Last week, a fellow IDEO alumnus published a damning article about IDEO on Medium. It was a difficult piece to read and process for many reasons. It was distressing to read about his — and his depictions of other’s — personal experiences of workplace harassment and bullying. I did, though, feel that some of the statements about the company and its practices were misleading. And yet, they did force me to reflect on my own experience as IDEO’s first partner of color. This is something I hadn’t fully grappled with personally, because there is some personal pain, and shame, that I associate with my journey to partnership at IDEO. But that pain was also coupled with joy, growth, and support. Since many have shared their stories, I feel compelled to share mine too.
My IDEO Story
I joined IDEO in 2001 and left in 2018. During my 17 years there, I directly experienced instances of bias and harassment, so the stories shared in the article were not revelatory, but still extremely upsetting. The most stressful years of my career at IDEO were the years before I became a partner. At the time, the path to partner was neither equitable nor transparent in my view. After my first unsuccessful attempt to become a partner, I was given very subjective feedback that was based on the whims of a few outspoken partners in the room. At the same time, I also experienced an outpouring of support from a team of IDEO partners who invested their time and energy in helping me get through the process the next year. If I had known the correct words back then, I would have called them “allies.” But this was 2011 so I called them friends, mentors and “people in my corner.” In 2012, I became an IDEO partner, and the first person of color to join the IDEO partnership.
I realize I may have survivorship bias and tend towards an overly optimistic viewpoint. But I am clear-eyed about IDEO’s failings during my tenure there. Over the 17 years at IDEO, I found leadership positions were largely dominated by white males and there was a glaring lack of representation of women and people of color. However, the IDEO of 2008 was very different from the one I left in 2018. One has to remember that so many companies were ill-equipped to deal with diversity and inclusion in the workplace, even as recently as a few years ago. When I took on my first management position to lead a studio in 2007, for example, I personally wasn’t trained with the language or tools to address the critical issues around racial equity that are top-of-mind for every leader today. Today, we have rightfully high expectations of what constitutes an inclusive, healthy workplace culture and environment. However, categorically deeming IDEO to be an unsafe workplace for women, people of color, and women of color, feels unfair and in stark contrast to the place I left in 2018.
Behind the Scenes
In the article, “leadership” is bundled up into one big, faceless, white male mass — a monolithic group that deliberately perpetuates an unsafe environment for the rest of IDEO, refusing to change despite damning diversity report cards on their desks. But during my time there, I personally witnessed evidence of IDEO’s commitment to inclusion and a human-centered approach to taking care of its people. After becoming a partner in 2012, I joined the partner committee in charge of the new partner pipeline and the nomination process. After my own dismal experience, I wanted to get a behind-the-scenes look at the new partner initiation process and see if I could make some contribution to improving it. The committee was run by a senior partner and he designed it to be gender-balanced, even when the rest of the partnership wasn’t. Witnessing this individual’s thoughtful, measured approach to these conversations was a masterclass in leadership. Although the execution of new tools or approaches developed may have been clumsy at times, I took part in a process that felt deeply human-centered and values-driven.
Under the partner’s leadership of this committee, and other partners stepping up to support and sponsor candidates, the partnership grew to be more diverse: from 26% women and people of color when I first joined, to 43% when I left. The make-up of the partnership had a long way to go to being fully representative, but I was still proud to have contributed — in some small way — to the progress made. The takeaway here: allies exist at IDEO, at the senior-most levels. I can personally attest to this.
The Work I Chose
Another point made in the article is about lack of empowerment and employee voice when it comes to IDEO’s client roster. What the article neglected to mention, though, are the countless clients and projects that IDEO chose not to take on. I can recall dozens of these cases. Like any design consultancy, IDEO has financial goals it has to meet. Large, multinational companies will inevitably make up a large portion of IDEO’s revenue, while projects that promote social good will make up a lesser portion of the revenue. That doesn’t mean that IDEO is, as the article suggests, “hiding the remaining portfolio behind the secrecy of a non-disclosure agreement.” The level of active deception suggested here is simply untrue and doesn’t accord with my own experiences. For instance, one of my most rewarding projects was with McDonald’s early in my career. I didn’t work on the project to promote global obesity; I chose to work on the project because I would be working with one of McDonald’s internal teams who were intent on helping this hugely influential company become more human-centered. This, to me, felt like a worthy pursuit. Other individuals who had a personal/moral/ethical conflict were given the opportunity to work on other equally prominent projects.
Later in my career, I was fortunate enough to make the final call on what clients or projects my studio would take on when there was no clear consensus. Most of the time I didn’t have to make that decision, because the group did, but when I did it was only after team-wide discussions where every voice was considered. If there was a team of people excited to take on the work and they were capable of owning and driving the project, they were given the autonomy to do just that. And that’s the part of the IDEO experience that isn’t well captured in the article — there is an enormous amount of autonomy and independence afforded to individuals. This stems from the belief that creative people do their best work when they are passionate about the work they’re doing; that creative work requires more than going through the motions and delivering a final output.
