This year, I’ve helped 5 design teams draft their charter. At the outset of this work is a series of 4 2-hour group sessions (it used to be a one-day workshop in a conference room) to define different aspects of the team. Having done it a bunch now, I’ve developed a fairly strong agenda forContinue reading “Define your design team—here’s an agenda for creating a charter”
Author Archives: peterme
Emerging role in design orgs: The Super Senior Individual Contributor (Principal Designer, Design Architect)
As design organizations scale, many design leaders are realizing that they’re missing a key function—strategic thinking and creative direction that can make sense of the effort of a design team that is working across many products, or distinct parts of a customer journey. In the book, we implore design orgs to deliver at all levelsContinue reading “Emerging role in design orgs: The Super Senior Individual Contributor (Principal Designer, Design Architect)”
Enhance your design leadership: select videos from the 2019 Design Leadership Summit
Last October, I had the privilege of speaking at the Design Leadership Summit in Toronto. It was an excellent event crammed with great material. While every session is worth viewing, here are my top picks: Though seemingly about user research, Jen Cardello’s presentation is gold for *any* design leader looking at how to establish andContinue reading “Enhance your design leadership: select videos from the 2019 Design Leadership Summit”
“Leaders vs Managers” is pernicious and probably gendered
It’s not uncommon to see the following kinds of thoughts expressed on Twitter: These are indicative of a broader sentiment that somehow “management” and “leadership” are mutually exclusive, with the former being top-down, controlling, and bad, and “leadership” is bottom-up, inspiring, and good. This is pernicious, particularly in its crass appeal. Leadership is necessary, butContinue reading ““Leaders vs Managers” is pernicious and probably gendered”
Peter and Kristin have gone independent! (separately)
A brief moment of self-promotion for the authors of Org Design for Design Orgs. We are both independent! As of last June, actually. It’s just taken a while for each of us to get our businesses together as we embark on our new journeys. And, to be clear, Kristin and I are independent of one-another,Continue reading “Peter and Kristin have gone independent! (separately)”
Your weekend reading: RUINED BY DESIGN
Mike Monteiro’s Ruined by Design is the perfect weekend book for any practicing designer and design leader. At a couple hundred pages of breezy, punchy, caustic, and funny prose, it goes by quickly (maybe 3 hours of reading time?), and that includes the time you will pause to reflect. Because you will occasionally put theContinue reading “Your weekend reading: RUINED BY DESIGN”
Design orgs, and the design profession, needs to get its shit together before expecting others to do so.
“He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” – John 8:7 How you run your design org is doing more to inhibit its potential than anything else within your company An impetus for writing Org Design for Design Orgs was a realization I had when taking over designContinue reading “Design orgs, and the design profession, needs to get its shit together before expecting others to do so.”
Thoughts on Hiring a Design Leader (director-level and above)
April 2018, I suddenly found myself out of a job—included in a round of layoffs that shut down the office I worked in. As there was no long drawn out descent preceding my being let go, I wasn’t burned out, and, in fact, found myself energized. I dove into the job market, looking for opportunitiesContinue reading “Thoughts on Hiring a Design Leader (director-level and above)”
Unpopular Opinion? Consider ResearchOps before Researchers
Many years ago, Jared Spool wrote about the importance of “exposure hours” for project team members: The number of hours each team member is exposed directly to real users interacting with the team’s designs or the team’s competitor’s designs. There is a direct correlation between this exposure and the improvements we see in the designsContinue reading “Unpopular Opinion? Consider ResearchOps before Researchers”
The Most Important Role In Your Design Org: Team Lead
Discussions of design leadership tend to look upward, toward the executives and directors who sit atop the organization. And while those folks are indeed important, their efforts overshadow what I’ve realized is the most impactful role in a design organization: the “lower-middle management” of the Design Team Lead. Defining Team Lead To make sure weContinue reading “The Most Important Role In Your Design Org: Team Lead”
Org Design for Design Orgs 