015 : Fostering Organizational Resilience Amid a Crisis with Bennie Johnson
Bennie Johnson shares his thoughts on his exciting new position as Executive Director at AIGA Design, a role he took on in January 2020. He talks about how his new position has been a long time coming: An entrepreneur and designer at heart, he started his first candy distribution business in the fourth grade and, before he could even articulate his ambitions, he found himself drawn to tasks and responsibilities that involve heavy amounts of creativity, teaching others, and building a community. In other words, Bennie never had a master plan for his professional life. Rather, it was an innate love for design and a spirit of entrepreneurship that led him down the path he walks today, as the leader of the “professional association of design ”.
Bennie approaches his new role through the lens of iterative growth: “How do we strengthen the organization and community for tomorrow? How do we leave the organization better than we found it? How do we come in and build the right set of resources; amplify the work we’re doing; promote, celebrate, empower our members; expand our network and showcase the impact of design on other industries? Finally, how do we channel all of that to make a positive impact on the world?”
Listen in and learn how Bennie, almost 100 days into his new role, is working to inspire resilience in the midst of a rapidly changing world, driven by an unforeseen crisis, in 2020. Stay tuned.s an essential role to team performance and improved customer relationships.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- An introduction to AIGA and its vision-mission
- How did Bennie’s role as AIGA’s Executive Director shift when the WHO declared a global pandemic?
- Why Bennie began an ongoing “listening campaign” to overcome challenges brought up by this crisis
- Why Bennie refers to the AIGA as a “community in practice”
- How rest and reflection can contribute to organizational success
- Changes that Bennie is looking to implement, as part of his iterative growth plan, in AIGA
- Bennie’s perspective on “the culture of design and the design of culture”
- How HR complements design
Resources Mentioned in this episode:
About the Guest:
Bennie Johnson is the Executive Director at AIGA Design. Having taken the role in January 2020, Bennie quickly found himself having to rise to the unforeseen challenge of leading an organization during a time of isolation. Bennie stays unfazed and determined to carry out his responsibilities during these trying times. He attributes this confidence to his lifelong proclivity for entrepreneurship, nurturing relationships, and inspiring teams and communities of all sorts.
He graduated with a Master of Science in Strategic Communications at Columbia University in the City of New York. Since 1999, Bennie assumed various leadership roles in the arenas of business and marketing.
Sponsor for this episode:
This episode is brought to you by the Culture Design Studio, a consulting firm that helps people and cultural leaders who feel constrained in their ability to engage their employees to become champions for their people through a series of facilitated workshops. They provide a practical and collaborative process to transform the culture within your creative organization.
Culture Design Studio has worked with organizations like Duarte Design, Design Thinkers Group, Red Bull, USAID, Bacardi, and the Office of Civic Innovation
If you’re looking for more than just a consultant and want someone who can facilitate your organization through a structured conversation to transform your culture, Culture Design Studio is the one for you.
Contact them today to learn more about what they can do for you and your company.
Full Transcript: Powered by Otter.ai
Announcer
Welcome to the Culture Design Show where we feature conversations with leaders and thinkers who are passionate about culture and design. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Steve Chaparro
Steve Chaparro, here. I am the host of the Culture Design Show, a podcast where I feature leaders and thinkers at some of the top creative firms in the world, including architecture, design, technology, and marketing. What’s the one thing they all have in common, they all believe in the power of culture, and design.
This podcast is brought to you by Culture Design Studio. We help people in culture leaders who feel constrained in their ability to engage their employees to become champions for their people. Through a series of facilitated workshops, we provide a practical and collaborative process to transform the culture within your creative organization. We’ve worked with organizations like Duarte Design, DesignThinkers Group, Red Bull, US AID, Bacardi and the Office of Civic Innovation. So, if you’re looking for more than just a consultant, but someone who can facilitate your organization through a structured conversation to transform your culture, reach out to us at culturedesignstudio.com.
On January 14, 2020, AIGA, the professional association for design, announced that our next guest, Bennie Johnson, was to assume the role of executive director for the organization. He came to the role from the Council of Better Business Bureaus, where he led strategy and marketing for the $250 million organization as Chief Strategy Officer at the BBB. Johnson managed partnerships with Google YP.com, Federal Trade Commission, Coca Cola, Verizon, and p&g, all working with the strategic marketing and a portfolio of self regulatory programs strategy brand customer acquisition, marketing and market research and insights. Benny, first things first, welcome to the Culture Design Show.
