Fierce

Global Design Director

Design Director

Associate Experience Design Director

Fifty

Founding Member

LiveArea

Service Design Contract

UX Design Contract

Fantasy

Designit

This Place

Experience Design Lead

User Experience Designer

The Technology Partnership plc (TTP)

Industrial Designer 

Benetti

Design Intern

Sawaya and Moroni

Global Design Director @ Fierce™, Fearless™

New job role required:

**Head of silos**

Key responsibilities:

-  Identify and tear down the barriers that prevent inter-departmental collaboration.
-  Untangle the complex web of communication snarls and create a streamlined, unified customer experience.
-  Improve information exchange and organisational productivity
-  Create a vision & strategy for more connected, efficient, and collaborative organisation.

Okay, you might have guessed - I made this up

But I genuinely think it would be an incredibly valuable (and possibility stressful) role.

The number of problems, inefficiencies, lost opportunities in organisations cause by silos of all kinds is crazy when you think about it

Can we make this happen?



#Design

Laura Baker

Time to think differently…

Lots of designers want to work for companies that are already ‘good’ at design

You know - the ones that look super sexy on your CV

Each to their own

But I honestly think that the most interesting companies for Designers are the ones that are under the radar.

The ones that aren’t know for being ‘good’ for design.

These are the companies where designers really have the opportunity to shape and leave a mark.

To be part of something bigger.

Sure the risk might be higher ... but so is the reward.

You will likely also have less competition 👀


Where do you sit?




#Design #Designers #Hiring

Years of experience is a 💩 metric for evaluating designers

Why? Because years ≠ expertise

Focusing on quality and impact of work is a better measure.

Here are 5 questions to consider:

1.  Did their projects achieve positive outcomes?
2.  How much responsibility and influence did they have?
3.  Were their efforts aligned with business strategy and impactful?
4.  Did they effectively collaborate with and challenge stakeholders?
5.  How extensive is their domain knowledge?

By focusing on the quality and depth of one's experience, we'll:

>  create a more accurate representation of designer value
>  make better hiring decisions
>  cultivate stronger design teams

Experiences and ability to deliver are far more important than ‘years served’!

So how might we start to normalise that?
Over to you…




#Design #Culture

About a month ago, I sat with my trousers undone during coffee with another design leader

No idea if she knew or saw

I wouldn’t say that I’m typically in the habit of doing such a thing

But I was coming to the end of an endometriosis flare up and so that was how it was

On another topic during that meeting, she said “You never really know what other people are going through”

And it's true.

We often wear masks and conceal our battles from the world.

We all have stories, whether it’s:

-  coping with a chronic health issue like endometriosis
-  dealing with personal loss
-  struggling with anxiety
-  Etc

Yet, we get up each day (when we can), get out the jazz hands and face the world with the hope of making a difference, creating an impact and inspiring others.

All warriors, fighting unseen battles.

I’m fortunate to work somewhere where I can talk about it and no-one gives it a second thought when my hot waterbottle joins me in meetings

But it doesn’t change the fact that balancing professional demands with personal battles can be challenging to say the least.

Especially when you have no idea when it will strike.

With more than 3 million (and rising) working-age people having a health condition that affects their jobs

The need for empathy is vital

After all, we're all human and battling our own things……one undone trouser button at a time!



—



Posting in honour of March being endometriosis action month

To all women with endometriosis (and anyone with a chronic condition)

I see and feel you. Keep going 🖤





#Culture #Endometriosis #EndometriosisAwareness #ChronicIllness #Trousers!

Endo carousel 

10 prompts to help show a journey instead of a process with your #portfolio

You can tell me which are your favourite!

Was recently speaking with a junior designer on getting into the industry and crafting their folio.

It’s a tough market out there right now but to be blunt one of the biggest problems may face is their case studies all look / read the same way.

It is hard to stand out when every role posted gets 300+ applications within hours.

My advice was to write their case study differently.

Don’t give a generic step by step breakdown of your process

Instead start with answering some “more interesting” prompts and build from there


Prompts such as:

1. The biggest challenge I had was…
2. We found a gap in our knowledge around…
3. We unexpectedly learnt…
4. Our first attempt didn’t work because…
5. I am most proud of…
6. I was really surprised by…
7. The key impact we had was…
8. We had to adapt because….
9. My biggest takeaway was…
10. We had to take a step back because…


Not all of those thing will be relevant or should be in there - you’re not writing a novel.

But ultimately you want to show your thinking on top of just how you execute.

👉 Give recruiters and hiring managers something that will hold their interest for the 60ish seconds you have it!





#Design #Hiring #Talent

Why Design is not getting a seat at the ‘grown-ups’ table:

1. Design is not well integrated
2. Design does not have the right accountabilities

I’ll break it down more


1.
The integration issue.
- Design too often operates in a silo (from a org/discipline perspective).
- It doesn’t have a viable engagement model
- It works in parallel to the broader business strategy without directly influencing it.


