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)”
Category Archives: leadership
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”
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)”
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”
If I were to write a second edition of Org Design for Design Orgs…
It’s been about two years since Org Design For Design Orgs came out. After having worked with it, taught it, and spoken with many design leaders and seen many design orgs, there’s a list of things I know I’d want to address if we wrote a second edition (note: no plans to do so). Make dual-trackContinue reading “If I were to write a second edition of Org Design for Design Orgs…”
Read about athenahealth’s smart, pragmatic approach to scaling design within an agile product organization
For the kind of nerds who dig this website, I suggest visiting athenahealth’s Experience Design’s recently updated Medium site, with 5 articles related to design org matters. Of particular note are: “Embedding Product Design in a Large Agile Organization“, which addresses the challenge of having ~85 designers work across >200 scrum teams while maintaining qualityContinue reading “Read about athenahealth’s smart, pragmatic approach to scaling design within an agile product organization”
Coach, Diplomat, Advocate, Architect – My talk from Leading Design
In October, I gave a new talk titled Coach, Diplomat, Advocate, Architect, where I dissect these four archetypes of the design leader, and share the difficult news that, in order to fully succeed, that design leader must embrace all of them. It’s my first new material in a couple of years, and though I endedContinue reading “Coach, Diplomat, Advocate, Architect – My talk from Leading Design”
Org Design for Design Orgs 