#61 Ok, so I'm no longer a designer now, am I...?

A few weeks ago I sat down with LinkedIn. My own page. I clicked the edit icon. The old headline contained designer. The new one, board chair. Thirty years of being a designer, a genuine part of my identity, and I was about to delete the word.

I've been a designer since 1994, when I started freelancing, building websites, and the occasional internal system for a corporation. Throughout MDA Konsult, Infomedia, Linnédata, Cell Network, Acando, inUse, and Ambition, I've always thought of myself as a designer first. Someone who analyzes the situation: the business, the customers/users, the (often technological) possibilities, and then iteratively helps shape a solution that creates value for everyone involved.

In April, I stood in front of the whole company at Ambition and told them I was stepping down as CEO. Admittedly, there has not been a lot of hands-on design work on my agenda over the last couple of years, but in my role I got to experience the feeling through my colleagues.

Over the last couple of years, I've added board roles to my work: Touchtech, Vizcon, and the Halland division of the Swedish Academy of Board Directors. And since leaving my role as CEO, apart from formalizing the board work at Ambition, I've added another board chairmanship. The construction company Nära hem AB. 

Different companies, different problems, and I'm still learning how different chairing a company actually is from running one. Unless something unexpected comes up, this is likely my main occupation going forward.

So, what should I write as a headline on LinkedIn? I'm no longer a designer now, am I...?

Herbert Simon won a Nobel Prize in economics, and in his book The Sciences of the Artificial (1969), which helped found design as a field of study, he said design is about devising a way from the situation you have to the one you'd rather have. Charles and Ray Eames used to say design is a plan for arranging elements to accomplish a particular purpose. 

And that's the actual task in front of me. To redesign the story. The value I'm offering hasn't changed, just the proposition, and who needs to understand it.

Owners and nominating committees are rarely looking for designers (even though I think they should). Instead, areas like digitalization/AI, growth, and internationalization come up a lot. So a headline that signals "designer" doesn't match what people are looking for, and it's not the kind of concrete signal that builds trust before you've even met.

The closest a headline gets to vouching is proof. Numbers, or names a stranger can easily check. 

inUse went from zero to a hundred-plus people, and we sold it in 2017. Ambition is the company I still co-own and chair. Helping organizations find what actually drives growth is what I've always done as a designer, just put in the words an owner understands.

So I ended up with "Co-founder turned board chair | inUse (0→100+, sold 2017) & Ambition Group | Helping orgs find what actually drives growth."

A bit cringe perhaps. But then again, mock us, we are moving, you stand still… This is simply the design I, at the moment, think has the highest possibility of returning the desired results.

So, yes. Actually. I guess I'm still a designer. Just not by title.

NB. I'm not looking for another board assignment right now. I might have time come May, but even then, it'd have to be something really, really interesting.