How Target Became a Giant by Embracing Design

Today we’ll see how a retailer transformed into a design powerhouse thanks to a trend manager who convinced its employees to find the feeling in good design.

In the embedded video, I tell the story from “Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard” about how Robyn Waters convinced the merchants at Target to embrace design as a way to make Target stand out in the marketplace. To do this, she didn’t try to reach people by making an analytical case and appealing to the bean-counters with numbers, at least not at first. This would be like trying to motivate the rider instead of the elephant. Instead, she saw that she had to reach people by showing them something, making them feel something, and then the change could occur.

This way of thinking provides us with a strategy to motivate the elephants in our own organizations. When motivation is a challenge, think of ways to visualize the change you are trying to achieve and visualize it in a way that makes it visceral. Make people feel the emotion that is needed to drive them to make the change.

I would love to hear what you thought of the video, so feel free to comment below, on The K Guy Twitter, or on The K Guy Facebook fan page.