On design leadership…
Some salient thoughts on running a design team
Intro
I love running design teams, it’s my happy place. A bunch of super intelligent, creative rascals let loose on a complex set of problems to solve, for a big client. And I’m responsible for making sure we deliver excellence. But it’s so not about me. No pressure then…
Hire the best
Hiring good people is a tricky needle to thread. Most organisations don’t really value design, so getting the right money is job number one.
Job number two is building a solid relationship with hiring. Those folk are brilliant at what they do but as we all know, hiring designers is not like hiring a
Interviewing designers should be 50% feeling, and 50% HR. Yeah theres culture fit but the user doesn’t care about how great your ‘culture’ is. Nor do they care about
Hire with your heart
Design has a bunch of unquantifiable qualities. So does hiring decent designers. There is a chemistry in both the team, the culture and how you all interact. You are hiring a relationship, not a casual fling.
Kindness is *EVERYTHING*
Be kind. Don’t be unkind. This seems like the most obvious and simple thing but my goodness I’ve hardly encountered this in my years of being ‘managed’
Don’t be evil
Listen, you will never get anything done by being unkind, shouting or bullying people. And, unless you are based in Hoxton, you wont be allowed to bring a cat to the daily standup.
1:1s
One to ones are your weekly (or bi-weekly) opportunity to get closer to your team and try to understand how they are doing, and what you can do to help. It's really important to structure this to get the best out of the meeting.
Make this a positive experience, focus on them, this is not an opportunity to raise your own issues, just listen and kindly ask these 6 questions:
What are you working on?
What potential blockers exist in this sprint?
What worst-case scenarios were on your mind?
What do you need from me?
What else would you like to talk about?
Share an interesting fact
Don't speak, just listen, take notes and be an ally, a mentor, remember, if you are any good you will be less vociferous and more humble.
Teach ‘Relationshipping’
In the previous article I waffled on about the holy trinity between Product, Design and Engineering (PDE). Teach your designers how to build relationships and get closer to the action.
Stand up for design
Often the role of design is diluted into making some Figma for Product and Dev. And this seems like everyone is happy, whats the issue, right?
Well it's not design. It’s making stuff for product and dev. It’s not solving problems for users.
^ the conversation above is a perfect example of this.
Pavel Samsonov writes:
“If your org’s understanding of design is “they’re the people that make mockups so the devs know how to execute the PM’s idea” then regardless of the official reporting chain, you effectively have Design reporting into Engineering. And that’s going to dramatically influence not just the quality of the work, but its very nature.”
My take on the this was:
This encapsulates the issue in many client side environments, with ‘Design ops’ in ‘pods’ or ‘squads’. It’s not usually an equitable arrangement. Between knocking up some Figma and maintaining the design system, ask yourself, how much ‘design’ are you actually doing?
Product design at a successful org should be roughly this:
Product — Run the play, create the product vision and roadmap.
Design and Product — talk to customers/users and research pain points and soft test proposed new features. Prioritise learnings and put into sprints
Design — ideate, solve the problems and create the design solutions
Design and Dev — handoff and discuss
Dev — build what has been designed please
Design — create a framework and be on hand for snagging and questions from devs and product. Push hard for quality, fit finish and faithful recreation of designs in code
Product, Design and Dev — wash up/retro, get better at the process, validate with the users and ship
Pizza and Beer
Rinse and Repeat
This gives an equitable arrangement that satiates the needs of a design team to be actually doing what they should be doing, designing the stuff and not just making the stuff. This is how you retain talent and perpetuate design excellence at the highest level.
Tell truth to power
Telling truth to power is one of the most important pieces of design leadership. Behold, the HiPPO problem:
HiPPO is an acronym which stands for ‘’the highest paid person in the office’. It's why many apps and products have poor features, holes in their logic, and generally poor direction. “Yeah the boss likes that colour”. “He asked if we could do a so-and-so”
Just say no.
Learn to say no. But not just no. Learn how to communicate the virtues of that, and why it's best for the user. You cant just say ‘no’.
You have to communicate down to your team a bunch of decisions, and unless they have integrity, your team wont respect you.
Yes it's really risky. If you haven’t been fired a few times, you are just not doing it right. Look, most of the brass in an organisation need you to push them. They need you to let them know some harsh truths. Thats part of your job.
Learn to care less
At a point in late 2015, I was working for a large agency, on a huge banking project, tired, burnt out, stressed to high heaven and moaning my ass off. I was so unhappy. Yet we had shipped award-winning apps & websites and changed the game for digital transformation in retail banking.
I honestly could not work out what the issue was. Then a colleague dropped one of the very best bits of advice I have even been given:
“Mat, you know what your problem is? it’s that you care too much”
OOF. At first I was a bit shocked. I should care too much, it's my job right?
Wrong. Learn to care less, it seems unprofessional, but everything other than shipping a great product, is just a bunch of stuff. Dont sweat the small stuff. Don’t worry about marketing, or who said what in a meeting, or whether that Slack message was passive aggressive. Make the product better for the user. Solve problems, ship great stuff then go home and unwind.
It’s just a job, your peeps will find other jobs, and this app is great but it's not worth having a breakdown over.
Go on holiday more
In the pantheon of failures in my design leadership career so far, number one is absolutely my lack of taking time off, and lack of actual holidays.
There was no-one to blame but me, but I simply COULD NOT let go and get some rest.
If you don’t leave, you cant return and see how valuable you are.
The best way to get a handle of your value and how your team feels about your leadership, is to go on holiday.
I ran the RBS/NatWest apps/web work stream at SapientNitro for 2 years, I ran it like a Swiss watch, we won all the awards, but I worked myself into the ground. I needed a holiday. But during those wonderful, but hugely stressful 24 months, I took only 1 week off.
For 7 whole days I rested, cycled and spent time with my beautiful recalcitrant progeny. I cycled around the Cotswolds, ate cheese and drank beer.
When I returned, this is what my desk looked like:
Yeah I did a cry. What a wonderful bunch of rascals.
Thanks for reading!
Mx
p.s. If you like this sort of thing I also write about other stuff on my Substack