The Big Little Book
There are other beliefs that were unspoken until the “Little Book of IDEO” was created. Snippets from this book are used to contrast IDEO’s own words with alumni’s stories in a way that demonstrates either IDEO’s hypocrisy or beliefs taken to a harmful extreme. For background, the “Little Book of IDEO’’ was created after the death of IDEO co-founder Bill Moggridge in 2012. For many IDEOers who knew Bill, his impact was immeasurable. Many people will credit Bill or his seminal book Designing Interactions for why they chose to be a designer. I distinctly remember before I became a partner, I was invited to give a presentation about some recent work at a partner meeting. I was the only woman of color in the room, but I powered through the presentation despite feeling very much like an outsider.
After the presentation, Bill made a point to come up to me and tell me I was a great storyteller and we had a conversation about the work. He clearly saw that I felt out of place, and wanted to put me at ease and help me feel like I belonged. When Bill passed away, many IDEO leaders felt the loss of not only an amazing designer and educator, but also someone who often played the role of a moral compass for IDEO. With the loss of Bill, partners felt the urgent, important need to capture his vision for what made IDEO’s culture special, before further loss and time had the chance to erode it. Thus, the “Little Book of IDEO’’ was born.
In this way, this book is precious to me. The “Little Book of IDEO” is, on one level, an embodiment of someone I deeply admired, who showed me kindness and grace at a moment when I felt vulnerable and out of place. But at the same time, it also represents one of IDEO’s biggest failures, especially in light of how it was used in the article, as a weapon against itself. IDEO is far from perfect, as demonstrated by personal accounts and stories surfacing in the last week. And yet, the “Little Book of IDEO” states values and beliefs as real and present, rather than aspirational.
“Over the years, the book has been roundly embraced by the IDEO community as an honest articulation of who we are, as opposed to what we aspire to be, and what we appreciate most about working together.”
I believe this book is an honest articulation of who IDEO wants to be, but it’s harmful to assert that this is a direct reflection of where IDEO is today. The gap between the real, lived experience of employees and what’s beautifully captured in this book is evident. And this gap can lead to disillusionment and disappointment, as evidenced by the stories shared in the Medium article.
On the other hand, I can confidently say that, in my time at IDEO, I witnessed countless examples of individuals doing everything in their power to achieve this “ideal” that can never truly be realized since we don’t live in a utopia. The “IDEO” that is epitomized in idolizing articles (e.g., HBR’s “The Helping Culture”) still felt very real to me because it was what I tried to achieve every day, as best as I could, but often failed to do along the way. I witnessed one of IDEO’s senior-most partners consistently make critical decisions that were better for IDEO’s people, even if they weren’t better for IDEO’s bottom line. Because he believed that inspired designers create amazing work that, in turn, creates happy clients and, ultimately, drives business growth and revenue. His actions demonstrated this order of operations consistently, and rarely in the reverse.
To IDEOers
Much like the author of the other article, I’m writing this letter to the current employees at IDEO. Personal stories of harassment or bias in the workplace need to be heard. However, the existence of stories of negative experiences at IDEO do not invalidate the innumerable positive experiences at IDEO. All stories deserve to be recognized and validated. The truth is that there are not many channels or outlets for the positive stories, and I can imagine that if you were working at IDEO today, that imbalance would be deeply felt.
All companies are flawed, and IDEO is no exception. No company that has existed for 20+ years would be unimpeachable by today’s standards. However, my belief is that IDEO is a unique culture and work environment in that it has the highest ideals, and therefore is at risk of falling the hardest.
But the existence of those ideals — and IDEOers’ everyday experiences practicing the behaviors and interactions on the collective journey to attain them — is invaluable in the growth and development of optimistic, excellent designers, researchers and creative practitioners.
One of the biggest benefits I’ve gleaned from my time at IDEO is the ability to imagine the impossible and, despite all of the known and unknown obstacles, attempt the journey to achieve it. And do it again and again. I’m grateful to IDEO, and its founders, for creating the conditions of design training where I’ve learned so much, and whose lessons I’ve taken forward with me. And as an important aside, the article in Medium suggests that one of IDEO’s founders was responsible for the formation of a certain company by one of his students, and uses this as a way to prove a point around IDEO’s “moral ambiguity.” Since professors don’t dictate the topics of student theses, I don’t see any substance behind the author’s claims. I’d expect a high integrity professor to provide mentorship and support to any student who asks for it.
The founders of IDEO imagined a place where “friends get to work with their friends.” Although the spirit of that idea continues to resonate with me, insofar as I do my best work when collaborating with people I care about deeply and connect with at a human level, this founding “myth” can be misinterpreted and sound out of touch. Won’t “friends working with friends” be the antithesis of achieving diversity? In the wake of a national, and global, reckoning with racial justice, IDEO needs to contend with this and other stories, values, and beliefs. What I saw in IDEO’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion is an honest start to that journey — an acknowledgement of gaps and a sincere promise to do better.
Although I anticipate IDEO will stumble along the way towards achieving those commitments, I also believe that only a company like IDEO, with all of its mythology and mistakes, can dream big enough and try hard enough to make a difference that will reverberate into other companies and the broader design industry. And I will be rooting for IDEO’s success, and their new CEO, every step of the way because I believe that the imperfect pursuit of perfection is better than no pursuit at all.