Bennie Johnson
Thank you for having me. It’s good to see you, Steve.
Steve Chaparro
Well, it’s great to have you. It’s an honor for me. And I feel as a member of AIGA myself, I feel like in some ways that this conversation is an introduction of you to the design community. I know there’s been a lot of communication that has gone out from you, as well as AIGA to the membership. But I’d love to offer them an opportunity to learn a little bit more about your story. So, thank you for coming on.
Bennie Johnson
I’m delighted. It’s really a pleasure to be here. And I’m excited to have some time to talk with you and kind of share a bit about where we are today with AIGA. And, as you said, really kind of share a bit about my background and why I’m excited about being the new leader.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah. So, with that, I’d love to hear what can you share with us a little bit of what we might call your origin story or your professional journey that that you embarked on that led you to AIGA.
Bennie Johnson
You know, it’s really interesting. I think that it would be nice to say that there was a plan to the story that leaves me. But looking back from this moment, it’s really not an overstatement to say every professional and personal and volunteer leadership experience I’ve had is really kind of prepared me for this role at this time.
And thinking about the origin story that we laugh about and, and toolkit, I grew up as a kid who always enjoyed design, I always enjoyed problem solving, and finding creative solutions to challenges both visually and structurally. So, before I could even think of the words to describe design or design thinking, I was really drawn to business and entrepreneurship and solving problems. So, my mom likes to tell the story that I started my first business when I was in fourth grade, and I decided that I should sell candy on the back of my school bus trip. And as a little fourth grader, I was coming up with straight Energy and marketing and building my own design my own fliers to build this program. And I love to kind of think back to that story because so much that are the things that I still get excited about today. Yeah, and of seeing opportunity, building community building relationships. It was fun. In those days, you could sell hard candy to a group of kids as a kid, and it was perfectly fine. Right? Let us know the time in which we were living. But it was really a way in which I saw the power of design and business and creativity.
That kind of led me to a career that’s always been working in marketing and brand. And helping organizations either bring new ideas to life or rebuild. And so that energy of innovation and recreation has always been a part of my my space, whether it was in technology companies and startups, I’ve done digital education and online learning. In today’s world. It’s fun to think about the pioneering work we did online learning 15 years ago and see the impact that it has in this moment. The work that I’ve done in professional associations, whether HR privacy, and then most recently, with looking to build better businesses for tomorrow with the Better Business Bureau, all of those moments kind of add together for my role here at AIGA.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, I love it. And I think that’s a common through line for a lot of the folks that I had the opportunity to chat with on the podcast, about their careers and the fact that it’s a journey, that we didn’t necessarily have this master plan or vision about what we were going to do in life. But there was a general sense of curiosity, or in our case, maybe entrepreneurship and design. That was the through line that led us to each individual professional choice that we’ve made. And I love to know the idea of the entrepreneur is that like the quintessential expression as a as a child of selling candy or something in our school time.
Bennie Johnson
It’s so much that we laugh about it, but it’s so much a part of who I was. I didn’t have the language to say entrepreneurship or strategy. I saw that there was an opportunity. And I understood with fourth grade math that if you put something in bulk, you could sell it and provide a value. You know, I knew that if I build relationships that I’d have the best can sell in that conversation.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah.
Bennie Johnson
And that transitions into kind of all the work you do you talk about kind of throughputs entrepreneurs are often tasked and are driven, to solve to make something better, to make it faster to make it more efficient, to bring kind of ideas to life. And so that’s kind of the the challenge and spirit of an entrepreneur. And I’ve been fortunate to be able to apply that to startup environments, but also into organizations that may have been around for 50 years, 70 years, or in our case, 100 years. And how do you provide that type of thinking, taking what’s valuable and dynamic and the legacy and crafting it to what’s new, so that it can be a filter into what happens tomorrow? Right? And and thinking about that with that lens has been something that’s been a hallmark of my career and journey. And each of the choices have been kind of exciting opportunities to build something new or rebuild.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, I love that into the fact that you said the AIGA has this legacy of 100-year-old organization. And as we were talking the other day, we understand that it started, I think, in 1914, or something around there. So, it has a very long legacy. But for those folks that are listening or watching, and do not have an understanding or exposure to AIGA if you can share a little bit about the organization and its mission.
