You would not believe the bullshit coming out of their mouths!

The thing that surprised me most wasn’t the ridiculousness of the conversation, but that it seemed so obvious that the interview questions weren’t going to get the woman the information she needed to make a decision about hiring the guy.

“Tell me about a time when you faced conflict at work and how you handled it.”

Complete garbage! Every interviewer asks that canned question and every interviewee has an equally canned response.

I wonder if this does not bode well for me the next time I have to interview for a job? If someone starts asking me canned questions, I’m sure I’ll have to call them out.

…not that they’re all getting it exactly, but at least they’re finally thinking about it. Let’s face it, for most Suits, Design is nothing more than visual creativity. In fact, that exact phrase appears in the heading of Fast Company’s Design theme page.

Before you get upset, be reminded that cultural change happens slowly and that we’ve already got a management guru on our side doing his part to speed up the recognition of Design’s value proposition in the Business community. His name is Tom Peters.

Tom recently spoke at the DMI Summit Conference in New York. Apparently, he suggested “men couldn’t really design effectively for women.” Darrel Rhea, who spoke before Peters at the conference, takes Peters to task in his article, “Designing for Aliens: What management guru and design advocate Tom Peters needs to learn about managing design,” arguing not only that point, but doing a damn fine job of describing a value proposition that only Design can bring to Business: “the act of uncovering, defining or clarifying the dimensions of human experience related to a product.”

While complaining about Business not understanding the value of Design is nothing new, my situation, that is, my personal understanding of the situation is…and it’s deeply troubling because the Design community seems to have gotten REAL quiet about this recently. (Shout out to Paula for keepin’ the dream alive.) I feel like most of us have forgotten all that talk about how Design should have a place at the table with the CEO, the CFO, the CIO and all the other C_O’s. Those arguments are still valid and we still want our seat, damn it!

So what’s up? Why are we so quiet? Are we simply happy in our roles as practitioners? Do we, as a community, not understand the benefits of having a position at that level? Am I missing the point completely? Talk to me, people!

…which is how I found this:

The Center for Work, Technology and Organization (WTO) is a research center committed to basic and applied research that will help us better understand how work is changing and, hence, design more effective organizations and technologies.

It looks pretty interesting. I think I’ll request a few of their papers. I love working at Stanford!

The Design Management Institute looks like a tasty source for information on the subject. The DMI Publications area has lots of downloadable articles and some are even free (most cost a small fee for non-members).

Are any brad lauster (dot com) readers members of the DMI? I’m thinking about joining, so I’d like to hear from you.

Does anyone have any suggestions for souces of information on strategic design?