2.
The accountability aspect.
- Design lacks defining responsibilities that align with objectives that others care about.
- Without clear targets and measures of success, its impact becomes hard to quantify.
- Without the right accountabilities Design lacks the authority and agency to get things done and get people together


(From experience) it is when these two things are not properly addressed that Design struggles to be seen as a strategic partner rather than just a service


Curious to hear about others’ experiences?

Yay or nay?





#Design #DesignLeadership #DesignMaturity

Introducing Sasha Castleman to Design Tea 👏🎬

Sasha recently joined me to spill the tea and share
•  her dislike of the title ‘designer’
•  issues she see around the lack of business knowledge
•  what she refers to as ‘the ceiling for design’

Honestly could probably make another episode from just the bits I had to cut from this one.

It was a conversation full of little tidbits

So get those cups of tea brewing and give it a watch

As always, let us know what you think (please)





#Design #DesignTea #FearlessTeam

Often in design, the most impactful part is not the tangible output

This is especially true for disciplines like Service Design

The value is in:
-  The process, collaboration and comms along the way
-  The systems that are changed for the better
-  The mindset shift that comes with good facilitation

Give Design the agency to work beyond the pixels and watch the magic happen :)



#Design #ServiceDesign

The worst two words for a designer to hear…

“So what?”

Absolute shut down.

But what does it mean?

Well it probably means that you’ve failed to tell the right story
(assuming you have done good work in the first place!)

If those you are presenting to, whether stakeholders or other designers, don’t see the value of your work, you’ve just lost the battle.

You need to speak the language of those you are presenting to.

Frame your work around what THEY care about and how it will align to / support THEIR goals.

The goal is always for people to take action off the back of work

But for that to happen they need to not be falling asleep or checking their emails....



#Design

If you believe that you need to be the best in the room as a manager — you probably shouldn’t be one!

I see it a lot with new(er) leaders that I speak to

The pressure to be the best, to know the most across the team

I get it because I have been there

But it is the wrong mindset to have!

I’m lucky to have people the team that are far better than I ever was as a designer

It’s an awesome thing

Haven’t done one for a while so here goes with a football analogy:

-  Pep doesn’t stand around worrying that his shooting skills aren’t as good a Foden’s or Haaland’s
-  They don’t need to be
-  He has a different role to play

It’s comes back to the classic line — as a manager your job is not to be the best but to make others THEIR best! 🖤




#Design #Leadership #DesignLeadership

You don’t need to have a seat at THE table.

You just need a seat at A table.

At every level there is (or at least should be) cross-functional working

So why not think of it as a table and focus on that?

A place to discuss challenges, work towards a vision and do meaningful work

Impact can be made at every level in an organisation

So,

-  build a relationship with those around you
-  understand their challenges and motivations
-  figure out how you support each other

Focus on adding value where you are and doing your best work - work with what you have

(For now at least)

If Design has a seat at every table, we will have a much greater impact




#Design #DesignLeadership #DesignMaturity

Very excited our next Fifty member event next Tuesday.

Excited to be on the panel with Julie Kennedy, Marco Huerta and Will Barraclough to talk about Building & Scaling Design Teams.


Some of the areas we will be covering will include:

1. Organisation influence:

→ How do factors such as where you sit in an org, engagement models, legacy, stakeholders etc impact approach?

2. Shaping a team:

→ What are the key considerations & trade-offs at different scale points and at different levels - specialisms / skillsets etc

3. Nuances vs fundamentals:

→ What will always be true no matter the team / org you are in and where do more nuances lie?

4. Learning:

→ No-one ever teach leaders how do do this. What have some of the key lessons been along the way?


———


We will share some insights following our discussion

Think that we have missed any key topic areas?
Drop me a comment!

The majority of teams could use more solid visual design specialists

But they sometimes feel like a dying breed

Ben called out a lock of appreciation in one of our recent chats

Some of our thoughts:

→  Seems to be a very minor part of most bootcamps. Harder to teach?
→  Hard to prove ROI for a business? Particularly in the B2B space
→  Fewer roles compared to Product Design. Sign of the times with generalists vs specialists?
→  Designers are instead following the money / career growth opportunities within the UX space?
→  It’s a nice to have rather than a must. The amazon ‘good enough UI’ influence?

Are we too busy searching for unicorns these days?

As an industry, are we starting to de-priortise visual design?

What do you think?




PS. any good April fools jokes today?
Feel like I've barely seen any




#Design #VisualDesign

First ever official podcast 🫣 — and it was ‘big time’ on Beyond UX Design….

Scary but a lot of fun!

Credit for the latter has to go to Jeremy Miller though for making me feel at ease from the minute we started (for the second time!)

