Musings of a design leader (Part II)
Back in Q3 of 2022 I set myself the personal challenge of writing a series of reflections (musings), based on my experiences as a design leader. My goal was to recount on a number of topics that I’ve encountered over the years to produce a post per week, every week, over the course of the quarter.
For those that follow my work, I’m a huge advocate of the process of writing, as a means to explore and reason perspectives, and as a way to express and articulate my opinions. The process of writing my thoughts down over the years — whether well formed or in their infancy — has allowed me to better communicate, as a leader, on all manner of topics.
For me, writing is a convergent process of distilling experience and opinion into a narrative that is coherent, engaging and hopefully thought-provoking.
This is part two of a two-part article (see also Musings of a design leader part I) summarising these reflections.
Note: The following are based on my opinions, and my opinions alone.
Musing #8: On the triangle of trust
Trust is a fundamental component in empowering individuals to do their best work. It’s the foundations of any healthy professional relationship and a catalyst for growth. Without trust in those we hire we limit their potential for impact, dilute their passion and motivation, and at worst, have them question their fit and purpose.
However, for most, trust is difficult to earn and harder still to rekindle where that trust is broken. Trust is something we tend to accumulate over a number of successive interpersonal interactions. It’s a dynamic attribute formed between two individuals, as a product of an enduring, reciprocal relationship.
Trust is a complex and systematic concept that is dependent on a virtuous cycle of assignment, accountability and autonomy (see Trust Triangle):
💼 Assignment speaks to the opportunities we identify and create for our teams, which allow them to apply their skills and experiences to tasks for which they are well suited. Furthermore, these assignments present opportunities to grow and stretch individuals in a way that we, as leaders, can use to accelerate and exemplify their growth.
✅ Accountability represents an explicit setting of expectations, a contract of sorts, between manager and line report (or assignor and assignee). It creates a very real and tangible outcome for a given assignment that sets the bar for delivery. It’s the currency by which which earn trust through diligence in execution.
🧠 Autonomy is state of self-determination where individuals are free to make their own decisions, without the need to seek permission. It assumes a level of expertise, operating under conditions of trust, where the outcome of an assignment (not just the output) has been delegated outside of central governance.
As leaders, our job is to understand this system and the conditions through which we earn and spend trust, both in those we lead and those we work with. For those we lead we have an inherent obligation to enable them to succeed by creating a state of empowerment.
Here, trust is first assumed and then evident through this reciprocal exchange of expectation; as underpinned by a healthy interpersonal connection.
Musing #9: On learning backlogs
Research is principally about reducing the risks associated with our product decisions. It turns our innate assumptions and personal biases into provocations for learning. It provides an ongoing, open dialogue with users, surfacing the insights that enable empowered teams to make great decisions.
However, research comes at a cost. Like any other aspect of product development, it’s an investment with expectations of return. Where the amount of research we can conduct is finite, how do we best determine where to invest the effort and prioritise for relative impact?
One way to prioritise is to use an artefact such as a Learning Backlog. Learning Backlogs enable cross-functional products teams to better evaluate where, when and how to invest their research efforts for maximum impact. Used effectively they:
⚖️ Promote an approach to continuous learning that seeks to balance an investment of time and effort across discovery and delivery streams; whether identifying new opportunities that inform future roadmaps or validating ideas to known problems.
♟ Driving alignment across cross-functional teams by creating a explicit connection between research and strategy; ensuring there is a common and agreed understanding of the questions teams’ are looking to answer and how those answers will inform their decisions and next steps.
📅 Help with prioritisation and planning by highlighting the purpose, scope and complexity of a team/group’s research needs, ahead of time; providing an indicative account of the strategic and tactical activities that are likely to require scheduling and resourcing trade-offs.
As an artefact, Learning Backlogs help teams to have healthier research conversations by being explicit about their investments in learning. They ensure research is continuous in nature, multi-facetted in scope and drives impact through a bias towards action.
Musing #10: On consistency and creativity
s consistency at odds with creativity? This is one of the questions we run into whether we look to systematise aspects of process, practice and craft. The more we seek to shape and define the artefacts of design, the more we constrain and commoditise the inputs and outputs of our problem-solving.
This much is true. However, commoditising and constraints are not inherent evils, even in the design space. In fact, quite the opposite. Systematisation can often be leveraged to drive consistency and cohesiveness, where we might otherwise — and without bounds — propagate divergence and disparity.
Furthermore, consistency promotes an emphasis on re-use and mitigates the duplication of effort. This is a fundamental inefficiency, where valuable time and effort can be wasted in an attempt to solve common problems, through a variety of different solutions, in the pursuit of creativity and self-expression.
Instead, consistency can create an impetus for delivering new value, and an investment in efforts where creativity can be a true differentiator. As such, it’s less about consistency for consistency sake and more about understanding what we should commoditise, with a view to having greater impact.
