about reliability-oriented executives and dismiss them as philistines who cannot
appreciate what needs to be done. As such, they define the reliability-orientation of
executives as not their problem just an immovable constraint.
If instead, designers treated the actual existence of design unfriendliness/
inattention-to-validity as a design challenge as important and legitimate as their normal
job of designing an artifact (i.e. product, web site, corporate identify, user interface), they
would be more productive and effective in working with executives. Inattention to validity is
and should be treated as just another challenge for the designer and tackled with the same
gusto and enthusiasm as they apply to their traditional work.
Executive advice no. 1. Take inattention to reliability as a management challenge
While executives generally love nothing more than taking the confusing and ambiguous
world where they operate and organizing it into a reliable operation, their reaction to dealing
with designers inattention to reliability is often quite unproductive. Rather than taking this as
a management challenge and putting their managerial hats on, they complain about flighty
and impractical designers and marginalize their work so that it does not threaten
organizational order. The validity orientation of designers then becomes not a legitimate
management concern, just a threat to security and stability that should be extinguished.
If instead, executives treated the actual existence of inattention to reliability as a
management challenge as important and legitimate as their normal management
responsibilities, they would be more productive and effective in working with designers.
Inattention to reliability is and should be treated as just another managerial challenge for the
executive and tackled with the same fervor and enthusiasm they apply to their traditional
management challenges.
Designer advice no. 2. Empathize with the design unfriendly elements
The only way to design a compelling solution for a user is to understand the user in a positive
way. It is almost impossible to design something compelling for a person who the designer
does not respect nor attempt to understand. The filing cabinets full of un-built houses
designed for clients whom the architects saw as philistines are testament to the limitation
of disrespecting your user. The architect consoles himself or herself with the brilliance of the
design without having any better explanation of its still-born fate than to maintain the client
had no appreciation of architecture.
In contrast, the effective designer aims for deep understanding of the user in order to
uncover the greatest range of options for creating a compelling solution. What are the users
greatest hopes? What keeps the user up at night worrying? What are the minimum
acceptable conditions for the user to embrace a design solution? How much risk is the user
willing to absorb?
The designer can answer these questions either with empathy or disdain. The ineffective
designer sees that what keeps the user up at night is the desire to keep his or her proverbial
ass covered. The effective designer sees what keeps the user up at night is the desire to
protect his or her employees from the consequences of a reckless decision. In the case of
the schism between the world view of the designer and the executive, a better
understanding of and empathy for the executives point of view enables the designer to
probe what constitutes a reckless decision versus a sensibly aggressive decision from the
executives standpoint. Only with such empathy can the designer forge a solution that meets
the executives needs in a productive way.

VOL. 28 NO. 4 2007 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS STRATEGY PAGE 9

Executive advice no. 2. Empathize with the reliability-unfriendly elements

The only way the executive can create an organizational context in which the designers can
productively work is to empathize with the designers. They are not being purposefully
dangerous and worrisome. They are attempting to make sense of fuzzy data, qualitative
insights, and judgment. The designers see things that the executives do not see and are
doing their best to deal with the complexity. Only by empathizing with the designers and
understanding their concerns and ways of operating can the executive devise managerial
structures that take into account both the needs of the organization and the needs of the
designers.
Designer advice no. 3. Learn and speak the language of reliability

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To empathize, one needs to communicate. But executives and designers speak different
languages. Executives speak the language of reliability because they put a high priority on
the production of consistent, predictable outcomes. They frequently use words such as
proof, regression analysis, certainty, best practices and deployment. Designers speak the
language of validity because they put a high priority on outcomes that delight, whether they
are consistent and predictable or not. They frequently use words such as visualization,
prototyping, beta-testing and novelty.
However, to executives, these words connote danger, uncertainty and guesswork, things
that encourage, if not compel, them to say No! In such circumstances, the designer must
learn the language of the executive the language of reliability. Otherwise, designers might
as well be speaking Greek to an Italian audience. Just as anybody who takes a job in another
country needs to learn the local language in order to function, designers need to learn the
language of reliability to be successful in communicating with executives.
I know how critical this is. I vividly remember working as a young consultant for a big bank on
a private banking strategy for its high net worth customers. My team came up with a
breakthrough idea, and in due course we were given an audience to present our proposed
strategy to the banks chief executive officer and his six direct reports.
They listened attentively. At the end, the chief operating officer asked one question: Have
any of our competitors done anything like this? Reveling in the unique brilliance of our
solution, I enthusiastically responded: No, not even close! I was too young, foolish, and
design-insensitive to realize that my answer put the final nail in the coffin of our idea. That
was 1988. It is small consolation indeed that I have observed several banks only recently
utilizing the approach we laid out almost two decades ago.
Executive advice no. 3. Learn the language of validity
By the same token, the executive needs to learn and speak the language of validity.
Executives are not going to get productive innovation from designers if they force them to
speak only the language of reliability. Both sides need to engage in the exercise and
discipline to learn one anothers language. Executives need to learn the language of validity
so they can understand what is being said and can actually communicate with designers.
Designer advice no. 4: Use analogies and stories
What tools can help bridge the language gap? It is difficult to provide proof or certainty,
even if designers appreciate that those words loom large in the executives reliability lexicon.
When the executive cares primarily about substantiation based on past events while the
designer cares only about substantiation based on future events, the designer bears the
burden of communicating ideas effectively. The best tool available is analogy: crafting a
story that takes an existing idea in operation elsewhere and shows how it is similar to the
novel idea being proposed not exactly the same, but similar enough.
Had I had more empathy with my banker clients and understood the language of reliability, I
might have responded, None of our domestic competitors have done this. But a variant of
this approach has been used by some of the best-performing European private banks for

