Unfortunately, Designit's global leadership team has no idea what they're doing—understandably, since none of them have any experience running a design business.
While the CEO, Nic, has good credentials in the traditional management consulting space, he is at a loss as to how to scale a design consultancy or even retain it at its existing size.
Over the last couple of years, Designit has gradually lost key leaders from the business, and Nic has slowly but surely surrendered business decisions to Wipro, which has resulted in a massive reduction of headcount across the board in an attempt to become "cost neutral."
Nic, being ex-Capco (FS Management Consulting), has built a leadership team around himself comprising other ex-Capco people.
No harm in that, except that he’s put them in roles in which they have no prior experience, in an industry that they have no experience, and as if that wasn’t enough, he’s also promoted them from holding middle management positions to being leaders of a global design firm.
The end result: Designit is now much worse off than it was before Nic took over. The business is rudderless, and lacks vision....
Nic and his team have had a crack at it; it's time to hand over the baton. Designit needs a leadership team with a real track record of leading and scaling a digital design business.
My advice to Wipro, poach someone from Deloitte Digital, Accenture SONG, or one of the big independents offering full-service digital agencies. You've invested heavily in Designit over the years, you desperately need the capability, but it can't continue like this.
