The thing about business is it's all made up–just like design.
In the 1990s, Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton proposed four standard categories for which business leaders could align goals and assess the health of their companies. They wrote about them in their 1996 book, "The Balanced Scorecard." Those four categories are:
- Financial
- Customer
- Internal Business Processes
- Learning & Growth
Referred to as "perspectives", these categories provided executives a framework to show the cause-and-effect relationship between goals, and help visualize how training an employee helps improve productivity, which creates more customer value, and in turn generates money.
In terms of prioritization, the framework represents that all activities, actions, and goals are in service to financial returns, that the way to do business is to prioritize financial returns over everything else. This framework has been adopted by thousands of companies around the world since it's introduction.
It's a successful framework and model–and it's completely made up. There's nothing written in stone that prevents anyone from adding, removing, or rearranging these categories. Yet, I've never personally seen or experienced it until
The second best (and most difficult) part about running a tiny company like Chief Design Officer School is that I get to remake these rules. I get to chose categories that are more important than financial returns, and put those on the top.
Equity, Sustainability, and Dad-ability are categories I've chosen to be more important than making money, which means I do everything within my capacity to make money only if it's through equitable, sustainable, dad-able mechanisms. I've not always lived up to these ideals, but they've helped me in more ways than I could count.
Does that mean it's harder for me to make money? You betcha! Does that mean that designing solutions requires more time and energy? Yep! Does that mean it's more meaningful when I'm able to make money in a way that lives up to these ideals? Indeed it does!The best part of running this tiny company is seeing the next generation of design execs remake their own rules about design, business, and leadership–and they totally work.
All business rules are made up–just like design. Remaking the rules opens the gates to new possibilities.
