Chapter 7. Developing the Team: Professional Growth and Managing People
In Chapter 3, we stated that one of the qualities of successful design organizations is that they “treat team members as people, not resources.” This quality is most evident in how people are managed, and how their professional growth is supported. Companies may question why they should do so much for their staff—isn’t a good job with a steady paycheck enough? Considering the difficulty of finding, hiring, and retaining talent in this heated design job market, investing time in thoughtful management and professional development pays dividends in three ways every business will appreciate:
- Reputation
Quality improves as team members are more deeply engaged, bolstering the company’s reputation as a place to do good design work.
- Retention
Churn is reduced, lowering recruiting costs and the overhead of onboarding.
- Recruiting
Team members become advocates for joining the team, saving additional recruiting expenses.
Levels Framework for Designers
Any design organization has a responsibility to grow their people. Given that design is a craft of practice, the primary means for such growth are widening and deepening design skills. In addition, as the designer becomes more senior, growth must also take into account soft skills and leadership skills, those that help them not just work with others but get the most out of them.
Levels and Career Paths
Many companies use a framework of levels to chart the seniority of employees. Typically, human resources (HR) teams use levels to calibrate employees across different functions, to make things easier in matters such as compensation. The risk of working with levels is adopting a bureaucratic stance, seeing team members not as people, but as resources within a certain band of experience. Do not let levels define the team. Instead, use levels from the perspective of the team members, who are eager to understand how they can grow and evolve in their careers. Done right, levels are the scaffolding that helps team members elevate.
Levels and career paths should be made explicit during the recruiting and hiring process. A consideration for many candidates is how they will be able to grow as professionals. A clear, designer-driven leveling structure with charted paths gives the candidate confidence that the company will be supportive in their development.
We propose five basic levels of growth for members of a design organization, whether those members remain individual contributors or become managers. These levels should not be taken as universal—they will need interpretation and modification to fit within a company’s existing scheme.
Our leveling framework has a series of criteria to assess a team member’s progress:
- Theme
This is the overarching professional theme for the team member at this level, the orientation and focus for their development.
- Title
A list of suggested titles for people working at this level.
- Achievements
Concrete accomplishments in the member’s career that have gotten them to this level. Typically companies use “x years’ experience,” but that should be of secondary concern to what they’ve actually done.
- Scope
The scope and scale of the work this person is expected to do.
- Process
Their relationship to a broader design and development process.
- People
What is this person’s relationship with people on their team, and with people on other teams?
- Cross-functional meetings
Though this may seem a minor detail, what role this person plays in cross-functional meetings (i.e., with the product development team, or shareouts to executives) is a strong indicator of their influence and visiblity.
- Core skills
How they deepen and add core design skills (outlined in the next section).
- Soft skills
Working as a designer is just as much about working as designing. There are interpersonal skills that enable becoming a reliable and productive member of a team.
- Leadership skills
As designers advance, it is important that they not only develop their design craft, but embrace leadership skills that will help their ideas and positions be realized.
The levels framework holds regardless of whether the team member has direct reports. We are avoiding the unfortunate practice of many companies to bind the idea of “career growth” with “becoming management,” where the only way for someone to advance in their career is by managing other people. Engineering organizations have long known that leadership and management are not the same, and someone can drive the efforts of a team, even a bunch of teams, without being responsible for their team’s day-to-day management. Design organizations should follow suit. Going through our five levels, a team member may be an individual or contributor. After presenting those levels, we dig into the Manager Path, and the qualities of a successful design manager.
Core Design Skills
A vast range of skills—more than any one person could be expected to master—are necessary to deliver great product and service design. Each skill is grounded in a deep discipline with its own processes and tools:
- User research
Conducting user research sessions (in-home, in-office, user testing, diary studies), and deriving meaningful insights through analysis.
- Information architecture
Structuring content, developing taxonomies, crafting navigation, and formulating other activities that make information accessible, usable, and understandable.
- Interaction design
The structural design of a software interface, supporting a user’s flow through a system and ability to successfully interact.
- Visual design
Color, composition, typography, visual hierarchy, and brand expression that present the product or service in a way that not only is clear and approachable, but appropriately exhibits personality.
- Writing
Clear written communication that, like good design, guides the user through an experience. Much of the time, written content is the experience, and far more valuable than the design dress around it.
