It's a wrap! Thanks for an amazing IBM Design Leadership Summit

We just wrapped our IBM Design Leadership Summit 2022. A three day virtual gathering of about 300 design leaders and emerging design leaders from around the globe getting together to sharpen the focus on our strategic intent, level up our practices, and hone our design leadership skills and pipeline. I'd like to thank all who helped make our IBM Design Leadership Summit everything I'd hoped it would be, and much more!

Day 1

Katrina Alcorn, our GM of Design, kicked off the event with an inspiring keynote detailing the organization’s strategic intend of driving pervasive excellence in design through a maniacal focus on customer insights, cross-discipline teaming, and intentional continuous learning. These are the core themes of the next chapter of IBM Design that we’re writing this year. Forrester analyst Andrew Hogan gave an insightful outside in perspective that brought additional clarity and perspective. Design leaders Krystal Webber, Kim Bartkowski, and Jennifer Price introduced some powerful business mindset focused design practices. Scott Robinson facilitated a “let’s get to know each other” virtual session breaking the audience into groups of six given that some of our leaders are new and others don’t work regularly with one another given the size of the company and it’s global footprint. He then led a workshop getting the audience to identify the most personally actionable ideas of the day that they plan to incorporate into their daily practice after the Summit.

Day 2

Ashna Ram introduced the Value Tree, a powerful IBM Garage methodology used in our IBM Consulting practice that we’re now going to incorporate into other parts of the company. Todd Simmons told us about an exciting new IBM Blue Studio that designs how IBM shows up in the world. We then had some exciting lightening talks with Hal Wuertz and Adam Cutler on designing for AI, Kim Bartkowski on intelligent workflows, Armon Burton and Alexander Graves on designing the early hire experience for Black designers, Lucy Baunay and Stephanie Cree on designing for sustainability, and Sarah Brooks on designing alternative futures. We then held drill down breakout groups with our design leaders choosing which topics they wanted to explore in greater detail. We closed the day with a reflection panel of emerging design leaders from all around the world hosted by Apurva Dabhade featured panelists Andrea B., Marion Bruells, Kareem Collie, and Michael Tam.

Day 3

Lauren Swanson and I described my Design Executive Team's work and updates to our Design Principal program. We were joined by Erin Buonomo, Kimberly Cassidy, Seth Johnson, and Kevin Paolozzi discussing our managerial and technical design career paths. We then had a panel of exemplary experienced design leaders Dawn Ahukanna, Ruchi Batra, Herman Colquhoun Jr., Adrian Jones, and Sophia Levens hosted by Renee Albert. We had the attendees provide commitments to incorporate the various key practices that we discussed during the whole Summit into the work of business unit teams with a workshop led by Kim Bartkowski. Katrina Alcorn and I wrapped up the entire Summit with our reflections and thanks.

Co-chairs & Summit Team

I'd like to express my deep appreciation and thanks to my amazing Co-Chairs, Kim Bartkowski, Sadek Bazaraa, Olivia Davis, Ryan Mellody, Oduor, Erick (Eno), Scott Robinson, and Dan Silveira and Summit Team of Renee Albert (who also served as MC), David Vox Avila, Gord Davison, and producer Lauren Swanson. This team was an absolute delight to work with in planning the Summit and the delivery of it. The co-chairs did structured interviews with a sample of our design leaders and that listening combined with my strategic imperatives informed the themes for the Summit. We collaborated with our Design Executive Team to select some of the speakers for particular topics, the co-chairs and my report Summit Team together designed the flow and format of the Summit, and the entire team shared various responsibilities in the delivery of the event. The latter included designing the branding (Ryan), creating the internal website (Dan), building the Mural boards (Gord and Eno), operating the video conference platform and controlling the virtual stage (Gord), sharing the interstitial charts (Eno), crafting and posting comms and links (Scott and Ryan), recording and editing videos of the sessions (David), serving as the awesome and personable MC through the entire event (Renee), and helping me daily with the big picture issues and sweating the smallest yet incredibly important details, overall producing of the Summit (Lauren).

______

Lastly, I’d like to thank the amazing design leadership community we have at IBM for your enthusiastic engagement, insightful questions and comments, and for having identified actions you’ll all take to incorporate what you’ve learned into your daily practice individually and as a group.

Let’s make a dent in the universe of IBM this year inspired by our Design Leadership Summit 2022!