PAGE 10 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS STRATEGY VOL. 28 NO. 4 2007

some time now. It is not exactly the same, but it bears important similarities. And remember
that our bank has succeeded in the past in taking an idea from outside our home market and
introducing it here.
This does not eliminate the apparent risk of an idea, but it presents it in a reliability-oriented
framework. An analogy or story helps the executive see that this is not a case of
substantiation based exclusively on future events but is also based in part on past events.
And in the end, in order to take action, executives will need to convince themselves that the
idea falls into an acceptable range of reliability.

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Executive advice no. 4. Share data and reasoning, not conclusions

The inclination of reliability-oriented executives is to crunch all the data they consider
relevant, come to a firm conclusion on the analysis and then impose that conclusion on
everyone else, including the designers. When listening to this, the designers will think that
what the executive sees as all the data are only a small fraction of the relevant data and the
executive is overlooking or consciously ignoring plenty of relevant data that are hard to
measure and quantify. If executives attempt to impose their conclusions on the designers,
they will cause the designers to feel that it is impossible to develop a truly innovative and
superior solution because so many of the important design features are being ignored.
However, if executives do not share their data and reasoning with the designers, they will not
understand what the executives are thinking and feeling. That will make it less likely for
designers to create a solution that the executives will find acceptable. Executives who share
their data and reasoning, but stop before imposing conclusions, help the designers come up
with a solution to which they can say: Yes! While the design they come up with may make the
executive nervous on the margin, it will be less likely to be a design that the executive feels
compelled to reject out of hand as too scary and dangerous.

Designer advice no. 5. Bite off as small a piece as possible to generate proof
Even with careful use of language and analogies, proof is the biggest problem. Designers
do not traffic in proof of the sort reliability-oriented executives want, which is substantiation
based on past events. Designers simply cannot prove in advance that their ideas will work.
However, there is both good news and bad news about the future. The bad news is that a
year from now is now in the future and from a proof standpoint what happens then is not
relevant proof. The good news is that a year from now that year is in the past. This nuance is
critical to reliability-oriented executives. Designers can convince executives to bite off a
piece of what they would like to do and say, Here is my prediction of what will happen. Lets
watch next year to see what will happen. If they agree to bite off that chunk and the
designers predicted results happen over the year, that builds confidence in the executive
because what was in the future a year ago is in the past today. The key for designers is to turn
the future into the past because future is the enemy for a reliability-oriented executive and
past is a friend.
Designers do not love the notion of biting off a little piece because they think any parsing or
phasing of the solution will destroy its integrity. Most designers would rather have everything
done in one swoop and not look back. They have a problem, however, in this respect with
executives and hence they need to develop skills in biting off as small a piece as possible to
give themselves a chance to turn the future into the past.

Even with careful use of language and analogies, proof is the

biggest problem.

VOL. 28 NO. 4 2007 JOURNAL OF BUSINESS STRATEGY PAGE 11

Executive advice no. 5. Bite off as big a piece as possible to give innovation a chance
From the other side, executives need to stretch to bite off as big a piece as possible to give
innovation a chance. Executives have to listen to designers insist that they have to do this
much of an idea or they will not really know whether it will work. This much may be a
somewhat frightening notion when not much reliability-oriented proof is offered. However,
just as the designer has to stretch to bite off as small a piece as possible, the executive
needs to stretch to bite off the biggest piece possible without feeling irresponsible.

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Getting along
Keywords:
Design,
Business development,
Conflict,
Senior management,
Conflict management

In many respects, the advice for getting along is quite generic: appreciate the legitimate
differences, empathize, seek to communicate on each others terms, use tools both camps
are familiar with, and stretch out of your comfort zone toward the comfort zone of the other.
Getting along has never been and will never be rocket science. But that does not prevent the
world from being full of conflicts like the uneasy relationship between designers and
business executives. The relationship can be highly productive, though, with attention to a
few key pieces of advice by all involved.

References
Goleman, D. (1995), Emotional Intelligence, Bantam Books, New York, NY.
Higgins, D.M., Peterson, J.B., Lee, A. and Pihl, R.O. (n.d.), Prefrontal cognitive ability, intelligence, Big
Five personality and the prediction of advanced academic and workplace performance, Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology (forthcoming).
War (1975), Why Cant We Be Friends?, Warner Brothers, New York, NY.

About the author

Roger Martin is Dean of the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at the University of
Toronto and Premiers Chair in Competitiveness and Productivity. He is a regular design
columnist for Business Week Online. He won the 2004 Marshall McLuhan Visionary
Leadership Award and was named a 2005 Business Week Innovation Guru. Roger Martin
can be contacted at: martin@rotman.utoronto.ca

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