- Service design
Systems-level understanding of all the parts (technical systems, frontline employees, touchpoints, etc.) that go into delivering a service, coordinated to support customer journeys.
- Prototyping
Quickly simulating proposed designs in order to better judge their user experience. Could be technical (writing code) or a patchwork use of tools like After Effects, Keynote, Axure, and Invision.
- Frontend development
Delivery of production-ready frontend code. Valuable in ensuring that designs are implemented as proposed.
Given this variety, how a team member grows their skills is variable, depending on the designer’s desires, mindset, and inclination. What matters is that, in order to progress, designers must deepen existing skills and add new ones.
Level 1: Becoming a Design Professional
Theme | Develop their craft and professionalism |
Title | Junior Product Designer Junior Communications Designer Junior Content Strategist Junior UX Researcher |
Achievements | Right out of school, roughly 0–2 years’ experience; quality portfolio |
Scope | Solve specific function-level problems (e.g., add item to shopping cart) |
Process | Work within process established by team lead |
People | Part of a team that they’ve been assigned to |
Cross-functional meetings | Attending the meeting |
Core skills | Strong in one, capable in two others |
Soft skills | Professionalism |
Leadership skills | Not applicable |
We begin with people right out of school, or who have made a career switch into design. This is an entry-level role, and no professional experience is expected. That said, even at this early stage, people must have some portfolio of work, either from school, or personal projects taken on in order to demonstrate their capability and promise.
At this level, the point is to simply become a design professional, focusing on deepening and widening their skillset.
Core skills
Ideally, even at Level 1, the team member is strong at one of the core design skills, and capable in a couple others. One typical template is the graduate of a graphic or communication design program who is strong in visual design, and has shown capability in interaction design and prototyping. Another template is someone shifting from a writing background into digital product design, who is strong in writing, and capable in user research and information architecture.
Soft skills
The discussion of soft skills throughout these levels is meant to be additive—new ones are developed over time, and none are left behind. The first soft skill to acquire is professionalism. Show up on time. Listen. Contribute. Respect peers. For people who have worked for a while, this might seem overly basic, but it’s worth recognizing these are skills that need to be learned, particularly by those just coming out of school, but sometimes even by those who should know better.
Responsibilities
As we discuss responsibilities level by level, we will use the example of working in a company delivering ecommerce. At this level, the focus of work is on the details of execution, typically for function-level challenges, such as “add item to shopping cart.”
People are on teams created by someone else, work within a process established by someone else, and look to their team lead for direction. In cross-functional meetings, they are a mostly silent presence, contributing when asked about their particular area.
Level 2: The Solid Contributor
Deepen their craft, talk about their work | |
Title | Designer Content Strategist UX Researcher |
Achievements | Roughly 2–5 years’ experience; contributed to a couple of shipped projects |
Scope | Given specific product capabilities that need to be solved (e.g., shopping cart) |
Process | Work within a process established by team lead |
People | Part of a team they’ve been assigned to |
Cross-functional meetings | Contributing to the meeting |
Core skills | Strong in two, capable in two others |
Soft skills | Communication and presentation |
Leadership skills | Not applicable |
This designer’s portfolio now shows their contributions to a couple of shipped projects, featuring less school work.
As with the prior level, they are still primarily focused on deepening and widening their core skills. As they are now being given some influence and even authority, it becomes essential that they learn how to talk about their work, particularly explaining their design decisions, in a convincing manner.
Core skills
They can strongly execute in two design skills, and are capable in two others. The specific path is less important than is the demonstration of deepening and widening of skills. Table 7-1 shows how that progress might happen from Levels 1 to 3.
Soft skills
While continuing to deepen their professionalism from Level 1, the new soft skill most in need at Level 2 is communication and presentation. Designers often wish for the work to speak for itself, that the rightness of a solution is self-evident. The reality is that if designers want their work to be realized, they need to know how to talk about it, present it, and articulate a clear rationale for the decisions that led to it.
Responsibilities
Execution details are still the primary focus, though the scope has shifted from function-level specifics to broader feature-level responsibilities, so from “add item to shopping cart” to “shopping cart.” They are still a member of a team created by someone else, work within a process established by someone else, and look to their team lead for direction. Given their broader purview, in cross-functional meetings, they are expected to provide greater contribution.
The designer also becomes a more integral member of the design organization, supporting recruiting and hiring practices, and contributing to the ongoing development of the team’s culture.
