Maria Giudice

Executive leadership coach and founder of Hot Studio, Maria Giudice is the co-author of 'Changemakers: How Leaders Can Design Change in an Insanely Complex World' and 'Rise of the DEO: Leadership by Design'. She coaches and trains executives and their teams in business and design leadership.

She is the founder and former CEO of the experience design firm Hot Studio, which was acquired by Facebook in 2013. There, and later at Autodesk, she led global design teams that created human-centred experiences for millions of people around the world.

Maria Giudice

About the talk

Becoming a change maker by leading with design

- Barbican Centre

Design leaders have evolved from being responsible for executing design concepts to having a crucial role in driving change across organisations. This is welcome progress, but with greater responsibility comes new challenges, especially when it comes to championing change in organisations likely to resist it.

As design-driven change makers have risen in the ranks of business, they’ve “learned on the job,” experiencing both setbacks and victories. We captured many of these learnings by interviewing over 40 design leaders and incorporating their shared wisdom in our book, Changemakers: How Leaders Can Design Change in an Insanely Complex World. Whether these leaders worked at IBM and Google, a US government agency, or a small consulting firm, their insights and observations are applicable to all and well-worth considering.

This presentation will offer an overview of what we learned. It will cover the top mistakes change makers make as they navigate the messy processes and people issues involved in driving any type of change. You'll learn how to determine the ground conditions needed for success, how to find and align supporters, how to minimise detractors, and how to repurpose design tools, frameworks, and techniques to your advantage.

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