Bennie Johnson
You know, organization is really kind of a wonderful one and, and it’s been driven by community, whether spoken or unspoken. It’s been driven by this idea of community and a professional group moving for the past hundred years. That’s what’s kept people together. One of the things that’s really remarkable, early on in my tenure, I received this incredible note from a member who let me know that they’ve been a lifelong member, and they didn’t know this at the time, but they had been a member since the year I was born, they had no idea that in expressing this and it speaks not to an offering in a moment or not to, you know, a trendy space, but it really spoke to a commitment to a profession and commitment to a community. And they shared with me all these wonderful stories about their professional journey that has been tied into the organization.
So AIGA is a professional organization for the broader design profession. And we have evolved as the profession has evolved over the last hundred years. We have a chapter network of over 75 chapters throughout the country, as well as student chapters. We are, you know, the professional support community, if you think about it. Our mission is about representing design but looking at design as both a professional craft a strategic advantage and a catalyst for positive impact in the world.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah.
Bennie Johnson
You think about that, you know, the craft of design the actual work of a professional guild. How you develop kind of pushing us to be the best mentorship accelerating celebrating the practice of design, you look at us retreating advantage, how do we interface with other parts of business? in organizations in society? How is design moved to allow industry and enterprise to move forward to allow our organizations to advance. And then you think about it the higher-level goal, from craft to strategy to actually looking about combining all these things to make a noticeable impact in the world.
Those are the things that have really driven the organization and spirit over those hundred years. I love to reference that because we’re, you know, kind of embolden by legacy. We’re challenged to keep that moving. And it’s really up until 100 years, it’s about an idea. It’s not about what you did in 1940s or 1920 or 1967. The actual tactical things matter less, but it’s the idea that a profession can come together, that there can be an organization that champions the work campion’s the strategy and leads the profession and amplifies its impact on the world. That’s what AI ga is historically been about. I think that’s an incredibly timely mission today, you know, we may approach it differently than we did 85 years ago, or 50 years ago. But the power of being the best at your craft, to saying, providing strategic advantage for your organizations and community, and then having a measurable impact. I really time this.
Steve Chaparro
So when you took the post, I mean, we look at the press release of January 14th of this year, you take the role, you take the role, it seems like it’s four months ago, but it seemed like five years ago.
Bennie Johnson
What a different world.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah. So, you took the post on that day, and what was your frame of mind? What was the plan the approach before all of this other stuff happened? How were you looking to embark on this journey of leading this great organization?
Bennie Johnson
Let’s think about how different of a world that was just as the start of my day, you know, I hopped on a train on an Amtrak train roughly five o’clock in the morning from Washington, DC, and took a crowded train to Tribeca in New York. Right? You think about how just in the way that they started, our journey and world has changed since then we’re talking about, what 100 days ago, roughly.
The plan of action is really, to be incredibly humbled by the opportunity to leave the organization in this moment. You know, we mentioned before about legacy, but, you know, having that the the windage back to work towards what the future is. So coming in, I was excited, humbled about the selection, excited about being able to bring my skills and background resource and network two there to really drive the best for the profession, and the community of our members, the companies, the organizations that are all a part of contributing to AIGA. That’s where I started, and the plan was simple. You know, how do we strengthen the organization and community for tomorrow? You know, how do we leave the organization better than we found it? How do we come back In build the right set of resources, amplify the work we’re doing, promote, celebrate, empower our members, you know, expand our network and celebrate and showcase the impact of design on other industries. And then that larger piece we talked about before, how do we channel all of that into a positive impact into a world? You know, that’s still locked in, that’s still the North Star and the ultimate goals and plans for us that are really reinforced in our mission. I come back to the mission always organization that is the heart and soul of who we are and why we are right. So that was the push. How do we get there is a series of strategic agendas and tactical expressions which, you know, naturally have changed over time.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah.
Bennie Johnson
I thought that I would need everyone. You know, a lot of our key leaders in the field at our design conference that was scheduled for the end of March in Pittsburgh, Yes, right. And a week in person and having conversations and listening and learning and hearing the inside stories. Have a community and during past meeting with medalist and legends, spending time with new participants and design students who just graduated, that was the dynamism that I thought I was going to face in person. And as you said, our world changed. And so yeah, that was the biggest part of a plan that changed, you know, creating an organization for tomorrow, that still stays the same. We’re still asking ourselves those questions. You know, this is actually a good moment, because we need to make sure that our answers are resilient to this moment.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, right.