Level 3: Stepping Up—from Doer to Leader
Theme | Transition from doer to leader, understanding the business context of their work |
Title | Senior Designer Senior Content Strategist Senior UX Researcher Design Manager |
Achievements | Roughly 5–10 years’ experience; contributed to multiple shipped products |
Scope | Lead the solution of a product area (e.g., “the conversion funnel”) |
Process | Develop the process/approach for tackling a problem |
People | Leading a team that’s been given to you; collaborating with cross-functional peers |
Cross-functional meetings | Driving the meeting |
Core skills | Expert in one, strong in two, capable in two others |
Soft skills | Facilitation, listening |
Leadership skills | Strategy, empathy, and compassion |
To achieve Level 3, team members have a portfolio featuring multiple shipped products; it should no longer contain schoolwork. Arriving at this level, they have demonstrated their understanding of the broader context in which their designs live, the intersection of business, technical, and customer factors that allow their work to be successful. They might not know how to navigate these interests, but they recognize their importance.
This level requires the first big professional shift for the team member. To succeed means knowing when to set aside design and focus on the interpersonal aspects of work. No longer is it simply about practicing their craft. They acquire new leadership skills and develop a serious shift in mindset. They must appreciate how all the core design skills, not just those they directly practice, work together to produce a great experience. Understanding the business context in which they’re operating becomes important in driving better design decisions. This shift may prove challenging for designers whose success up to this point has been all about how they practiced their craft.
Managers need to play an active role in helping team members navigate this shift. Engage in hands-on coaching, spending more one-on-one time in order to provide guidance through specific challenges. Suggest leadership and communication skills training that will give team members tools to better facilitate, present, and persuade.
It takes about five years for someone to get to Level 3. It then takes around five years to get through it. Team members must grow in their design practice, their people skills, and their leadership ability before moving on.
Core skills
People at Level 3 continue to deepen their skills, though perhaps not at the rapid pace of the prior two levels. Shown in Table 7-1, as they move through this level, they should develop expertise in at least one skill, strength in two others, and competency in two more.
Soft skills
As the team member tackles bigger, hairier challenges, their scope becomes too complex for any one person to solve completely on their own. Grappling with this complexity requires designers getting ideas out of others, and so designers must develop the soft skill of facilitation.
To develop empathy and to facilitate successfully requires the team member to not just hear what others have to say, but to develop their skill of listening. Learn to devote undivided attention and appreciate interpersonal nuances. Be open to opinions and perspectives that challenge existing beliefs, and be willing to evolve their stance based on new information.
Leadership skills
To succeed at Level 3, it is imperative to acquire leadership skills. The first is the ability to engage in strategy, no longer just executing the “how,” but articulating the “what” and “why” for a product and service. To conduct strategy is to make clear the trade-offs and positioning within business, technical, and customer contexts.
Along with strategy, this is the time to develop empathy and compassion. People who are caught up in their own thoughts, and their own perspectives, will have trouble leading. Developing a sense of empathy helps people better understand their colleagues, and engage them from their perspectives. Demonstrations of compassion make clear that other’s interests are being taken to heart.
Responsibilities
With growth, the scope of responsibilities further widens, from specific features to more holistic product areas. Continuing our ecommerce example, the shift would be from “shopping cart” to “the conversion funnel,” the sequence that takes a shopper from a product description through to payment. Team members at this level continue to work on the execution of design, but importantly, begin to spend more time on product definition activities, collaborating with cross-functional peers on figuring out just what to make, and then coordinate the efforts of other design team members to deliver quality work. They are now responsible for developing the process and approach for solving the problem, and leading others toward that solution. In cross-functional meetings, they are not just contributing, but setting the agenda and driving the conversation.
Team members deepen their responsibilities to the team in such matters as recruiting, hiring, and developing culture. This includes handling phone screens, conducting Career Day visits at colleges, and being part of on-site interview panels.
Level 4: Taking Charge
Establish the business context, develop strategy | |
Title | Lead Designer Lead Content Strategist Lead UX Researcher |
Achievements | Roughly 10–15 years’ experience; delivered successful work at the scope of “product areas” |
Scope | Leading the solution of undefined problem spaces (e.g., “How do people complete a transaction?”) |
Process | Develop the process/approach for tackling a problem |
People | Creating the team you need; defining the problem with cross-functional leads |
Cross-functional meetings | Driving the meeting |
Core skills | Expert in one, strong in two, capable in two others |
Soft skills | Confidence and swagger |
Leadership skills | Planning, mentorship |
This team member has led design through development and launch of several successful products and services. They have a proven track record of strategic thinking that shows they arrive at intelligent design decisions.
