Ben Holliday

The art of design leadership

Manipulating time and space - The Second Doctor

Manipulating space and time – The Second Doctor

“Design leaders are still designers, but they design different things. Teams, processes, and culture” – Kim Goodwin, Leading Design conference, London (2016)

Design leadership is making sure that other people have as much space and time to do their best possible work.

Therefore, we spend most of our time trying to manipulate space and time. Creativity only happens if you make the time and space for it to happen.

So, in my mind, I’m slowly building a time machine. I’m trying to bring a little bit of the future into where we find ourselves right now. It’s a methodology of tools and tricks. Stories and questions that give other people the possibility to do their thing, and do it well.

There are no shortcuts to building a time machine. Its risky, prone to failure, and you don’t quite know where you’ll end up. But the adventure is your greatest opportunity. People will follow as long as you’re doing something interesting, no matter how ambitious of misguided that might look to the rest of us.

It’s really a simple step forwards. Design leaders are still designers, but they’re ambitious enough to believe that everything else can be designed. And then what’s possible?

This is my blog where I’ve been writing for 18 years. You can follow all of my posts by subscribing to this RSS feed. You can also find me on Bluesky, less frequently now on X (formally Twitter), and on LinkedIn.