Bennie Johnson
So, it’s the good forcing function for us because we were starting to ask the right questions in this moment. So, I feel good about that part of it.
Steve Chaparro
Well, we talked about the other day as we were chatting, we talked about as of this moment in time as of this recording, it’s I think, may 13. We’re almost at the hundred if not at the hundred days of you’re taking on this role. And I mean, very specific about dates just for the sake of of measuring time of these hundred days. So, it was announced that you were taking the post on January 14 on March 11, is when the World Health Organization deem this whole thing as a global pandemic? How did things change for you, then? How did you have to change your strategy moving forward?
Bennie Johnson
What’s interesting is we actually start to make our adjustments before the World Health Organization declared the pandemic we had actually announced. And we’re able to navigate moving our conference and leadership event to the end of the year. Prior to that, yeah, where we are, you know, I take leadership in this role, you know, said very seriously and, and you’re not only providing leadership to the profession, and reaching out to your membership, but we also have a staff in the team, and about 80% of our staff was located in the New York epicenter. So very early on at the beginning of March, we actually moved to a completely remote structure. We were fortunate in that as an organization, we were already making the infrastructure investments to lean towards that prior to eating my lunch by joining the organization, but we made the call early on to For the safety and security of our team to have people spend time at home. So, you know, that move I think was really important for us.
We also in that part, were one of the early organizations having conversations about moving our event. So we moved it as far away as possible as we could not knowing and even today, still uncertain about what the future has. But that was something that we were able to do that week before, which put us in a different position, but made it aware that we had to be responsive and resilient. We started early on knowing that this moment was having a direct impact to designers, as both individuals and as business owners and as creatives and as team leaders, you know, really kind of looked at all the different identity moments that we have as creatives, you know, and what could we do in this moment, and one of the things I wanted to be careful was was not to just impose activity and solutions, right. We wanted to actually listen into our community.
So around that time, we launched the listening campaign through our social media channels. In every aspect of we’ve had to hear directly from our community and our design community at large. What were the things that you needed? Some were self explanatory, you know, we could guess. But most of it were really things that were sincerely geared towards that moment. We had designers asking for very small things, it’s really humbling to know that those needs to make a big difference. We had bigger, bolder ideas are being contributed. But each of the inputs allowed us to start on a plan to frame our actions for the next eight weeks, which was how do we build programming services? How do we create partnerships and alliances to deliver this information to our community? And so, I galvanized the team together and they had us work in a different way to kind of daily look at what could we do? So, everything from the practical and tactical webinars that we’ve done in terms of looking at ideas of mental health? I’m a business owner, how do I talk to my bank? How do I navigate the Small Business Administration, bringing in expert leaders but curating the content for design, professional community. Those are things that are all driven from what we heard from our audience.
We then also looked in knowing that we had a unique space to galvanize to bring people together. So we worked with our chapters and made sure they had the infrastructure to be able to do events in their own backyard, right to make sure that chapters throughout the country had what they needed to be able to put on events. So that as a national organization we were able to support. We also then took a look at what are the unexpected things we could do so we started doing design pop up series in which we took people who had been keynote inspirational keynote figures that are normal conference, and we made that free to the design community. And just to see this kind of surprised these events are designed not to give you three months lead time, they’re really the they were the just in time, just when I needed it. Three days in advance. Let’s talk about in inspiring or challenging moment that brings together design.
And so that had been the formula and in our approach know these practical things that work for you as an individual, whether you’re a student, an emerging designer, or even a medalist, whether you’re at the beginning, middle or end of your career, starting a business, managing a larger team or working as a freelancer, we wanted to make sure that we provide it a series of resources in variety of formats that would be there for you. And, you know, the listening campaign wasn’t one and done. It’s an ongoing part of how we’re leading, right, and we’re learning every day and people share. You know, this was great. I wish I had more of you thought about this. These are all the spaces that allow us to provide better service.