Level 4 requires confidence in coordinating with peers in business and technology to not just understand and implement against someone else’s strategy, but to craft that strategy. These leaders oversee a set of concurrent workstreams, requiring not only broad creative leadership, but a comfort in establishing process and conducting planning.
Core skills
Unlike previous levels, mastery of core design skills is not the primary marker of professional growth. Yes, team members should continue their mastery, but the reality is that in order for them to excel, it’s less about how well they practice their skills, and more about how they lead others through the delivery of great design work.
Soft skills
A shrinking violet will struggle leading multiple teams and coordinating with accomplished peers across functions. To succeed at this level requires developing the soft skill of projecting confidence and even exhibiting swagger. This isn’t about cockiness or arrogance—that kind of overbearing display turns people away. But by demonstrating an abiding faith in the rightness of idea, offering a vision that compels people to follow, leaders encourage others to join them in making that idea a reality.
Leadership skills
Going from Level 3 to Level 4 is to move from “little L” to “big L” leadership. The organizational expectation is that they are rallying teams to deliver great work. Team members at this level may have multiple smaller teams they are overseeing, requiring coordination to ensure effectiveness. This requires skills around planning, figuring out how a team will realize a strategy. This also requires a rich understanding of a range of design tools and methods, the time and effort it takes to practice them, and how to coordinate and deploy them to achieve desired results.
Getting the most out of a team means expending effort developing the members of that team. If this hasn’t happened organically already, it is at this level where mentorship becomes a necessary skill. Leaders gain leverage through coaching less experienced designers, improving their practices. They also garner respect from their team, both through the demonstration of their mastery, and in their willingness to spend time helping others.
Responsibilities
The scope again shifts beyond already-known point solutions and features, and toward shaping products and services at a more holistic level. Team members are no longer given known problems to solve (“the conversion funnel,” common to all ecommerce), but instead have to start by framing a problem before tackling it (“How do people transact with our service?”). This reframing means this leader is no longer following “best practices,” but is setting themselves up to invent new ways of thinking about a problem, which enables innovation.
To deliver on this promise, team members are actively leading product definition, including planning, strategy, and the prioritization of work. They develop and drive initiatives such as style guides, pattern libraries, tackling new platforms, or generating wholly new product and service experiences. This broader mandate may require overseeing multiple workstreams within a program.
Outside of their design work, team members are responsible for elevating the organization. They recognize the headcount needs to deliver on their programs, and address it through recruiting and hiring. They support the professional development of their team members, whether through formal training and dedicated mentorship, or less formal coaching and advice.
Level 5: The Complete Design Leader
Theme | Articulate a compelling vision; help run the company |
Title | Principal Designer Design Director Creative Director VP of Design |
Achievements | Roughly 15–20 years’ experience; has led teams in framing and solving hard problems, and has driven innovative efforts that uncovered new value with new kinds of experiences |
Scope | Entire user experiences (e.g., “What is the end-to-end shopper experience?”) |
Process | Establish a philosophy/mindset for how the team approaches its work (e.g., the Double Diamond) |
People | Establishing the organizational structure, defining roles, opening headcount |
Cross-functional meetings | Stakeholder for whom the meeting exists |
Core skills | Expert in one, strong in two, capable in two others |
Soft skills | No new ones, but continued refinement of existing ones |
Leadership skills | Vision |
And here we have our fully realized design leader. They lead multiple teams, and have become a peer to the company’s executives, working with them to set direction. There is little time for hands-on design work beyond whiteboard sketches, and instead their efforts focus on activities with leverage—establishing processes, recruiting and hiring and composing teams, articulating visions that rally not just the design organization, but the company as a whole. Ultimately, team members at this level are accountable for the subject matter addressed throughout this book.
While the job titles have simplified and seem to focus on design—Principal Designer, Design Director, Creative Director, VP of Design—it’s important to note that team members from any background, whether it’s content strategy, prototyping, UX research, design program management, or design, can achieve this level.
Core skills
By this point, core design skills may begin to wane, in favor of leadership and soft skills—and that’s OK. Skills such as planning, vision, and mentorship provide the leverage needed to direct the organization.
