Changemakers : How Leaders Can Design Change in an Insanely Complex World

Today's radically complex problems require people to lead with design. 

Changemakers is an essential playbook for designers and nondesigners who want to drive change at work, at home, and in their communities. Groundbreaking designers Maria Giudice and Christopher Ireland—armed with insights from some of today's top minds in business, tech, and social justice—offer a pragmatic, people–centered approach to change.

Who Should Read This Book?

Changemakers can be designers, leaders, CEOs, tech people, project managers, product people—virtually anyone who wants to embrace and address change. This book will show them how to do it by clearly defining, studying, and addressing change as a design problem to be solved.

Takeaways

• A new approach to change is emerging, and design is at the forefront of responding and provoking change.
• Purpose and passion are essential changemaker qualities.
• Change involves choosing the right problem and finding an entity open to change.
• This book will be your guide for creating and maintaining change in your organization—for you, your team, and your stakeholders.
• Leaders can design change and affect the world—this book will show them how to become that kind of leader.
• Each chapter has critical takeaways at the end of the chapter, summarizing important points.
• Each chapter gives the reader a list of extra sources to gain further knowledge.

Innovator, artist, protagonist, activist, and positive provocateur, Maria Giudice has pursued a vision of intelligent, elegant, people–centered design throughout her professional life. Her grasp of the pragmatic, the authentic, and the essential have kept her at the forefront of design and business for over 30 years. When Facebook acquired Hot Studio, a design agency, founder Maria Guidice felt some sense of validation. For some, design is an after–thought. The acquisition sent a message to companies all over, "Design is strategic. It’s not just execution." Her expertise lies in fostering a vision and bringing people together to execute it. She knows how to overcome team silos and lead with influence instead of authority.

Researcher, strategist, idea generator, and alliance builder: Christopher Ireland started her career with the notion that businesses could benefit from a better understanding of people and culture. Her ability to create simple explanations of complex human behavior and to translate those insights into effective design and development strategies attracted clients from both technology and consumer goods companies, including Microsoft, Apple, Pepsi, Levis, GM and more. As co–founder and CEO of Cheskin, a firm that pioneered design research in Silicon Valley, Christopher and her partners had ringside seats to unrivaled feats of creation, innovation, and reinvention. Beginning in the 1990's, she led teams exploring topics like how trends move through the teen population, how music relates to mood, the history of residential architectural styles, the power of play, the cultural and behavioral differences of girls and boys, the emerging culture of "cool" in China, the development of trust online, and the meaning of color around the globe —to name just a few. She and her partners sold Cheskin in 2007, and walked away with their sanity mostly intact. Christopher is a co–author of Rise of the DEO: Leadership by Design and China’s New Culture of Cool. She received an MBA from UCLA and currently teaches leadership and design strategy courses for Stanford University’s Continuing Studies Program.