dug (company logo) Good looks like this.

Design leadership

I was recently interviewed about my leadership practice (questions link to lower down on this page).

I thought the questions were helpful, and writing the answers helped me reflect on my practice. I've included some of them here as a starter-for-ten for customers wanting to know more about what I do. I'll add the questions not listed here to a blog post for further discussion.

Q: What are five things that matter?

Good teams have principles, and good businesses have purpose. What are the things you carry with you as you grow across engagements? What do you try and develop in design teams?

1. Do it together

Foster collaboration in the studio and with other disciplines beyond. Individual culture and identity do matter, but assholes scale, and egos can get in the way of growth. If design is on a journey, we're going to go further by valuing the energy of our collective learning and output.

2. Keep learning

Learning is both one of the most important, and one of the most forgotten elements of leading design. I've been privileged to work with some amazing design minds over the years and all of them have been teachers. From Klee and Breuer's work at the Bauhaus, to Zeldman and Fried's public writings, to LD's work at GDS, the greats have always laid down pedagogical frameworks that have trained and inspired generations of designers after them.

We can't all be Jony Ive, but we can all try and frame our leadership in ways that promote our businesses becoming the learning organisations they need to be.

3. Commit to your passion

A team member once phrased this as "design like you give a shit". He described the importance of caring deeply about one's work, that true innovation and excellence in design can only emerge when designers are genuinely passionate and committed. As leaders we need to create spaces that allow and reward that commitment.

4. Challenge the frame, find the problem

Your team's job is literally to find the right problem to solve.

When you're a designer in a large team, maybe in-house at a large household name company, it can seem like much is set and things just are the way they are. This is especially true in regulated environments like financial services and public sector.

You need to challenge that. Every single day. Ask questions. Ask why. Get to the bottom of the problem. When asked by a reporter "what are the limits of design" Charles Eames responded: "what are the limits of problems?"

5. Build your culture

Design is human agency. Your team needs to believe they are accountable before they can lead work that changes the business or even changes the world a little bit. Building a culture of accountability falls in your lap as leader. There are many techniques and frameworks you can build on but at the core, if your people aren't embracing accountability they'll never be able to open the door that will let them lead the change.

Q: What are the scale and scope of the teams that you’ve grown and managed? What are some of the challenges you faced?

Such a great question:-)

I had never thought about it in a structured way, so I sat down and considered my experiences with teams in a bit more detail. I've framed the refection in terms of what my teams where able to achieve for the business. Where I've gone deeper, there is a link to a short case study.

1. Growing a practice in a global tech consulting firm with low design maturity

Digital Consulting Director (Hands off)
Large team at management consultancy
Read case

  • Actions

    • Advocate for design. Over, and over, and over
    • Collaborate with Global team-mates to make the most of our mix of backgrounds and skills
    • Create a place of safety where my people could thrive and produce great work
    • Negotiated to bring design thinking successfully into the company culture taking account the firm's hyper-accountability culture
    • Organised the coming together of the digital strategy (Sitecore SBOS business unit) and Design teams into a larger, cross-functional department

  • What impact did my team have?

    • Bring about change of attitude in internal marketplace. This lead to more customers coming to us instead of going out to agencies, and an increase in our billings revenue
    • Evidenced quality and delivery, which in turn allowed UK leadership to win further budget for growth
    • Built on their strengths as thought leaders in enterprise technology to claim thought leadership in workplace transformation
    • Competed successfully with other agencies in the group and beyond
    • Helped me bring in my chargeability targets and the right employee survey results (it was an adventure and I think most of the team was happy to be there)

2. Re-energizing digital teams as part of an exec turnaround team

Head of Customer Experience (Hands off)
Large team at electricals retailer
Read case

  • Actions

    • Give a broken team hope, a huge hug, and give them my 100% permission to question assumptions and kick ass
    • Advocate for UCD as part of a large technology transformation, keeping the group honest, and human-focused
    • Establish ways of working between remote dev unit in Paris and design teams in London

  • What impact did my team have?

    • Successfully re-platform the three largest e-commerce websites in the UK in time for Peak trading
    • Collaborate with external consultants while nurturing their in-house culture and setting up stronger, more resilient teams
    • Deliver a foundational base for the parent company's turnaround (my team didn't turn the ecommerce business around on their own, but they sure as hell made our customers more likely to make up with us).
    • Support and adapt the processes and behaviours to land a marketing automation and experience management toolset

3. Guiding an in-house design org towards greater strategic relevance

Service Design Lead (Player-coach)
Small team at high-street bank
Read case

  • Actions

    • Build stakeholder relationships
    • Advocate for design in a technology environment
    • Become a ‘trusted advisor’ to business leaders
    • Give team permission to challenge their brief

  • What impact did my team have?

