Jeans in the boardroom? The rise of a design culture at nib Health Funds

This is the story of how a regional Australian Health Insurer with a history deep in steel manufacturing was able to value not only the efforts of designers but the authority of design itself… Kind of – well, sort of.

We aren’t working in a designers paradise, we don’t often get to “think different” and sometimes just getting the word ‘design’ into a conversation feels like a victory.

It took a comment by an outsider – encouraging us to look back and see the design culture we had cultivated – that helped us focus on the progress made and look past the myths of ‘design culture’.

We will step you through our journey highlighting the anti-patterns we identified, the opportunities created, the mistakes we made along the way and the challenges that remain.  We will present an emergent model that supports continuous cultivation of our design culture.

These days we get to wear ‘jeans in the boardroom’ – and not just on Fridays.

Presentation audio

Presentation

Sketchnotes

Jeans in the (NIB) boardroom - Glyn Thomas & Tim Hogan