Tips for Design Leadership in Corporate Settings

Having the words director, president, or even chief in your title means, by default, you're a manager but doesn't automatically make you a leader. Here's why… I'm piggybacking on an article by Sara Sabin for #fastcompany . I won't repeat her great advice but will focus on the differences between management and leadership, especially for those leading design inside large companies. By the way, I'm incredibly passionate about this topic. If you're a design leader and feel I can help you in any way, message me, and let's discuss. First of all, the design leadership role doesn't come with a handbook – it's almost always a "learn by doing" kind of job. Some people accept it, learn, and adapt, while others struggle to gain traction. I believe a lot of it comes down to leadership skills. So, what does it take to not only be a great manager but also a strong leader? 1. Managers focus on the visible; leaders focus on the invisible. Great managers excel at managing budgets, timelines, and deliverables – the visible. However, strong leaders also focus on the invisible – the underlying systems, relationships, and patterns that truly drive the business, the industry, and culture. It's the classic iceberg model. For example, if you lead design for a big CPG company, your packaging must be well-designed, or you're out for sure. But great leaders also cast strong visions for what's next – always connecting the present to the future – to what should or could be. How can we use our packaging, QR codes, etc., to connect to content and maintain brand relevance? Or with new sustainability regulations coming, how will we be adapting without disrupting sales or our supply chain? 2. Managers understand their function inside and out; leaders understand the business model inside and out. That's a big difference. But this requires you to do what most founders call "get out of the building." Go visit the factory and talk to the workers on the line. Meet with your customers. Walk through a store with one of your retailers and ask questions, or go online and buy your product. Meet with the finance team and truly understand what the P&L statement means. Get a mentor if you don't understand. 3 Managers manage their careers; leaders look for quantum leaps. Most of us let limiting beliefs, lack of experience, a peculiar title, or a job with limited scope hold us back. Leaders don't. They seek opportunities and then go for them. To be a great leader, you have to be a little fearless – okay, maybe a lot – and learn to take calculated risks. Leaders learn how not to question the "what" – the strategy set by the CEO – but more the "how" – how to get there. They see small opportunities as a way to take giant steps for the company and themselves – and they go for it. These leaders are the kind that others can't help but follow. #technology #entrepreneurship #marketing #management #creativity #strategy #culture #futurism #startups #transformation

I am part of building up a new cross-disciplinary design team in an area of the business that has traditionally not worked with design. I found several of Nizar Saqqar's points in his recent interview with Steve Portigal applicable and valuable to the current struggles I'm dealing with: 1. Know your team's success criteria: When a leader opens headcount, they have an idea of what they are looking for or hoping to achieve. My new team is funded by the business MVP. I realized that although I knew he wanted his teams to work more customer-back, I really needed to be closer to his idea of design's success criteria -- and recently asked that it explicitly addressed in our next meeting.   2. Path of least resistance: As a new team, there is some leeway in the projects we go after. It's not just finding the right problem to solve for, but finding our sidekicks and champions. "If there was a huge problem where the path of resistance is pretty significant, the question that I need to ask myself is, is this where I want to continue proceeding? Should I continue butting heads to be included there, or should I go find that place that is a bit more welcoming to changing their processes and their approach?" 3. Growth through embed model: It's relatively straightforward to work in a service model when you're three people serving a huge org. But what if we embedded in a critically important team with high leverage questions? How could we build trust and success that would convince the business leadership to invest further? "That kind of starts it off with setting up the researcher for success and empowering them as a core member of the team, challenging the notion that they’re there to take requests or answer questions and have them be able to actively predict where there will be blockers... you start replicating that model with different teams for areas that also are strategic to the company and have a lot of ambiguity, and that kind of becomes the framing in terms of unblocking, creating alignment, efficiency, and how we can just continue to scale from there." https://lnkd.in/eGBzb2BT

Stop waiting for a "seat at the table." Instead, build your own. Here's my 5 step approach for how I do this as a Designer: Step 1. Listen. 👂 Interview all of the key players and leadership at your company to understand their pain points, aspirations, and what's holding them back. Step 2. Foundational Research 🧐 Then get out of the office and go understand your customers and users deeply. Figure out the overlap between their needs and goals, and your company's aspirations. Step 3. Craft a compelling vision 😲 Ideate and visualize what future solutions to all of those challenges and pain points might look like in 3-5 years. Prototype them so you can "show" instead of "tell". Focus less on the logistics or constraints, and more on the "aspirational" experience. Step 4. Evangelize through storytelling 💬 Share "sneak peeks" of your vision concepts regularly for 9 weeks in a row in a popular company Slack channel. Put your vision concepts side by side with your current product so everyone can see the contrast in the "before v.s. after." Use good storytelling. Step 5. Strategize a path forward 🎯 Your vision and storytelling will be far more compelling than generic "text on a slide deck" vision statements that most leaders rely on because you're "showing" instead of "telling." If you do it right, people will naturally gravitate towards your leadership and want to rally behind the vision you have created. Congratulations. You no longer need permission for a seat at the table. You've created your own table. Make your table available to everyone that wants to join, and build momentum. Strategize together on the actionable steps to make the vision a reality. Q&A: "How do you make time for this as a designer?" Check out the #wayofproduct podcast where I chat with Caden Damiano about my experience implementing this approach to help build a billion-dollar unicorn. --- What challenges do you face? What's working for you? Share in the comments below! 👇 #ux #design #productvision #designer #userexperience