    • Leverage courage to be bold, and guide our clients to better challenges
    • Business customers now see the value of design in this environment
    • Built our delivery platform to include design methods, processes, and governance
    • Drive group-wide transformation through impact of design on customers

4. Improving a product organisation with business design leadership

Director of Service Design (Hands off)
Dotted lines at saas scale-up
Read case

  • Actions

    • Collaborated with other directors to change behaviour and generate outcomes across the product org
    • Coaching CPO on service line approach and journey management

  • What impact did my team have?

    • The teams I coached influenced the behaviours of others, resulting in better product outcomes
    • Training in journey mapping and ecosystem visualisation resulted in silo busting collaboration
    • Product org leadership took steps towards service-ownership

5. Setting up a design agency for growth as part of a global tech consultancy

Executive leadership (Hands off)
Mid-sized team at design agency in tech consult group
Read case

  • Actions

    • Promote emotional safety and mastery of craft
    • Design advocacy with global clients
    • Set up business development pipeline

  • What impact did my team have?

    • Design teams led creative pitches and won business (luxury brands in Chinese markets)
    • Service designers upped their game in solution-shaping
    • Overall improvement in recruitment performance
    • My teams overcame an incompatible culture and let their own influence the parent org

6. Helping a boutique consultancy find their misplaced mojo

Executive leadership (Hands off)
Mid-sized team at boutique design consultancy

  • Actions

    • Developed close partnership with MD to cover for founder on mat leave
    • Leverage consulting experience to shape go-to-markets
    • Set up training and coaching of Leads
    • Manage stakeholders

  • What impact did my team have?

    • Team members rebuilding agency reputation by speaking and coaching at events like Global Service Jam
    • Research leads co-designed and delivered a new service offering based on the provision of incremental value from user research
    • Leads engaged with new partners in technology and data to shape go-to-markets

7. Structuring a design-led test-and-learn team at a mobile operator

Team lead in charge of innovation (Player-coach)
Small team at mobile service provider

  • Actions

    • Advocate for design
    • Cross-silo diplomacy
    • Build network of approved suppliers to support exploration and prototyping
    • Secure budgets so team can launch pilots

  • What impact did my team have?

    • Established commercial credibility and relevance of R&D unit
    • Created successful pitch for funding to social investment fund
    • Launched pilot services in Egypt and Romanian markets

Q: What kind of leadership team do you thrive in?

I like to know what kind of personalities I'll be partnering when I join an organisation...

I wonder is it the leadership team itself, or the struggles we overcome together that matter?

Thinking back to LTs I've worked in, there doesn't seem to be a correlation between the individual personalities of my colleagues and the outcomes from our work together. I have strong friendships and positive growth from working with utter arses, and have been in the most nurturing friendly teams and not grown as a leader at all...

I think what makes more of a difference is how we together turn to look at our challenge as one. Bottom line this is a hugely bonding experience, and I think for this to happen you need to build on some common beliefs and values. Important ones that come to mind include:

A good test of values is to ask a colleague to relate an experience of betrayal. How that question is answered can be a good compass...

For teams in a design agency (as opposed to in-house) I would add your position on "user experience" versus "product culture" continuum. I don't want to work with people who put ARR before everything else.

Finally

It may be worth reflecting on where the leadership team needs to get to before thinking about who to partner with on the journey?

How far away is the mountain? How long will it be? How much tension and conflict lie ahead? How Byzantine or Machiavellian are the organisation's politics? How will this team fit inside prevailing trends (like economics or AI, for example)? How much clarity of vision already exists?

Then as a final checklist we could look at traits to avoid (to be honest, antipatterns might be a good place to start?):

As I write this I am reminded of a project (called "Shoulders") that I started and will have to find the time to finish. It's me reflecting on the amazing leaders I've worked with over the last few years, and what I learned from my time with them.

I would like to be one of those leaders. I would like to work with one of those leaders, and I would like us to be a team of those leaders and provide the broad shoulders needed by our people.

Want to talk about some of this?

You could email Dug at dug@goodlookslikethis.com