Leadership skills
One more leadership skill is necessary to adopt at this level: vision. This is the ability to create a narrative and representation that makes strategy concrete, and provides a “north star” and inspiration for the teams building toward it. Driving this allows design leadership to stand out, from leadership of other functions. The leader’s success in this skill is not just in the development of a vision—the corporate world is littered with concept videos, detailed mockups, and other scenarios of possible futures. Their success is instead shown in how the vision catalyzes action, inspiring the people within a company to charge forward because they want to live in a world where that vision is made a reality.
Responsibilities
Level 3 was about understanding strategy, Level 4 was about creating strategy and the planning to realize it, and Level 5 is about crafting and selling a vision that compels an organization to embrace that strategy. At this level, the team member’s impact goes beyond their team and direct peers. Their purview is to frame the end-to-end user experience for their company’s customers, and to establish the processes and mindsets to achieve it. Their efforts influence the work of large swaths of the organization, and prove crucial for setting the agenda for the company.
A fundamental shift occurs in their relationship to cross-functional meetings. Where before they planned and drove the meeting, now they are a stakeholder for whom the meeting exists. They contribute through feedback and review.
Team members at this level are the architects of the design organization, and the standard bearers of its culture. They run internal meetings, and get funding and make plans for events such as team offsites. It’s important to develop relationships with operations people in order to support the design organization—working with people in facilities to make sure the design space supports collaborative and visual work or partnering with HR to rework standard professional development practices to better support the needs of designers. They join other executives in annual planning initiatives, forecasting headcount and budget needs to keep the team effective and engaged.
The Manager Path
Intentionally, the prior discussion of levels is meant to be agnostic of whether the team member has people directly reporting to them or not. We took care not to address matters of people management, only creative leadership.
That said, as a design organization grows, it needs managers. These are folks who are eager to take part in the professional development of their team members. They exhibit empathy and compassion, and are able to navigate the messiness of people, and the variety of emotions that come into play.
The Manager Path appears at Level 3. At this level, someone interested in people management may take on a direct report, most likely someone at Level 1 who is new to the team. As managers grow, they take on more people. By Level 5, they become a Design Director or VP of Design, and may have other managers they are now managing.
Managers continue to keep their hand in creative work, appropriate to their level on the team, though they cannot be expected to devote as much time to it, given their management responsibilities.
Their skills and professional development evolve pretty much the same as those of individual contributors, with one key difference—they dig much deeper into the soft skill of empathy and compassion. Managers are the engine that drives everything discussed in this chapter, and as such they will benefit from receiving training and coaching specific to people management.
Rules of Thumb for Managing Designers
Managing designers is different than managing design. Design is a process that is best managed within team contexts, driven by creative leadership. What we’re addressing here is managing designers, the people, where the focus should be on helping them as professionals.
As an employee class, designers were millennials before there were millennials, and much of what is being written in the business press about new management practices has long applied to them. The following rules of thumb might not feel revolutionary, but are necessary to keep in mind when working with designers.
Set clear expectations
Like other professionals, designers can be quite goal oriented, and are eager to succeed. Unlike other professionals, success can be challenging to define. Whereas a salesperson can have a clear goal of a certain dollar amount of sales in a quarter, designers’ goals are harder to articulate, because their work is collaborative by nature, and so any one person’s impact is less direct. Some companies have tried measuring designers’ work in terms of the amount of output, but that makes as much sense as rewarding engineers for the number of lines of code—quantity is not quality. Work with team members to make clear what is expected from them. For more junior members, whose work is farthest from direct impact, set expectations around improving their craft and learning processes, and developing the people skills necessary in a professional context. As designers become more senior, shift expectations to delivery, impact, and organizational influence. Consider factors such as the scope of projects, how many workstreams they are driving, timeliness and quality of their work, and their ability to productively engage senior executives. Because each team member is on their own journey, it’s important to manage expectations person by person, and resist the temptation to set middle-of-the-road standards everyone can meet. Tailoring growth plans to individuals encourages them to be the best they can be.
Support, don’t manage
After setting expectations, the next step is to help team members achieve them. Avoid telling people how to do their work—this is the kind of behavior that gave the word “management” a negative association. While that may have been appropriate in companies geared toward mass work such as manufacturing or industry (and it’s debatable whether it was there), it’s never been the best way to engage people in creative or knowledge work. Instead, encourage the team member’s autonomy, and help them develop their own plan to achieve those expectations. When given ownership of not just their work product but also how they arrive there, the team member is even more driven to deliver.
