It’s easy to dismiss design as surface aesthetics. A nice-to-have, applied after the real work is done. A bit of style, a splash of colour, a polished slide deck for investors. But in the hands of the most effective CEOs, design is anything but ornamental.
The best leaders understand that design is a strategic advantage.
Take Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, who trained as an industrial designer. His experience was shaped in design studios, not business schools, and that lens changed the company’s trajectory. In Airbnb’s early years, listings were underwhelming. Users weren’t booking. Instead of throwing money at advertising or sales, Chesky and his co-founders flew to New York, rented a camera and reshot the listings themselves. People needed to see a place before they could imagine themselves in it. That small act of design-minded empathy helped transform Airbnb from a quirky startup into a global brand.
Chesky isn’t an outlier. Human-centred thinking is increasingly at the core of high-performing organisations. It’s about clarity in complexity, consistency at scale and, above all, showing customers, employees and stakeholders that their experience matters.
Design as strategy
Bracken Darrell’s turnaround of Logitech is also worth noting. When he became CEO, Logitech was a commodity brand: reliable but uninspired. Darrell, who had worked with P&G and Whirlpool, placed a deliberate bet on design. He brought in Alastair Curtis as Chief Design Officer, shifted focus from efficiency to desirability and gave designers real authority.
As a result, product lines became more distinctive, more emotionally resonant and better aligned with how people actually work and live. Wireless mice that looked considered. Conference cameras designed for hybrid work. Between 2013 and 2021, Logitech’s market cap rose from $2 billion to over $17 billion.
What the numbers say
A study by the Design Management Institute found that over a ten-year period, design-led companies outperformed the S&P 500 by 228%. McKinsey’s “Business Value of Design” report tracked 300 publicly listed companies and found that those that were more design-focused, achieved 32% more revenue and 56% higher total returns to shareholders than their less design-focused peers .
These studies found a clear correlation between design actions and financial performance. Top performing companies embedded design thinking into how they launched products, served customers and made decisions.
When IBM rolled out its design transformation under Phil Gilbert, the goal was to shift the culture. Design became everyone’s responsibility. Engineers were trained in design thinking. Cross-functional teams used journey mapping and prototyping to simplify internal tools and customer interfaces. One example outcome was the 75% reduction in design defects, saving IBM time and money whilst also improving employee satisfaction scores.
Culture first, tools later
The CEOs who get design right tend to think about culture before craft. Yes, they invest in design and design tooling, but just as importantly, they change how their organisations think about business challenges.
At Intuit, former CEO Brad Smith introduced the “Design for Delight” principle across the company. The aim was to work delightfully: empathy with users, rapid experimentation and empowerment to solve real problems. The shift rippled through every part of the business, from finance to HR. Intuit became a design-led company and its products reflected that.
This is in sharp contrast to organisations that bolt design on at the end. They might commission a rebrand or bring in designers to improve the UI, but the deeper structural questions go untouched. The result is inconsistency, friction and a disconnect between what the brand promises and what it delivers. Design-led companies understand that coherence is competitive.
Design as empathy, not just efficiency
One of the most overlooked truths in business is that how something feels is often as important as what it does. This is where design earns its place.
When a product works intuitively, when a form is easy to complete, when a confirmation email sounds like it was written by a person: these things register. They show that someone thought about the person on the other side. And people notice.
Design is a signal. It tells customers you’re listening. It tells employees you care. It tells investors you have discipline. These signals are embedded in every touchpoint, from packaging to pricing pages.
Too many leaders underestimate this. They focus on features and functions but not on flow. They invest in product design but ignore communication design: the onboarding emails, the internal documents, the presentations that quietly shape perception. Everything communicates. Design determines whether that communication resonates with people.
What great CEOs do differently
They put design at the centre, not the edges. They treat it as a way of working: collaborative, user-focused and iterative. They give design a voice in decision-making, not just execution. They measure its impact, not just its output.
They also understand that design maturity is about creating the conditions for good design to thrive: clear priorities, cross-functional collaboration, space for iteration and leadership that values long-term experience over short-term fixes.
I’ve always believed that design is like a super power or a secret weapon. It is a multiplier: of clarity, of confidence, of connection.
Design isn’t optional anymore
Customers today choose between organisations that often offer similar features, similar pricing and similar models. The reason someone chooses one over another is frequently design. And by that I mean visual design, experience design, service design and communication design. Every part of how a company interacts with the world is an opportunity to stand out or fall short.
Great CEOs understand that when design is done right, everything works better.
