What Surprised Colin Dunn About Being the Designer?

Colin Dunn says the most surprising thing about the CEO and chief designer role is how weak his attachment to being the designer has been. He expected the opposite.

He used to think he was a product designer in the sense that the role was his identity, the same way he had been a graphic designer before that. Designers often make being a designer a big part of their identity, not just a job. He now treats the roles as different flavors of an orientation to the world and a way of seeing things, divorced from the specific task. The job has not changed the way he sees it. He is still a designer, and he is designing a company. The materials have changed. What got him into design is deeper than what he is making: a way of thinking, a way of problem solving, and a way of bringing something into existence.

He treats the role as the next step in his career and a privilege. He is not just designing a product. He is designing an organization and creating a culture, design problems he has not worked on before. He gets to meet people further along on the journey who can give him the wisdom they have learned.