Ep. 56 - Design that sticks - Martha Cotton

17/12/2025 57 min Temporada 1 Episodio 56

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Episode Synopsis

Martha Cotton, Managing Director at JPMorgan Chase, brings 25 years of experience bridging anthropology, design, and enterprise transformation. Known for helping large organizations understand people, navigate change, and design for adoption, Martha shares how empathy, collaboration, and partnership shape modern design leadership.In this episode, she and Jochem explore how designers can speak the language of business, why data partnerships matter, and what it really takes to drive customer centricity inside legacy organizations. They examine the future of journey management, organizational transformation, and how AI will reshape creative work.Guest BioMartha Cotton is Managing Director at JPMorgan Chase, where she leads design research and drives customer centricity across one of the world’s largest financial institutions. With a background in cultural anthropology, she has built a career spanning boutique studios, global consultancies, and enterprise design leadership.Her work focuses on designing for adoption, shaping change inside complex organizations, and elevating design as a strategic partner to the business. Martha is also an educator and long-standing contributor to the Ethnographic Praxis in Industry community.TakeawaysDesigning for adoption ensures experiences deliver sustained customer and business value.Design leaders must articulate impact in business terms, not just craft terms.Organizational change succeeds when it’s driven top down, bottom up, and radiating from the middle.Strong partnerships between design and data unlock measurable outcomes and credibility.Journey management becomes transformative when supported by diverse data and cross-functional collaboration.Chapters 00:00 Setup and warm up 02:27 Intro to Martha Cotton 03:44 Martha’s career through line 05:46 Why empathy still matters in business 08:17 Skills needed to thrive in complex enterprises 12:04 Craft, business impact, and designing for adoption 14:42 How design leadership is evolving 16:37 The rise and pitfalls of design thinking 19:58 Making new ways of working stick 22:11 Breaking the glass ceiling for design 25:23 Moving from order taking to partnership 28:53 Charm offensive and influencing without disruption 30:57 Learning business context the hard way 32:40 Early days of digital transformation 33:45 Making transformation stick in enterprises 35:04 Top down, bottom up, and middle-out change 39:32 The challenge of creating opportunities inside enterprises 44:00 Design and data partnerships 47:26 The evolution of journey management 49:29 Data-enabled journeys and organizational reality 54:41 What Martha wishes she could change 55:47 Thinking about AI as a creative partner 58:29 Where to find MarthaLinkedInGuest: Martha Cotton Host Jochem van der Veer

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