CHRIS JACKSON - STRATEGIC DESIGN LEADERSHIP
Your team isn’t underperforming.
It's operating without a clear, shared strategy for how it creates impact. That gap shows up as friction, invisible work, and constant reprioritisation.
I help design leaders to build that strategy, starting with a workshop and going as deep as your team needs.
THE PROBLEM
Most design team challenges aren’t visible as problems. They show up as patterns.
Misalignment, overload, and inconsistent visibility of design’s impact.
Your team is capable, but the organisation doesn’t always see that capability clearly. Work is delivered, but strategic space is limited. And responsibility sits with you, even when the causes are systemic.
The daily reality of that can feel different depending on the day.
Your best designer just resigned, you saw it coming but felt helpless
You’re in another priority meeting where design is the last to know about change
You’re being asked what design has delivered this quarter and the honest answer is hard to say out loud
These events don’t resolve themselves because they sit in the space between strategy, delivery, and organisational decision-making.
And they persist until the team has a shared, explicit strategy for closing the gap.
THE DESIGN TEAM STRATEGY
A structured way to build clarity on how your design team creates impact, and a shared strategy for improving it.
It starts with a workshop. For teams that need to go deeper, it extends into advisory work grounded in your team's real operating context.
Major NZ bank · Strategy Realignment
Culture reset and redirection for a design team of 40
Reframed how a 40-person design function aligned on priorities, reducing internal friction and clarifying strategic direction across leadership layers.
Regional Council · Capability Building
Building a service design team from the ground up
Built a service design capability from inception to organisation-wide delivery maturity over three years.
ABOUT ME
I work at the intersection of design, strategy, and organisational change.
Over the past 20+ years, I’ve worked with organisations across government, financial services, energy, and technology.
I’ve won 23 design awards, spoken internationally, and created the Futures of Design 2045 Scenarios, downloaded by more than 500 designers, leaders and educators.
I help design leaders build clarity and strategy around how their teams create impact—through workshops, capability building, and advisory work.
LET’S CONNECT
Ready to build strategy for your team?
If you want a low-commitment, high-impact way to start, the Design Team Health Check is a great way to start. You fill out a diagnostic about your team, we unpack the results together in a one-on-one workshop and prioritise one thing to act on immediately.
If you're further along and want to talk about a deeper strategy engagement, the first step is usually a short conversation about what's actually happening in your team.
Four futures for design and what they mean for how teams like yours will need to operate.
A scenario set designed to help design leaders think about how their teams may need to evolve over the next two decades.
It helps you step back from delivery, surface assumptions, and think more clearly about how your team, role, and systems may need to evolve.
Field Notes on Design and Strategy
A fortnightly digital postcard on how design really shows up inside organisations, and what shapes its success.
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