Priorities become clear.
The team knows what matters and what doesn't.
Who this is built for
Growth-stage companies with designers already on staff.
Stage
Series A–C companies with design already embedded across product, brand, marketing, and communications. The team exists, the challenge is alignment and performance.
The problem
Design is fragmented across functions with different priorities and standards, work is produced in silos and often reworked. Leadership struggles to see clear commercial impact from design.
The gap
No executive-level ownership of design. A need for someone to unify standards, align teams, and make design commercially accountable without hiring a full-time CDO too early.
Recognise the problem
Executive design leadership, not another senior designer.
One leader accountable for how design performs across product, brand, marketing, communications and the design team.
Vision & strategy
Sets the three-year design direction and connects it to business strategy.
Commercial accountability
Makes design visible on the P&L and presents its return to the CEO and board.
Talent & culture
Owns why great designers join, how they grow, and the reason they stay.
Standards & governance
Holds the quality bar across every function, including where no designers sit.
What changes
A supercharged design team
A clearer design function, better decisions, stronger team performance, less rework and better commercial alignment.
Decisions move faster.
Design no longer waits on founders, product or marketing for constant direction.
Designers do better work.
Standards, reviews and development become systematic.
Design starts serving the business.
Product, brand and marketing work from one direction.
Engagement models
Built around the problem, not a fixed retainer.
We offer five engagement types, selected and scoped to what the defined outcome needs.
Founding
Companies with design talent but no leadership structure, we build the function from zero.
usually
4 months
Turnaround
Broken design functions, high attrition, team dysfunction, inconsistent output that needs resetting.
usually
3–5 months
Scale
Preparing a functioning design team for the next phase of growth and complexity.
usually
5–8 months
Sprint
One specific, high-urgency design leadership problem. Usually with a fixed scope and fee.
fixed
4–8 weeks
Advisory
Post-engagement continuity, or a lightweight ongoing senior design perspective at the top.
monthly
4-8 hours
Cost advantage
Get the leadership required for your stage without paying indefinitely.
Permanent senior design leader
₦32–60M
Role level
CDO or VP Design
Period
12 months, recurring
Design Lever engagement
₦24M
Role level
Embedded fractional CDO
Period
4 months, fixed term
How it works
It begins with a call.
01
Discovery call
A focused conversation about the company, the team and the outcome leadership needs to produce.
02
Diagnosis
We assess the design function, quantify the current cost and define the outcome and success measures.
03
Leader or engagement
We place the right design leader or scope the engagement required to deliver the defined outcome.
Cost calculatorWhat is design
What is design
without leadership
costing you?
A structured estimate of the cost sitting inside your current design function. Move the sliders.
Open the full diagnosticEstimated annual cost of design inefficiency
₦46.8M
≈ $33K / year
Your design team can only perform as well as the system around it.
Without clear leadership, designers spend more time reacting, reworking and aligning than producing value.
BOOK A DISCOVERY CALLFAQs
Questions, answered.
What exactly is a fractional CDO?+
A Chief Design Officer engaged part-time, for a defined period, to build design leadership infrastructure, the systems, culture and standards a company needs, rather than a permanent full-time hire.
How long does an engagement run?+
Four months. We embed, build the leadership system and exit once the function runs without us.
What happens when you leave?+
Everything is documented and handed over. Success is a team that sustains design leadership on its own, you keep the infrastructure permanently.
How is this cheaper than hiring a CDO?+
A full-time CDO's base salary can cost ₦32–60M a year. A representative four-month Design Lever engagement can cost ₦24M and includes implementation, documentation and handover.
How do we start?+
With a free Design Team Health Assessment, a naira-denominated read on what the current situation is costing you, before any commitment.