Boards have immense innovation potential, but complexity and time pressures often trap them in routines that constrain opportunities for new ways of thinking. Design-led governance breaks this cycle by shifting focus from compliance to collaboration and creative problem-solving, placing empathy and deeper insight at the heart of strategic decision-making.
Beyond compliance, boards need situational awareness to identify patterns, challenge assumptions, and respond with agility. This shift in approach was explored at The Value of Design Thinking in Governance, Decision Making and Innovation event, hosted by the Australian Institute of Company Directors and the Australian Design Council.
Panellist Jacqui Jordan, an executive coach, strategic advisor, and Australian Design Council Advisor shared her experience of integrating design capability into business strategy, risk, and transformation. Inspired by her insights and experience, we spoke with Jacqui to explore how a design-led approach enables boards to make more informed decisions, foster greater trust with management, and drive lasting innovation. “With external change happening at digital speed, boards are finding they need more direct pathways into the organisation for deep listening and insight”, she said.
Design Thinking as a Strategic Organisational Capability
Governance is anchored in strategy, not compliance; its centre of gravity is judgement, rather than process, according to Catherine Livingstone AC, Board Member of the Australian Design Council. Design-led governance is not just a tool for process; it’s a mindset that drives innovation at the highest levels of decision-making. “The design-led methods already applied in product and service design can also assist the board to navigate complexity through iterative learning and thoughtful decision-making,” said Jacqui Jordan.
Good design incorporates opportunities to pause, reflect, and reframe, while also introducing specific roles (voices) and structure to each conversation.
“It’s important to distinguish between learning conversations and problem-solving discussions,” she says. Boards are often required to make complex and nuanced decisions relying on summary reports and abstracted information. Learning conversations are exploratory, grounded in observation and insight. These discussions integrate both divergent and convergent thinking. “Our instinct to ‘listen to fix’ can prevent the deeper understanding that design thinking requires,” says Jacqui.
By fostering more learning-led discussions, boards can better align strategy and communication across the organisation. These conversations are key to the Discover and Define phases of the Design Councils Double Diamond model, where curiosity, exploration, and reframing the problem lay the foundation for effective design outcomes.
“A design-led method promotes effective decision making,” she adds. “But it’s no silver bullet. The Australian Design Council encourage boards to experiment with it and provide support by adding design capability along the way.”
How Design-Led Thinking Reshaped Strategy at Emergence Insurance
One organisation embracing this mindset is Emergence Insurance, a specialist cyber insurer that partnered with Jacqui to integrate design-led thinking into its strategy development.
Previously, strategy development was primarily handled by the board, CEO, and senior leaders, often resulting in a fragmented understanding and limited engagement across the broader team. To shift this, the team adopted a collaborative, design-led approach that brought team members in as co-authors and custodians of the strategy. This came to life through a two-day strategic conversation.
“The CEO and the Chair were in with the teams – listening, not solving,” recalls Jacqui Jordan, whose expertise complements directors’ skills by fostering curiosity, diverse perspectives, and design-led decision-making. Teams used hand-drawn templates by visual designer Ben Crothers from Bright Pilots that were deliberately rough and open-ended to invite input and spark meaningful discussion.
“They knew what they wanted, but our job was to get the whole company involved in mapping out how to make it happen.” By day’s end, strategy was evolving towards a living story that would be captured in a single-page visual to create shared language, energy, and ownership across the organisation. Taking a design-led approach ensured a collaborative and inclusive process, refined through continuous iteration, said Troy Filipcevic, CEO of Emergence. “This approach not only shaped the strategy itself but also fostered a sense of ownership across the team, making it a shared vision rather than a top-down one.”
“The board is empowered to ask different questions and explore multiple solutions. By embracing experimentation and collaboration, the board can be more effective in enabling better decision making”, he said.
This shift illustrates how design-led governance moves beyond process and compliance to foster empathy, shared understanding, and agility at board level. “The correlation Troy draws between experimentation, collaboration and effective decision-making at board level is powerful,” Jacqui added. Jacqui designs activities that capture a breadth and depth of insights, creating ways for new depths of understanding and empathy.