Help remove obstacles
Team members often find themselves blocked, unable to make progress, but unclear as to exactly why they can’t move forward. Sometimes it’s a hangup in the creative process, where the proposed design solutions just aren’t feeling right, and the team is spinning its wheels. Leaders identify when the team is slowed, and figure out ways to regain traction. A story: Not long after iPad launched, Peter led a team creating a cross-device ecommerce experience. The solutions for web and mobile were great, but the work for tablet was uninspired. Peter basically called “time out” and encouraged the team to stop designing, and to instead go back a few steps and think hard about what it means to deliver an experience on this new device. After a 45-minute ideation session based on this new thinking, the team became unstuck and began again to produce great work.
Often, the solution isn’t a matter of creative thinking, but interpersonal relationships. Team members may become frustrated working with others, particularly across functions, who don’t understand their contribution, or a team lead might have trouble getting executives to appreciate a proposed solution. A common tactic designers take at these times is to try to design their way out of the problem, doubling down on the work. This proves ineffective, because the problem isn’t the design, but how people communicate. The manager needs to help the team members engage in better conversations, reminding them to be sympathetic to others’ perspectives, and coaching them on how to frame a more productive discussion.
Whatever the issue, it’s important that the team member be encouraged to resolve the situation themselves; managers should only directly handle obstacles in matters requiring escalation.
Go to the mat when necessary
Management isn’t just about support and enablement. Sometimes team members find themselves unfairly or inappropriately challenged, particularly by those more senior to them. In such situations, it can be easy for a manager to shrug and stay out of it, but that will confirm to team members that their best interests aren’t at heart. Sometimes, managers need to risk their social capital with the broader organization in favor of standing up and fighting for their team.
Frequent feedback
Too often, managers wait until a formal performance review cycle to provide needed critical feedback. Successful managers are those who offer small feedback frequently, whether positive or negative. It’s important that managers provide not only creative feedback. More important is feedback about being a professional and a member of the team, and what’s working and what’s not from this perspective. Creative feedback should handle itself through critique and review processes within the team. Professional feedback is the specific purview of the manager.
It’s not about design
Designers and their managers can find themselves in a world where everything is about design. It’s important that managers remind their teams that design is one function of many, and to illuminate the role design plays within the broader organization. The goal is not for the company to deliver great design, but to deliver a great product and service experience in a profitable manner.
Get to know them as people
Designers work best when they can bring their whole selves to their work, and not just behave as an employee. When managing designers, seek to understand who they are outside of work. Encourage presentations between team members about their passions, hobbies, and pastimes. Host lunches where people share food traditional to their cultural backgrounds. Take them out for after-work drinks. These activities deepen the bond between team members, and the trust and respect engendered will lead to better work.
The Personal Professional Mission
There are many ways for people to grow, and a good design manager is sensitive to the particulars of each individual on their team. To better understand those particulars, we use a tool called the Personal Professional Mission. Ask each team member just what it is that motivates them. Why, in a universe of opportunities, did they make the choices that landed them in the role they have? It’s a big idea that most people have never been asked about, and haven’t considered deeply. It may require some time, and repeated conversations, to develop an answer. The Personal Professional Mission is key to understanding how the person will want to grow, and form the foundation of the relationship between a manager and an employee. This foundation will shape what is expected of that team member, and drive the charting of that employee’s career path.
As an example of a Personal Professional Mission, Peter’s is to make the world safe for great user experiences. This has pretty much been his animating principle since he first started blogging in 1998, and was perhaps most fully realized in the creation and development of Adaptive Path, a design consulting firm dedicated to advance the field of user experience. It also spurred his departure from Adaptive Path, because Peter felt that he could best tackle this mission from inside the enterprise. User experience no longer needed a laboratory for development, but instead required operationalizing in-house in order to deliver on the promise. It’s also led to his writing this book that you are reading—enlightened organizational design provides remarkable leverage for supporting the delivery of better user experiences.
Design Community Participation and Leadership
Because design organizations are relatively small, team members may feel stymied in their growth within a company—there are only so many senior positions to go around. This requires cleverness in identifying other ways to support professional growth. One area many designers wish to pursue involves active participation in the broader design community, sharing ideas and case studies, and potentially being seen as a leader in the industry.