Steve Chaparro
That’s very encouraging. It’s very encouraging to that the design organization would actually use the principles by which we design for our clients anyways, you know, we use empathy we use human centered approaches, and the organization that is there to support and to nurture and advocate for the design industry itself would employ those very same friends. supposed to, to listen, but also to make sense of those things because I think many times an organization can listen, it becomes this smorgasbord of feedback. But to be able to make sense of all, then I think your your background in marketing and market research is probably well used during this time period.
Bennie Johnson
It really is to that point, it’s so much a part of who I am to think about, you know, how do we design for a really diverse and robust community, and designing needs and you think about some of the needs along the continuum, but we knew it, we’re building out certain items that we could see around the corner, in which even if our membership didn’t say they needed it today, we could see that down the line you would write if you’re running a business, and this is where the experience being at the Council of better business bureaus comes in. There are certain things that we knew that business owners were going to need in the first few days. It really hadn’t sunk in the scope of this moment.
And so we were able to start having conversations down the line, and we knew that we’re going to be important. So we were able to have the former former general counsel this fall. Business Administration on a webinar for a series that started very much in the process before people even asked about information about SBA loans and support it just knowing that if you look at our design community, how many people were running their own shops, you know, we knew that this is going to be important information in there, and kind of building it in a way that that would make sense.
There were some topic areas in which we knew our membership may have a challenge, getting the information because it wasn’t presented in a way in which they saw themselves. Like some of the language when we talk about Small Business Administration really isn’t in the language in which our creative industry speaks, but but we saw programs and purposes that were there for them. And so finding a way to do that translation to eliminate any of the barriers and these critical moments was really important for us. So yes, the idea of understanding and embracing the fact that we have a really robust community. This is really a robust community in practice, and it’s not a one size fits all approach. Our goal was to really develop this portfolio of programming and resources and services to really kind of strengthen our community in this moment,
Steve Chaparro
I can tell you that I’m very grateful for that type of resourcing because myself as a Hispanic business owner myself in the design industry, I was able to benefit from, you know, the PPP program, partly and due to the information that I received through a IGA. So that was very helpful as well, as you mentioned, the ability of the local chapters, my local chapters here in Los Angeles, and they’ve been a huge source of support and encouragement, and sometimes just creating space for us to kind of flesh out, you know, what are we feeling in the moment and having some of those real conversations addressing some real topics even, you know, the ideas of how we might be experiencing grief individually, but collectively as a community as well.
Bennie Johnson
We’re really well positioned for this moment when you think about the network of chapters and our connections. wanted to be able to support each other in those ways that that we say are meaningful, they’re direct, sometimes they’re driven by proximity. You know, sometimes it’s driven by identity or prac- you know, this is something that we’re pushing really hard this notion that, you know, we are a community and I like to say we’re a community in practice, in these ways, and it’s, you know, we don’t always have the answers on the front end, this is about building and being aware of the space in there and seeing Wow, this is what’s happening in LA, how can we support that? or learning from what’s happening? Like, could that be helpful in Detroit? Or we’re seeing this opportunity where they’re designers who live neither in Detroit or LA, and how can we at a national level, help them have a connection? If proximity is not there, right. These are all things that, you know, when you talk about how did the plan change. Our plan was really to focus on community and that part hasn’t changed. Right goes back to this. The idea of 100 years of bringing together professions still stands the idea of January 13. of we need to be connected as community still stands today on May 13. All right. All about community.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, for sure. And I really appreciate that. Because one of the things that I found as I was navigating my own struggle of trying to figure out a way forward for myself as an individual during this time is I landed on three things that I really craved. And that was, one was compassion, and two was community. And three was to be part of a healthy culture and whether it’s a culture of one within myself or even a culture within my team, the industry and just culture at large. And I found all three of those things in the AIGA community because I think been able to express the fact that we as business owners or practitioners need to have compassion for ourselves first, you know, like, give yourself a break. Like, it’s not the way it was before you’re adjusting. That’s okay. If you don’t hate eight hours of billable work in a day, you need to take two or three hours off to just, you know, rest your brain in your soul do it and just having that compassion. So, a lot of those great conversations came through being part of that community for sure.