Take for example design systems. Here, we seek to distill and codify our design decisions into a series of patterns, behaviours and interactions; providing a set of standardised solutions to what we observe as common, product-wide design problems.
An organisation’s adoption of a design system enables them to leverage consistency in order to deliver a coherent, high-quality experiences at scale. There is value created externally, in terms of the quality of the product, and through rationalising efforts internally to reduce duplication and waste.
This investment in consistency, creates an opportunity to shift the relative focus of our design efforts. Where time is precious and creativity is at a premium, we trade the inputs and outputs that can be reasonably commoditised for higher order problem-solving; creating a space for innovation.
Musing #11: On contracting growth
As managers and leaders, we play a pivotal role in the growth and personal development of our teams. This ongoing sense of personal progression is highly motivational, and something many of us value and come to expect of our organisations, in the pursuit of self-betterment.
However, progress invariably runs deeper than the title or financial reward, and first and foremost speaks to a widening or deepening of the competencies we and our organisations’ value. Those that enable us to perform better, year on year, within the context of our roles and relative to our desired trajectory.
As individuals, we determine this incremental progress both through the lens of our managers, peers and colleagues, who, through feedback, build an actualised model of our professional performance and through an internal lens, based on our own self-reflections and perceptions of capability.
Our job, as managers and leaders, is to support individuals on both levels, by providing clear, constructive and actionable guidance that is specifically tailored towards an individual’s growth needs. From experience, any healthy development plan (or contract) would typically comprise three key components:
🧭 Orientation: This is about helping our team members orientate and understand where and how they can grow, within the structure of your organisational design. What pathways are open to them as individual contributors, or managers, within the bounds of a current role or following an adjacent discipline?
✅ Assessment: This is about the conversations we have with our teams to build out a coherent, objective assessment model for where they are today and which dimensions or attributes they would need to build or develop to grow; relative to their desired career path.
🎓 Enablement: Last but not least, enablement addresses what can provide as leaders and managers to specifically target and support an individual’s agreed growth needs. Identifying the tools and resources we can leverage to help folks make the progress they seek.
Creating a coherent growth plan can be seen as a contracting between manager and line report. Here, the key is removing the vagueness and subjectivity of development discussions. Instead, ensuring that progression is more of a systematic process that is explicit, observable and actionable.
Musing #12: One modern leadership
Is leadership a title? Something we are bestowed in recognition of our seniority? A badge declaring hierarchy in a traditional power-based organisational structure. Or is it more about how we show up as individuals, and the behaviours we demonstrate, that exhibit the qualities of leadership?
My take is that leadership isn’t something given by right, or simply inherited as a result of career progression. Instead, leadership is something we earn, over time, as a product of behaviours we exhibit; specifically those that are representative of the qualities of modern leadership.
Modern leadership isn’t about demographics, characteristics, personality types, or the physical attributes once associated with archaic concepts of leadership. Rather, it’s about how we lead by giving up control, empowering others to do their best work, and earning trust, respect and credibility as a leader, through a series of endeavours and interactions.
Modern leadership seeks to shift away from the command and control structures of old, where those in hierarchical positions of power were seen as authoritative figureheads and de facto decision-makers, by virtue of title and status alone.
Therefore, modern leaders are instead defined by their ability to serve the people they lead, how they operate with empathy and emotional intelligence, and their ability to inspire and motivate in the absence of hierarchy.
Musing #13: On resilience
Leadership can be a tough gig. There is an expectation that folks can, and in many cases should, be able to deal with the pressures and expectations that are often associated with leadership roles. One of the misconceptions is that leaders are battle-hardened and therefore immune to the stresses and strains of work, and life in general.
🪞 However, in order to thrive in leadership, we first need to acknowledge that we too are vulnerable to our emotional state. We have to protect ourselves from these inevitable and unavoidable pressures, learn to recognise where our resilience is compromised, and how to deal with situations that bring our confidence and self-belief into question.
🛡 To this end, I like to think of the qualities of robustness and resilience as our emotional armour. Worn well, it shields us from a number of situations that might otherwise impact and tarnish our emotional resolve. Yet, after every knock, every stalled project, every missed deadline, every mishandled conversation, that sense of imposter, if not checked, will start to slowly creep through the cracks.
❤️🩹 However strong our armour, resistance is not absolute, and even the most resilient of us has a natural breaking point. Apply enough tension and it will snap, your armour will fail, and you’ll expose yourself to the emotional consequences. What’s fundamental here is the need for all leaders to recognise their personal limits, to know when to seek support, and to know it’s OK to reach out for help.
💪 In reality, the more we expose ourselves to these situations, the more we learn to cope with, reframe, and look beyond what are often momentary bumps in our journeys to becoming better leaders. And while resilience isn’t something that can be taught, we can learn to read the signals and situations in which being conscious of our emotional state better equips us to deal with the everyday challenges of leadership.
For more on this topic see my recent Medium article: On Being Robust and Resilient.
