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At Johnson Controls, design has emerged as a partner in critical business activities. Bill Fluharty discusses how, by providing talent and a sense of vision not available elsewhere, he and his associates have become key players in such arenas as defining deliverables in the product development process, facilitating collaboration, presenting the broad context for decisionmaking, and defining advanced initiatives.

Johnson Controls is a Fortune 150 company and a global market leader in automotive systems, as well as facility management and control. In the automotive market, it is a Tier One manufacturer of integrated seating, interior systems, and batteries.

Tier One suppliers in the automotive industry earn their success primarily through being highly efficient manufacturers, producing parts and components that meet customer specifications. Intuitively, such a situation would suggest a limited role for design. But at Johnson Controls, that's not the case. Our industrial design team has established itself as a highly integrated and valued part of the organization. We have a 20-year track record of accomplishment, and we feel we're a significant influence on the success of our company.

Although our team is often thought of as a service group that provides industrial design deliverables-model making, product ideation, and so on-to other corporate functions, it has been our goal to link our skills and services with strategy and decisionmaking efforts throughout the company. It takes an assertive, ongoing effort to put design experience, talent, and deliverables in at the right place and at the right time to provide leadership. There is a spirit in our group that drives us to be involved in solving current and future business and product issues. Although we don't focus our activities on any one area of the company, if I wanted to be specific, I would say that at Johnson Controls, design is most involved in three areas: advance development, product proposal creation, and product development.

Like many designers, we are skilled storytellers, and our gift for imagining in a broader context is easily recognized when we leverage it with individuals or groups tasked with creating complex strategies to accomplish corporate objectives.

Let's start with seven actions that, if built into the daily and weekly objectives of a design team, can consistently put our talents to use in ways that provide value far beyond what a traditional service group could offer.

1. Place design skills at the right place and time for influence.

2. Gain enough autonomy to build the best skills and studio process.

3. Define critical deliverables in the product development process, and deliver consistent excellence.

4. Facilitate a collaborative environment.

5. "Connect the dots"-illustrate context that no other group can see.

6. Make others successful, creating customers for life

7. Create a vision of the future with "advance initiative" projects.

Strategy #1: Right place, right time

In our company, as in many others, positional authority is reserved for a select few corporate functions, such as manufacturing, engineering, and our customer business units. It is not productive for the design team to be competitive with those who ultimately set the direction for strategy and product. Instead, we seek to create partnerships with key decision makers within these groups. Through a combination of specialized skill sets and involvement in diverse projects, we can offer a unique, insightful perspective to anyone tasked with making strategic decisions.

It is impossible to become a significant competency if you have not consistently contributed value in areas the company feels are critical for success. This means that the design organization must pursue a deeper understanding of current key business strategies, as well as the way in which other company functions plan initiatives to meet corporate objectives. This is where attending the staff meetings, as well as the strategic planning sessions, of other functions is key. Can't get your foot in the door? The fastest way to get an invitation is to offer facilitation or visualization services to those teams. This not only gets you an invitation, but it also makes your design team into keepers of strategic information, as you help to document product and strategy roadmaps.

Imagine being assertive about offering your skills in areas that give you the most knowledge about trends, customer concerns, and the requirements that have defined a product. If you can build a way of functioning within your company that allows for a consistent approach in which you can build knowledge and experience in these areas, your group will become a sought-after resource. Helping to define and lead advance-strategy projects, supporting product definition activities with external customers, and helping arrive at consensus in decisions related to product appearance during the product-development process-all these give us a broad base of experience with issues that affect the success of our company.

These activities also give us the longest view of the path a product follows from concept to production-a downstream visibility that gives us the role of "product historian." The design team, of course, has information about the origin of a product's form and function that tooling and manufacturing engineers need to know. For instance, a tooling engineer working on an automotive interior could be so focused on making the tooling so simple that he might place a tool parting line in a place where it leaves an unsightly or uncomfortable detail. The tooling engineer was not present when the product was defined and so does not realize that this detail is highly visible to the customer. When we leverage our storytelling tools around product or strategy scenarios, we educate and motivate decision makers by presenting a context that is broader than that to which they are currently exposed. Over time, then, we become a resource that provides the kind of confidence that would be missed if we were not included.

To maintain this commitment requires an assertive, even a proactive, effort-all the time. It is not enough to provide a high level of skill and world-class deliverables as requested by those who can use them. First, they may not know how to ask, and second, they may not have a broad enough view of the issues to know how to leverage the deliverables of the design team to their fullest.

Even smaller design teams can define their strategic influence. The design department can, on an annual basis, identify the areas that can benefit most from their efforts and agree upon objectives that make the best of their time, money, and people. Our experience shows that even minimal support, if it consistently delivers successful results, creates a demand for the services of the design team-and this demand can eventually become a company's way of encouraging growth in its design capability. A design team that acts as a strategic partner willing to go out on a limb to make recommendations is much appreciated.

Strategy #2: Gaining autonomy

At Johnson Controls, the design function reports to a high level within the organization, and therefore it has a level of independence that would not be present if it were an entity within engineering or product development. This is an ideal situation, in which the design team can choose its own approach to become a valuable, empowered service partner to other groups in the company. We are fortunate that the senior leadership at Johnson Controls has always seen the value of design, and that these leaders want us to provide an opinion and a resource that is unique.

This does not mean that we will always have this position. We need to work hard-all the time-to reassure decision makers that we have information and services they are better off having close at hand. In bigger corporations, changes in objectives-as well as in leaders-happen often. A design team must always educate and use its influence. If a design team reports up through the engineering or marketing function, consistent effort is required to improve its position within that function.

The trick is to have the majority of senior leaders feel they cannot make an educated decision unless the design team is involved. At the same time, if you want to build the kinds of systems that create world-class capability, autonomy is important. When we have to go head-to-head with business leaders, it is a big help to show up with the best design research and storytelling possible.