Bennie Johnson
And to your point, I mean, it’s so important that we forget that rest and reflection are part of a strategic game plan for success. Right? You look at elite level athletes are performers or anyone at the top in their craft, there is a combination of rest and recovery. That’s a part of the space in there and, and these are things that that were there there’s also the space of learning. And so as a community, I’m really it makes me smile to hear that you’re able to find that comfort and support within, you know, what represents the community what we also need Is that at this time people are spending a lot of time learning? Right? How do I, you know, whether it’s learning a new hobby, whether it’s exploring new things within yourself is having that challenge, that these are a part of that kind of reflection, I think you’ve been on our end, we’re at a spot from which you could have endless zoom calls. We were talking about that earlier. There’s no time day. I know my zoom call, by the way, the light changes in the background right in the time, but there’s power in, in having that moment of reflection and going okay, what did we learn from what we’ve seen the past week? What have our results shown us? Where do we want to be in the future? And how can how can we get there? Those are some of the things I’m championing with our team, as we work through and even as we protect this kind of self care in helping to care for community.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, and that speaks to a couple of thoughts that I kind of arrived at, and a lot of it is to is just going through this whole journey, being in this environment, this context of this moment in time and learning. You know, for me, it’s Kinda like along with the whole idea of really seeking compassion, connection or community and culture, it was like another triplicate of ideas was just being able to breathe, you know, not just the inhale, but the exhale as well, because sometimes we can hold our breath because we’re waiting to figure out what’s next. So breathing, resting, as you’ve mentioned before, but also being present, which I think very much is you can’t learn, even from the moment if you’re not present with the moment. And I think we need to be able to look at all of those three different things. And I think that’s a great opportunity. We have the silver lining of this whole moment that we have.
Bennie Johnson
I couldn’t agree more. And, you know, for us as an organization, you know, it’s important for us to practice resilience, you know, as a part of our strategy and things you just expressed, really support that in that in that moment. So, you know, we’re thinking about what’s around the corner and what a revised world looks like. Do we have all the answers now but we certainly are asking questions.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, absolutely.
Bennie Johnson
That’s helping propel us forward. And we’re seeing what we’ve learned. And, and we’re looking at what things are valuable regardless. Right? And that that’s kind of power power in that. And, you know, we’re seeing what are things that are needed within our professional community? How is the world evolving in our community in practice the product, and some of those evolutionary movements? Were starting before January 13, like many of them, you know, in some places, there’s an accelerant to them. But things we need to think about as our profession grows and evolves, are we creating a space in which it can welcome the evolutions in the profession? Are we creating a space where we understand the power of our profession adjacent and working through other spaces of industry? You know, are we seeing opportunities in which other professions have gone through a similar evolutionary arc? Are were shaped and we’ve continued where designers are helping to lead and a Imagine a new future, a future of work the future of business, the future of social impact, you know, how do we take those lessons in those moments and celebrate that, you know, by expanding the community versus interacting, right?
Steve Chaparro
Yeah. Yeah, one of the things, as you mentioned, you know, looking to the future of not just the organization, but the industry profession itself, in order for us to go from one stage to the next many times that requires that shift requires the death of the old a little bit. What are some things that you’ve heard from people members in hga, who have said, you know, we welcome your leadership, we look to you to help us lead us into that new era of our profession. But here are some things that really need to change. What are some of those things that you’re hearing?
Bennie Johnson
You know, it’s interesting, you say it like that. I’ll take a step back and frame it this way. When you have an organization that had 100-year track record, there’s a lot of those. Absolutely, yeah. And the metaphors we often use that I often use are thinking about renovating a home. But renovating a home being a person from DC renovating a home. That’s a historic landmark, right? So you have things that are, you need to make sure the home is energy efficient, has a green footprint is best suited for Wi Fi, all the things that weren’t imagined when it was built 100 years ago, but you’re still holding on to the kind of the ideas and premise and protecting that as well, the dynamism between that innovation and legacy. It’s that creative tension, that is really a part of it. And so, I think it’s a false choice sometimes that things have to die for. I think it’s more of a question of putting it context and perspective, right?
And you start to see when we kind of whittle it down to the idea of gathering together. That’s an old idea, right? The way in which we approach it needs to change and whether we take advantage of new norms, new societal changes opportunities, we want to look at the fact that We want to make a space that’s more inclusive. We want to make a space that’s more dynamic. And so those are ideas that we want to make sure don’t get lost and are elevated to the top. We also want to look at, you know, how do our programming this goes into kind of a conversation. What is needed in this moment, right is the way in which professionals look at the journey map of what a career looked like 30 years ago, or 25 years ago is very different than what professionals need today. And so, I think that that’s where we kind of ramp that in.
