Organizations that have hired talented designers don’t always produce good designs. For those of us who are designers, there are many, sometimes frustrating reasons. For organizations, there is a complex interworking of goals, communications, organizations, processes, tools, and relationships that may or may not positively influence the quality of design.

In the past ten years I’ve designed well over 30 digital products. Reflecting on all the people and companies I’ve worked with, the design work was only a fraction of what I actually did. For example, recently I’ve written about how I’ve been helping companies refine their goals, sharing the lessons of established disciplines, and approaching design from the business perspective.

So I’ve decided to deliberately do all of this, beyond designing products, to help organizations improve their design capabilities. I’ve resigned my full-time position and will soon start consulting with this new focus. It’s about achieving the innovation that comes from integrating design practices on the strategic level, managing products, and building the right teams and processes to reach business goals. If you head an organization and would like to improve how you manage design, email me: victor at victorlombardi.com.

These are wicked problems that can’t be solved by applying someone else’s best practices or installing yet another software package. They get to the core of how people work together to make great design possible. And I’m pretty damn excited to do it.