Three Ways Design Consultants Drive Strategy: Insights from Design Consultants for Strategy

In today’s fast-moving business environment, strategy is no longer just about numbers and forecasts. It’s about understanding people, markets, and the future in a way that creates real value. This is where design consultants for strategy come in. They bring a unique perspective that blends creativity with rigor, helping organizations navigate complexity and uncertainty. Over the years, I’ve seen firsthand how design consultants can transform strategic thinking and execution. Let me share three key ways they do this.

Why Design Consultants for Strategy Matter More Than Ever

Strategy used to be a neat, linear process: analyse, plan, execute. But the world has changed. Complexity, rapid technological shifts, and evolving customer expectations mean that traditional approaches often fall short. Design consultants for strategy bring a fresh mindset that embraces ambiguity and focuses on human-centred outcomes.

They don’t just make things look good or facilitate workshops. Instead, they embed design as a strategic capability at the leadership level. This means helping leaders ask better questions, explore new possibilities, and align their teams around meaningful goals. The result? Strategies that are not only visionary but also actionable and resilient.

For example, I worked with a scale-up CEO who felt stuck between ambitious growth targets and a fragmented innovation approach. By involving a design consultant early in the process, we reframed the challenge from “what product to build” to “what value to create and for whom.” This shift unlocked new opportunities and clarified priorities, saving months of trial and error.

Design consultant presenting strategic concepts in a meeting

What Does a Design Strategist Do?

Understanding the role of a design strategist helps clarify how they drive strategy. At its core, a design strategist acts as a bridge between creativity and business goals. They combine research, insight, and design thinking methods to shape strategic decisions.

Here’s what they typically do:

• Discover and define: They start by deeply understanding the context, stakeholders, and challenges. This involves qualitative research, market analysis, and stakeholder interviews.

• Ideate and prototype: Using creative techniques, they generate ideas and test assumptions quickly. This iterative approach reduces risk and accelerates learning.

• Align and communicate: They help translate complex insights into clear narratives and visualisations that resonate with leadership and teams.

• Embed and enable: Beyond projects, they build internal capabilities so organizations can sustain strategic design practices over time.

  
  

In practice, this means a design strategist might facilitate a workshop to map customer journeys, develop a new business model prototype, or create a strategic roadmap that balances short-term wins with long-term vision.

Three Ways Design Consultants Drive Strategy

Now, let’s dive into the three specific ways design consultants make a difference in strategy development and execution.

1. Turning Ambiguity into Clarity

One of the biggest challenges leaders face is making decisions with incomplete or conflicting information. Design consultants excel at navigating this ambiguity. They use structured frameworks and human-centred research to uncover hidden needs and opportunities.

For instance, when working with a Chief Innovation Officer, we used ethnographic research to reveal how customers actually used a product differently than expected. This insight shifted the innovation focus from incremental improvements to entirely new service offerings. The clarity gained helped the leadership team prioritise investments confidently.

Practical tip: Use design-led discovery methods like customer shadowing, journey mapping, and scenario planning to reduce uncertainty before committing resources.

2. Aligning Diverse Stakeholders Around Shared Goals

Strategy often falters because different parts of an organisation have competing priorities or unclear roles. Design consultants bring facilitation skills and visual tools that create shared understanding and alignment.

In one engagement, a design consultant helped a board and executive team visualise the ecosystem around their product. This revealed gaps and overlaps in responsibilities, enabling a more coherent strategy. The process also surfaced unspoken assumptions, which were addressed early on.

Practical tip: Use visual strategy tools such as ecosystem maps, alignment diagrams, and storyboards to foster collaboration and clarity.

Strategic ecosystem map created by design consultant

3. Embedding Design as a Strategic Capability

The most impactful design consultants don’t just deliver one-off projects. They focus on building lasting capabilities within organisations. This means training leaders and teams to think and act with design principles embedded in their strategic processes.

For example, I’ve seen organisations adopt design sprints as a regular part of their innovation cycle, enabling faster validation of ideas. Others have integrated customer-centric metrics into their performance dashboards, ensuring strategy stays grounded in real-world impact.

Practical tip: Invest in ongoing design capability building through workshops, coaching, and embedding design roles in leadership teams.

How to Work Effectively with Design Consultants

If you’re considering engaging a design consultant for strategy, here are some recommendations to get the most value:

• Start early: Involve design consultants at the beginning of strategic discussions, not as an afterthought.

• Be open to experimentation: Design-led approaches thrive on iteration and learning from failure.

• Focus on outcomes, not outputs: Look beyond deliverables like reports or visuals to the decisions and actions they enable.

• Commit to capability building: Aim to develop internal skills rather than relying solely on external expertise.

  
  

By following these principles, you can harness the full potential of design consultants to drive meaningful strategic change.

Elevating Strategy with a Trusted Partner

At White Space Strategy, we believe that design is not just a tool but a strategic discipline that can transform how organisations create value. Our mission is to help leaders turn complexity into clarity and innovation into real impact. Working with a design strategy consultant can be a game-changer in this journey.

If you want to move beyond traditional strategy and unlock new growth pathways, consider how design consultants can help you rethink what’s possible. The future belongs to those who design it well.

I hope these insights help you see the strategic power of design consultants more clearly. When done right, their work is not just about aesthetics or facilitation but about shaping the future of your organisation with confidence and clarity.