But we also want to create a space in which we’re perpetually iterating. Right. The last thing you want to do is have the profession of today, set a kind of ironclad concrete view of what the profession is, you’re actually repeating the same challenge that you’re trying to overcome, right. So this kind of iterative growth, this kind of reinforcement that ties you back into your mission, you know, the mission as well. believe it’s not what you do in that space, what we do may change over time, but our kind of mission of why we’re doing it. That’s the part that continues to go forward. And to your point, I think he challenged them back and forth. that’s helped me a part of the creative destruction. But you know, I don’t go into it as though you know, these things have to change.
I do. You know, I’ve had people in my own kind of listening, paint folks will tell me all the things they love about the organization and all the things that they don’t love as much you’ll say it in that way. Right? And a lot of it, you know, you’re not throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. It’s kind of like, Okay, I see where that was a challenge. I see where that created attention. And you dig into it a bit and like the structure or the idea may not have been the problem. It may have been the execution in the moment. You look at that before, but that’s an interesting space. For me. It’s also great when you think about the dynamism of, you know, we have members who have been members as as I said before, since before I was born, Leader, you know, and I’m not a student just starting. So, you can see about that that large, professional space, you know, that folks are active and dynamic in our profession for a very long time. So, we’re balancing all of those kind of intergenerational moments and needs, right.
So that’s the other space. And to your point, I’m always cautious about throwing everything out, because you may have advanced beyond it, you may have matured beyond it, you don’t need that now, but someone else coming behind you does. Right. And so it’s that space in which if you know, I’m always say before thinking about it from the user experience or from the market research space, you know, Steve, you and I may throw it out the window, like we don’t need that before. And it’s just the right bit of resource or information that someone needed who just started Yeah, you know, so I
Steve Chaparro
As you know, my backgrounds in architecture. So, I love the framing that you just posed of this historic home and balancing legacy. See, and innovation, I think that’s a perfect metaphor for what we are experiencing with, you know, this next era of AIGA. So I love that number one. And so I can definitely identify with that. The other question I have is kind of a little twist in the conversation. And the conversation, or the podcast itself is called the Culture Design Show. And it’s meant to explore topics, where we look at the culture of design, and also the design of culture. So when you think of those two ways of looking at that conversation, what comes to mind for you?
Bennie Johnson
It comes to mind that creative tension that I talked about before, and I think that, that there’s beauty in that moment, right, the tension, and spaces in which in my career or events, we’re seeing these kind of powerful moments. It’s been in that tension. When I worked in online education. It was I often referred to it in that same frame. It was the business of education and education in business. and kind of give and take and where they’re referential to each other and where they’re the moments in which the best and the challenging parts kind of emerge in there.
So, yeah, I love the idea of thinking about designs, broader impact on culture, and the culture within design and how these are not just, you know, unidirectional, right, the influence and the shaping are reinforcing the flow. That’s how I think of it, it’s not a, this comes from the culture and this comes from design. I think they’re constantly besting each other and challenging each other. And I think beautiful world is when a reinforced for the positive and good, but they’re also challenging against the things that LS and how does that that rub work between the two?
Steve Chaparro
Yeah. And I think what’s so important about that tension or addressing that tension is not about trying to negate it or ignore it, but it’s about embracing that tension and having some real conversations. Sometimes I’m very comfortable. Maybe painful conversations. But that’s the only way we can address these situations and be able to move forward.
Bennie Johnson
It really is. I mean, it’s the real conversations. It’s, you know, often verbalizing and expressing things that you’ve seen his current conversation as well, you know that there are times in which we stop on the conversation. And, you know, we’re not acknowledging what’s happening around us. There’s also the space of understanding and continuity in this space that, you know, if we’re not able to address and break certain cycles, it doesn’t allow us the opportunity to grow, knowing that within our space, there’s going to be spaces of positive intent. And there’s going to be spaces in which people have noticed neglect, right. Either one of those spaces doesn’t disqualify you from continuing to grow in that right because as you said, if we don’t identify that you can’t grow from it.
Steve Chaparro
Right, right.
