When I introduce myself to clients, I’ll sometimes talk about my “zigzagging career path” through various design disciplines.

The coolest zag was through strategic design. That was a time when I ran around solving “undiagnosed design problems”. Many problems that appeared to be intractable political, management or process problems became far more tractable when approached as design problems.

This has me reflecting:

My most rewarding projects have always been those where we took a design approach to solve a problem that seemed outside the domain of design.

My least rewarding projects have been those where we were prevented from taking a design approach to solve what everyone knows is a design problem.