The Chief How Officer

If there’s one thing I want my clients, network and people to learn this year: don’t leave anything your company creates to chance. Want to stay relevant? Get a Chief How Officer!

As I wrote in my book „The Right How“: Design is How – Design is How – how something is executed in terms of every aspect that can be executed in different ways. And there are countless ways to execute (design) anything – any product, service or touchpoint.

The question is: are you executing your products, services and touchpoints in the most beneficial way? Is the design of your solutions getting you to a place where you want your business to be? Business leaders and managers need to ensure that everything their company creates is executed in a way that supports its long-term success.

Therefore your company’s output can’t be a loose collection of individual components. They all have to tell the same story.
How you executed your solutions must make you „the one“ for your customers.

Ultimately, the only reason to design anything is to maximise its value.
Without someone or something actively aligning all How aspects of your solutions, you’ll struggle to maximize your company’s value and stand out.

So, get a „How strategist“ and put him/her into your leadership team. Appoint a person to critically analyse all the How aspects of your solutions and manage people’s performance accordingly.

At least create a guiding How strategy (a distinct design strategy for your products, services and touchpoints).

The choice is simple: design by default (creating an interchangeable How) or design by choice (creating a distinctive How).

Which will you choose?

I wish everybody a happy 2025.
Best,

Stefan