Appreciate you inviting me on to talk about career direction

Please take the time to listen and support Jeremy

Also me let know what if there was anything that stood out from our conversation!

Anything you liked or didn’t agree with??

I’m all ears :)





#Design

I heard someone say the other day "don't be your team's "sh*t umbrella". 💩

One of the hardest things leaders can experience is watching people in the team suffer.

Naturally we want to jump in and fix things for them or give them solutions to their problems but actually this can be counterproductive

There may always be sensitive, legal or political 💩 to protect a team from but despite being be well-intentioned, hiding it all from the team can be harmful:

- it will likely impede their growth
- they’ll be unprepared for leaving the umbrella
- it won't be sustainable for you long term
- they’ll often hear it from someone else anyway

So instead, we need to start by looking inward at what we are 'protecting' them from and why.

Find ways to tell them about the sh*t you’re protecting them from so they are aware of it

Crack a hole in the shield where it makes sense to and support them through it.

From personal experience, they may never be fully ready to hear / see it

But it is those moments that you learn the most from and that shape you as a designer.





#Design #Leadership #DesignLeadership #Culture

🎬  Autonomy
🌱  Growth opportunities
🧡  Great culture & aligned values
💰  Good pay
💪  Flexibility
🤩  Awesome leadership

If you had all of that in your current role, would you stay in your current company for good?

Or do you think there is a point where you would still look to move on?

A quick scroll through LinkedIn will surface numerous posts each day around retaining talent and how leaders should look to create better environments.

Even with "the perfect conditions" though, is it inevitable that designers will always look to move on eventually?



Anything missing from the list that would be the key factor for you?



#Design #Hiring #Talent #Culture

Here’s why there should be an I in team

There has to be a place for ego in high performing teams.

The best teams and leaders are not 'egoless'.

Egos have a bad rep but we all have one.

Our egos are a reflection of:
- who we are
- how we perceive ourselves
- our beliefs about our capabilities
- our relationships with others

You will never find anyone that doesn't have any ego.

Healthy egos are good.

They can drive us to achieve more when invested in the right way.

They make us show up and strive for more.

We can leverage them to rally around shared goals and to drive success for the team, the work and growth.

So in summary:

👉 Ego in your teams, yes.
👉 Assholes in your team, no.




#Design #Culture

1 of the top challenges for new leaders

—> Shifting your mindset around the value you create

When I was first ‘nudged’ into a leadership role I suddenly had to reframe what my view of personal success.

I was no longer an IC delivering tangible artefacts.

Overnight I had to get comfortable with a change in where my validation came from

What I learnt was:

-  Leadership and management are often messy
-  You become more of juggler than a sprinter
-  The team’s success is now my success. My job is to empower / unblock to allow them to do their best work.
-  I still ‘design’ and solve problems but the subject is different. As a leader, I can use the same human centred mindset but change the focus to team and organisational problems more so than user problems.


(Spoiler: it took time — didn’t actually happen overnight)




#Leadership #Design #DesignLeadership

Interviewing is one of the most important jobs you can do as a leader

We talk a lot about other leadership aspects:

-  Building high functional teams
-  Driving impact & ROI
-  Organisational relationships
-  etc

But none of it is achievable without the right team

The reality is though - many of us are just left to it / left to figure it out

Never really trained or told HOW to interview well

A good interview goes beyond a ‘meet & greet’, it:

-  assesses experience and suitability
-  uncovers potential for growth
-  evaluates character and values
-  eliminates bias
-  etc

Making complex / important decisions about people in a short interaction is hard (for both sides).

There are never any guarantees.

Not only that but in an interview, we are representing our company & team.

The way we conduct interviews (and act across the hiring process) either enhances or tarnishes reputation.

Maybe if more people saw interview as an opportunity rather than a task to tick off, there would be more conversation around it?


——


Ever been given any ‘formal’ interviewing support?




#Design #Leadership #DesignLeadership #Hiring


A friendly reminder....

As a leader, even if it’s not your fault, it’s your responsibility.

I once had a manager that failed to deliver cover work for another designer in the account I was running.

I was pretty pi**ed off at first.

She was in a position of leadership and she should have executed what was needed

But I soon realised that I was the one that I should be upset with.

Despite our levels, I was the person that the buck stopped on within the account

I should have kept a closer eye on it.

As a leader you need to be prepared to hold people accountable

But you also need to be able to take accountability.

I recently reread the 5 dysfunctions of a team.

It talks about the importance of accountability to build meaningful culture.

It was a great reminder of that previous lesson.

Hold people accountable

But also know when to put your ego to aside, hold your self accountable and invite others to hold you accountable.

Culture starts from the top but it lives within us all 💜




Hope you are having a better weekend than me -- been struck with tonsillitis 😖 




#Leadership #Culture

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