Bennie Johnson
pass it off that you can’t do x. You know, one of the things that was always always been important for working which we’ve done You know, we saw this in the Better Business Bureau as well, it was kind of a path to redemption, kind of a space in which organizations would have a mess up, you know, but we’re there to work and help to build together. And seeing organizations go from this space in which there’s a problem to actually becoming a leader in an industry. Those were the stories that were the most powerful. Those are the times in which the cultural adjustments and they really took and were part of this success, right, versus spaces in which it’s always seemingly perfect.
Steve Chaparro
Right. So I know that one of your roles in your past was that you worked as the Chief Marketing Officer at the HR certification Institute. I went to war, what were some of the things because, you know, HR culture mixed in now with design? How did that experience contribute to the formation of your thoughts about organizational culture one, but also its pairing with design.
Bennie Johnson
You know, it was really an important time to be a part So, there are a couple of parallels that I see at the time I work with HR Certification Institute and we work closely with SHRM – the Society for Human Resource Management. The big conversation was about HR emerging as a profession, right, expanding as a profession becoming a strategic driver. So some of the things that we talked about in the mission of AIGA wish design is kind of settled those roles in their HR at the time, just maturing to that space. There were things that we learned about how do you, you know, quantify a profession? How do you talk about the things that are important to learn as kind of accomplice, what are the ethical guide rails of the profession? What does it mean to be a member of profession? What are the key things you need to learn? You know, that helped to shape an understanding of HR as a profession, and that drove culture in organizations. When HR was it as a function, it was a part of the dialogue with the C suite. It was a part of the dialogue with The business leaders, the financial leaders were HR and human talent were a part of it, right. And so it allowed much like our conversation of design principles, being able to be used across the organization, you saw the opportunity for good HR and human capital principles to be used.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, I love that. And I definitely have seen the evolution of you know, as you said, it’s not just HR and design are not just functions, but they are actually strategic components and competencies of an organization. But they have now been given in many cases, a seat at the C suite table, you know, the chief HR officer or a chief design officer, and that has elevated as you mentioned, the professions of designers and HR leaders across the world.
Bennie Johnson
I think there’s a great similarity in HRCI and the work we’re doing there. We were actually on the forefront of launching a global certification that raised the kind of caliber of the profession of HR. We think of that way. I think that design here is several years removed from that. You can see continual art that goes into it. I think that that’s important in that space to really think about culture and organization. Yes, during that time, you know, you saw that there’s not a secret that successful organizations that attract better talent that track better loyalty, that drive better gains and returns on investment. The successful ones are driven by strong cultures. Right.
And one of the things that I learned from that experience is that a positive culture is intentional. And sometimes in organizations a negative culture is intentional, right? The culture is reflection of the things in which you do, which you build in which you tolerate, and which you establish. And so those are like the personal takeaways that I have from as a leader. You know, we’re intentional about the culture in which we build. Yeah, you know, so it’s not just the mission map on the wall or the pictures that give you a degree of this is what we’re about as an organization. It’s the internalized mission and the way in which we operate but that’s the culture you reinforce. And that reinforces policies and procedures, the way in which you work, but the work in which you undertake, you know, really strong organizations are able to tie that together. Much like our conversations about design, really strong design driven organizations, you know, design is flowing through design thinking is throwing through every core component part of your organization. Right. And it’s done in an intentional way. Yeah, that’s not needing to accidentally trip upon this. This is a part of who you are as an organization. I mean, that’s, that’s what I take away often from culture, that the best cultures are intentional. You know why you’re building it, you know why you’re defending it, you know why you’re reinforcing it.
Steve Chaparro
You can’t see it, Bennie, because I’ve got long sleeves on but I’ve got goosebumps because that just speaks to my heart all the way my work actually is in that overlap of HR or culture and design. And that word that you have used that you brought up intention or intentionality has been such a common reference for Many of the guests on the podcast talking about how design and culture is all about intentionality. So I love it. You’re affirming so much. We’ve been talking to Bennie Johnson, the executive director of AIGA. Bennie, if people want to learn more about AIGA and about you, where can they go?
Bennie Johnson
You can definitely check out AIGA.org. And you can learn about our work our mission, you can connect with a local chapter in your community or in your school.
Steve Chaparro
All right, Benny, thank you so much. I appreciate you coming on the show. This has been such an honor for me.
Bennie Johnson
Thank you, Steve. Appreciate it. And when this is over, I look forward to us connecting in person as well.
Steve Chaparro
Absolutely. Thank you.
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