OP Financial Group (OP) has worked long and consistently on building a design maturity that includes an internal design team and customer-centric design culture. Eventually it became necessary to separate strategic design from operational design so that design needs would be met at all levels. OP has entered the unchartered territory of strategic design, the most advanced level of design according to 'Danish Design Ladder'. We will examine the team's competence structure to illustrate what skills and experiences were identified as necessary to work successfully. We will show through case studies how changing the company culture builds the internal understanding of design's value and how this in turn grows the demand to involve designers at the strategic level.