Where do you sit on the ten tensions?

Why aren't there more designers in the C‑suite of Fortune 50 corporations?

This self-test comes from that question, which I researched for my PhD between 2017 and 2020. Thirty interviews and two surveys surfaced ten factors. The first, and the least tested, is the designer Ethos: habits that design education and practice build, and that large corporations often read as liabilities.

Each slider runs between a habit design tends to build, on the left, and a habit the top teams of large corporations tend to rely on, on the right. Both sides describe good work. This is not designers versus executives. Good leaders, trained in design or not, draw on both sides; a lean toward the design side doesn't make anyone less suited to the top. Your result shows which way you lean on each tension, and how strongly. It doesn't score you, and it doesn't tell you where you should be.

Executives are welcome too, and so is anyone who never trained in design. No one, including me, can see an individual's answers. Once 30 or more C‑suite executives have taken it, their answers as a group will show designers where leaders actually sit, and tell me whether the right-hand statements describe their work fairly.

Before you start

• This is a tool for reflection, based on research. It is not a psychological assessment. It doesn't measure personality, and it doesn't predict success.
• You can take it again after 30 days. Give it time: answers shift with experience and with role, and that's part of the point.
• No name, no email, no tracking.