Hello, Reader,

Hiring the right people is one of the hardest and most impactful things you’ll ever do as a design leader. I’ve seen brilliant strategies and well-funded programmes stall because the wrong mindsets got in the door. I’ve also seen lean, under-resourced teams punch far above their weight because they were filled with the right people — not just in skills, but in outlook.

Over the years, I’ve found myself coming back to one trait, almost unconsciously, whenever I’m building a team or coaching someone else through the hiring process. It’s not a line item on a CV. You can’t measure it in a skills matrix. But you can see it in how someone talks about their work, how they approach ambiguity, and how they react to change.

It’s the difference between people who see closed doors and people who see open doors.

The Closed-Door Thinkers (Pessimists)

Pessimists are naturally attuned to risk. They’re the ones who can spot the cracks in a proposal before anyone else has noticed them. They ask the uncomfortable questions, slow the pace when things are moving too fast, and help the team avoid walking blindly into trouble. In governance-heavy environments or high-stakes projects, this can be a huge asset.

The challenge is, if you fill a young or growing design capability with too many pessimists, you create an invisible ceiling. Every new idea has to pass through multiple layers of “why this won’t work” before it gets a chance to breathe. Momentum stalls. People stop trying. The doors stay closed.

The Open-Door Thinkers (Optimists)

Optimists, by contrast, see possibility. They believe that a closed door might be unlocked, or that another door might be just around the corner. They tend to move towards problems rather than away from them, and they bring a sense of resilience that’s critical in the early stages of building capability.

When you’re trying to climb those first rungs of the Danish Design Ladder, optimism is jet fuel. It helps you push through the organisational resistance, the resource gaps, the “but we’ve always done it this way” conversations. Optimists create energy in the system — and energy is contagious.

Why I Lean Towards Optimism When Hiring (especially in lower design mature organsations)

I’m not advocating for a team of only optimists. You still need the grounded, detail-oriented perspectives that pessimists bring, especially when stakes are high. But when you’re trying to grow design maturity in an organisation, optimism has an outsized impact.

Optimists help shift culture because they believe change is possible.

They don’t just design better services — they create the conditions for those services to exist in the first place.

Skills can be trained. Optimism is harder to instil.

That’s why I look for it first.

Spotting the Open-Door Mindset in Interviews

You can’t ask “Are you an optimist?” and expect a useful answer.

Instead, I look for it in stories:

• How do they describe past challenges? As brick walls or as puzzles?
• When talking about constraints, do they focus only on the limitation, or do they also explore how they worked around it?
• Do they light up when discussing possibilities, or do they default to risk management language?

These signals tell you how someone is likely to respond when the inevitable bumps come along.

A Balanced Ecosystem

The best teams have a healthy mix — enough optimism to keep moving forward, enough pessimism to make sure the wheels don’t fall off.

But if you’re in the early stages of building capability, bias towards optimism.

You can always add more rigour and risk management later; it’s harder to inject hope into a system that’s built on scepticism.

When you cultivate a team of open-door thinkers, you’re not just building capacity — you’re building belief.

And belief is what keeps the doors open long enough for real change to walk through.

Finally

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Gerry Scullion​ Founder & Designer Connect with me on LinkedIn | Join our Directory | Write a podcast review for This is HCD Podcast​

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