“Jeanne Liedtka, one of my greatest design mentors, taught me to leave space for people to immerse themselves in strategy as authors, not editors. That insight has become central to my practice,” she says. “It’s also essential to introduce ways to challenge assumptions, experiment and learn. These methods can all be incorporated in ways that feel structured and methodical.”
Defining Success: How Design-Led Governance Improves Decision-Making.
What is the real advantage for a board? “The aim is decisions that do more than process information—they transform it into enhanced capability and measurable impact for customers and shareholders,” Jacqui explains. “It’s not about adding more to already overburdened directors. Many board members already have the systems thinking, synthesis, and multi-perspective skills that design demands – they just need opportunities to apply them differently.” Boards can enhance their effectiveness by providing opportunities to surface ideas in advance, using design frameworks to structure time in the room, incorporating visual artefacts and leveraging AI.
The Australian Design Council recommends that boards begin with small, achievable steps:
– Use strategy sessions as design experiments
– Refresh board materials with visual formats to spark new thinking
– Bring in design experts as board members, facilitators or advisers
– Complete a design-led governance review to explore potential opportunities
Of course, it’s not always easy to embed a new way of thinking. The main challenges?
Time, capability, and culture. “Time is the biggest one,” says Jacqui. “Then the capability gap. One suggestion is to bring a designer onto your board, even if just for six or twelve months. Ideally, it would be permanent,” Jacqui suggests. “You can only go as far as your design advocates will take you. Once you’re working at the board level or CEO level, if they’re not advocates of design, it can be a real challenge to get support for the methodology. Whereas if you’ve got a board and the CEO who are already advocates of design, the implications for the organisation are massive. The Emergence case study demonstrates that.”
A design thinking mindset also shifts boards away from seeking the first definitive answer and toward uncovering the next best answer, challenging assumptions and opening new possibilities. Design-led governance creates room for that next right answer – encouraging deeper thinking, broader input, and sharper judgement.
Ready to Unlock the Power of Design-Led Governance?
“Businesses operate in complex, regulated environments – it’s no longer enough to rely on traditional models,” said Jacqui Jordan. “Many successful organisations have already adopted a design-led governance model, in some form.” She emphasised that the future of design-led governance hinges on four key shifts:
– Embedding design capability as a core business skill
– Strengthening adaptive capacity through design-led approaches to build resilience
– Shifting directors to active collaborators, not passive overseers
– Creating meaningful metrics to track design-led governance success
“If your business understands different complexity frameworks, recognises the type of problem it’s solving, and has adaptive leadership embedded, it’s in a far better position to respond and evolve. Adding design capability as part of your board skills matrix will greatly assist in making this transition for your board,” she added.
Building Design Capability at Board Level
The Australian Design Council champions the power of design capability to deliver meaningful impact that fuels economic growth, strengthens communities, and shapes a more sustainable and prosperous Australia. Our mission is to embed Australia’s world-class design capability into every facet of business, government, and society – transforming organisations, products, services, environments, policies, and systems for lasting impact. Design impact grows when capability is fully integrated – starting with design-led governance and the board. While some organisations benefit from design, many fall short due to lack of design culture.
Boards don’t need to start big; they just need to start. Ask different questions, invite diverse perspectives, and make space for the next best answer. An independent assessment of your design-led governance adoption could be the catalyst to amplify your impact. The process includes interviews with board members and key stakeholders, followed by a facilitated workshop exploring how design methods apply across six core board competencies. This intersection approach positions design thinking as an integrated enhancement to governance.
The aim is to balance assessment with practical application, giving boards insight into their design-led maturity and a clear roadmap for phased adoption. The future of governance won’t be shaped by more process, but by curiosity and collaboration, with design-led governance playing a critical role in this shift.
Discover how design-led governance can transform your board’s impact. Contact the Australian Design Council today to undertake a design-led governance review of your organisation and board processes.
Main Image: JCDecaux Australian Office, 2024 Australian Good Design Award, Interior Design. Designed by M Moser Associates and Commissioned by JCDecaux.
