Humanise with Joanne Jørgensen
Image source: Joanne Jørgensen
Thought this week
“I’ve seen a lot of creative leaders filling the space with a lot of words, but not holding the space for people to speak up or hold silence to allow for the AHA moment to come in, because you’re allowing peace to think. Get to know your team, help everybody speak, your output will become 10 times better. ”
The following article was originally published in the January 2025 issue of SPUR magazine in my Tomorrow column.
Image source: Spur
As we explore our theme ‘Humanise’, this month I interviewed design and innovation leader Joanne Jørgensen on ‘Humanising how we work’. Joanne is a creative director and executive coach, X-Nike Design Director with a key focus on Human and Earth centred design, whose work sits at the intersection of culture, sustainability and creativity.
As an accomplished creative leader, Joanne Jørgensen harnesses an interdisciplinary and human-centred design approach to create the future edge of sustainability. As a director and coach, she has led creativity and culture within cutting-edge organisations delivering insights, strategic vision, innovation and leadership.
Geraldine Wharry: There’s a rich tapestry to your experience. There's the designer, the intuitive creative in you. There's the coach and team leader that’s very strategic, you’ve worked with big corporations. Then there's the maverick. A few decades into your career, what's the glue?
Joanne Jørgensen: I think creatives often end up in their field because of passion. It's not easy, so you have to be in love with what you do. Early on, as an Empath, I noticed we were being desensitized to the actual making of things. It was in the late 90s, early 2000s, we were sending our production to Asia, and we were losing the beauty and the energy of the making.
I used to often hear ‘we’re doing this because this is how we've always done it’. I think that's what got us in this mess so, for me the thread was always curiosity to try not only to design better products, but better teams, better ways of working.
When I was at Nike and first introduced to being coached by an executive coach, it was illuminating because now I had a person to help me get clarity, go outside my comfort zone, reach my full potential. I decided to train as a coach with experts in neuroscience and mindfulness, and saw that a lot of the methodologies and approaches could be used with teams to unlock new ideas, playfulness and break the mold of old hierarchies. That's what led to my multidisciplinary approach today.
GW : You talk about the importance of getting away from echo chambers, adopting interdisciplinary work, listening and reflection. You're advocating for a recipe for success that isn't systematized.
JJ: I'm a huge believer in slowing down to speed up. We're human beings and creatives hold so much empathy that it can be quite emotional, even draining when you're in corporations where the importance is placed on bottom line and making money. I had a real reckoning on my own journey around mental health and slowing down, but also seeing that this is symptomatic throughout the fashion industry. Nobody's really stopping and going ‘oh, wait a minute, here's another superstar creative director stepping down or breaking under the pressure’. It’s ‘make more stuff, more money for investors and shareholders, and we'll just ignore what's actually happening to our employees and the world.’ I can't tell you how many people I meet who want to create a better way. But it can’t be all on one person or company. That’s not going to create the seismic change we need.
GW: When you were at Nike leading their Design Lab for advanced materials, working on innovations from the fly knit to collaborations and the Olympics, how did that interdisciplinary and listening approach manifest?
JJ: I was bridging that gap between design and making, which was increasingly uncommon within many physical product companies. When you do that, you need people who have specialist experience: people that can program the machinery, textile designers, industrial designers and 3d visualization, as well as computational design that would traditionally sit in architecture.
Some creative leaders might find this overwhelming, particularly in the fashion sector where it's been more traditional hiring from fashion school. But we're all designers, we're all creatives, and we're all making products, even if you’re an engineer.
I really looked at how to level the playing field and remove hierarchy, making sure we started every project together, dissecting the brief with all of those different disciplines and thinking ‘Is this the right brief? How would we allow rules and barriers to be broken?’. That's where the magic starts to happen. It might seem like it's making your life harder. Why would you not just sketch a shoe and send it off to a factory? But when you're pushing into a space of things that have never been done before, it's exciting to get outside your comfort zone.
GW: I’ve heard you speak of the CREATE acronym you use in your work. Could you tell us more?
JJ: CR-EA_TE is a coaching model. The CR is CURRENT REALITY. For example, during a design sprint you may be in a chaotic space of design thinking where there's a ton of ideas, but you're struggling to find focus so you sit down with everyone and ask ‘as a current reality, where are we at?’. Then you go into the EA of CREATE, EXPLORE ALTERNATIVES because maybe the current reality isn't working so we then brainstorm as a group. You can see the energy in EA. If there's just one thing that's getting the debate going, and suddenly people are all really engaged, usually you start getting action, which leads to the TE of CREATE, TAP THE ENERGY. Someone might say ‘I think we should be doing this in a completely different method of make. And then someone may suggest something else and so on. That's where the action is and the team defines next steps. Those are the broad strokes of the CREATE model.
A lot of people have often said to me ‘you're so intuitive’. I think intuition is slowing down and really seeing and listening with everything, all of your body. I've seen a lot of creative leaders filling the space with a lot of words, but not holding the space for people to speak up or hold silence to allow for the AHA moment to come in, because you're allowing peace to think. Get to know your team, help everybody speak, your output will become 10 times better. I hear so many big brands ask ‘what does our consumer want’? We're really bound to cultivating listening and understanding what is actually needed for us humans and our planet.
Find out more about Joanne Jørgensen here and the launch of her brand new project in January. Stay tuned.
Parting thoughts
The time has never been greater for humanity to be bold, to be radically hopeful and human. In order to create the solutions for today and future generations ahead, we can learn from the thought-leading humans around us such as Joanne Jørgensen, to help us come together, create and craft the societies we want to live in.
By Geraldine Wharry