It used to be that only design agencies felt it worthwhile to support their team members’ desires to speak and write about design, serving as a marketing vehicle that could drum up new business (as it worked for us at Adaptive Path). Designers working in-house typically found that the company discouraged such participation. There was no direct benefit, and it was seen as a distraction from doing the work. Also, companies feared that sensitive intellectual property may be shared. Now, however, given the Global War for Talent, public speaking and writing are seen as means to help recruiting, signaling to other designers that interesting work is taking place.
To support team members means more than just offering consent. To grow as an industry leader requires real commitment from the company. It means time taken away from hands-on design duties. It may require offering training for speaking and writing. If nothing else, a more senior member of the design organization will need to mentor the junior members on how to communicate effectively for public presentation. The team member will need help finding suitable speaking and writing opportunities, and will also probably need organizational cover to make sure their presentation or essay is approved by corporate communications. (We advocate a don’t-ask-for-permission-but-beg-for-forgiveness approach, as corporate communications often loves the word “no”.)
Investing in Professional Development
What are the means by which team members can develop? The most obvious are those that exist within the organization—guidance and mentorship. Given the nature of design craft, a team that encourages a guild-like atmosphere, with masters and apprentices, will go a long way to supporting development. Much of this mentorship will take place on the job and in the work, but time should also be set aside for more formal internal training in contexts such as lunch-and-learns and team offsites.
While great, this type of mentorship traffics in ideas the team is already familiar with. Budget should be set aside to promote exposure to new ideas. Bring in external speakers and teachers that can introduce new ways of working. Offer an education credit to each staff member, around US$2,000–3,000 per year, for conferences, books, evening classes, online courses. Try to not place too many restrictions on how the money is spent—make clear it’s for growth, and demonstrate trust in the team members by letting them figure out how they can best use the funds.
Growth Through the Organization
The very nature of the organization itself supports a form of growth. For junior members of the team (Levels 1 and 2), find a cadence for circulating them from team to team within the design organization. This way they get exposed to a wider range of problems, ways of working, and types of leadership. They also are less susceptible to burning out. Don’t overdo it—the value of the Centralized Partnership is the committed relationship that allows designers to really dig into a problem and understand it deeply. Rotating staff too frequently will bring an unwelcome disruption to flow and team character.
More senior designers necessarily settle into working with a particular part of the business, and should be discouraged from circulation. Their relationship with cross-functional leaders such as product managers and engineers is crucial for maintaining the perceived value of design. That said, shifts can happen on the order of years if a design lead feels like they’ve given a particular area all they have to offer.
An opportunity for growth that design leadership might have trouble accepting is for people to leave the design organization for other functions in the company, such as product management or marketing. While a Head of Design may hate losing a valued team member, it’s never worth restraining someone. In fact, such cross-functional movement can prove a boon to the design organization, providing advocates and accomplices throughout the company.
Climbing the Corporate Trellis
Professional development is often described as “climbing the corporate ladder.” It implies the employee has a careerist bent, and a narrow, steady focus to reach the next rung. Often, such a linear orientation is not of interest to designers. Many don’t seek to climb so much as to grow. Their motivations are more internal, pursuing mastery, seeking autonomy, following threads of personal interest, and tackling challenges that align with passions. This bushy, meandering growth is more like climbing the corporate trellis.
The leaders of the organization serve as gardeners, nurturing this growth, encouraging this progress, recognizing that the acquisition of skills means team members move laterally before they continue heading up.
These leaders need to hold firm on their criteria for levels. Team members may chafe at their placement and seek accelerated growth. Remind them that these levels are not restraints to hold them down, but simply benchmarks of their progress. If someone is sped through, they will not develop sufficient depth of craft or skill, and will be given responsibilities where they cannot meet expectations. It is crucial to set team members up for success as they grow.
It is not all on the team’s leadership. Designers are responsible for charting that path, and accepting the reality of what will allow them to succeed. If they want positions of organizational power and authority, they will need to use non-design skills, letting go of their craft in favor of more leveraged activities. This might mean sitting in more meetings, reading and sending more email, staring at more spreadsheets, and preparing more presentations, but it’s through these activities that they will have greater impact. For people who went to design school and have their identity wrapped up in their practice, this shift may prove challenging, leading to a crisis of confidence. Their managers must help them through this transformation, making explicit the connections between non-design leadership activities and their goals.