Make An Impact: Navigating the Shift from Pastoral Leadership to Tactical Leadership in UX & Product Delivery
Every product delivery org has different expectations for their management teams. This is especially true in the field of product design & user experience.
It is easy for leaders from start-up environments to see scaled management techniques as prohibitive or academic. This may call into question how UX managers should approach their daily work or how they’ll be asked to adjust their priorities to fit the needs of SLT’s vision.
In this case, the topic at hand is Pastoral Leadership vs. Tactical Leadership. In order to understand how a UX manager must adjust to fit these roles we must first understand them.
What is Pastoral Management?
While not a term that is trafficked frequently in the tech world, it is one that I think fits well a traditional model of management. Think of pastoral leaders as shepherds. They exist to guide and enable their team members to solve problems, build solutions, and provide business value. How they do that enablement is typically through individual and group guidance, review sessions, work allocation, and fitting workers to the right roles to highlight their strengths and improve their weaknesses.
Pastoral leaders do not typically engage in hands-on vision work. They’re not often driving a particular product solution. They understand the product, comprehend the user needs, and have personal opinions on how they should be solved for, but do not let their personal vision drive the work.
Instead they use their knowledge and skillset to create opportunities for their direct reports, clear blockers, connect with stakeholders to better understand cross-functional needs, and help monitor work loads to avoid burnout or to avoid underfunding key projects. Their alignment with business goals, cross-team dependencies, and quality relationship building, is utilized to create systems and strategies that speed up work and reduce re-work.
To be Pastoral is to be a mentor & a systems thinker
You may not draw up the plays on the field all the time, but you teach your people to identify patterns, react efficiently, and execute at a high level. You can shift the direction of your people while they’re on a project to prioritize the right things, and can call in a pivot when you think it’s necessary, but ultimately your individual contributors are calling a lot of the shots on the project in real time. You do most of your work in team reviews, retros, workshops, and connecting with your cross-functional peers to understand the projects at a higher level, so you can ensure your ICs are properly aware of all that’s at stake. You optimize work delivery systems, comms strategies, and build scalable strategies for UX ops.
What is Tactical Management?
Tactical management is typically focused on short-term objectives and releasing key product wins every quarter. Think of tactical leaders as Napoleonic (and I don’t mean short, he was 5’8” afterall!), leading from the front lines, rolling up their sleeves to ensure tactical execution is done correctly. They are all about rapidly meeting customer demand and making a large impact as quickly as possible with as few resources as necessary.
Tactical leaders do engage in hands-on vision work. They will ideate and champion specific product solutions. They use their knowledge and skill set to blaze a trail for their ICs and their cross-functional colleagues. Their alignment with business goals, cross-team dependencies, and quality relationship building, is utilized to actively shift business strategy and enable financial outcomes.
To be Tactical is to be a leader
You have the vision and draw up the plays. You’re not just growing your team’s knowledge by leading workshops and reviews, but you’re driving vision in tandem with your people. You’re closely aligned with business goals and help define product vision by researching, validating, and selling large ideas and projects to stakeholders. Your vision defines, in strong detail, the pathway forward for your team. You are the banner carrier for the plan and you make sure your people execute as you lead from the front.
Why Tactical Managers are preferred in certain companies
“Do more with less” is a phrase we often hear at companies. This is often the impetus for a shift in middle management style from one that is more pastoral to one that is more tactical.
Tactical Managers enable the following:
- Faster to market changes & short term wins
- Rapid ideation & innovation
- Thrive in siloed environments where internal competition is encouraged over cooperation
For a startup:
- Playing catch up: New entrants will often be pressured to meet feature parity or key functions that large clients need to convert. Tactical managers can help their ICs by doing the pre-work on these projects and leaning on ICs or a design system to fill in the UI details.
- Player-coach-esque: a more tactical middle manager can often churn out some designs or prototypes as needed to enable short handed teams.
- Optics driven organizations: Startups don’t always have good project tracking or outcome tracking. They can really only track output well. Startup leaders see tactical managers as good soldiers who produce output and see pastoral managers as overly academic layabouts.
For a mature enterprise:
- Creating a sense of urgency: Large companies are a big ship to steer and often find that with their size comes lack of immediate progress. Leaders at these companies may start seeking a more tactical output from middle managers to act as an accelerant to their roadmaps.
- UX as light on outcomes: Although UX is often tied to major product releases, a waterfall type environment may see the UX contributions as watered down by the time they reach customers. The fanfare and excitement, ends up centering more on the technical achievement of finally getting the build done. This may lead to an optics issue about UX output/impact.
- Inspiring others: “Leading from the front” means showing ICs how tactical planning and execution looks in real time so they can mirror and upgrade their work based upon your example.
What you’ll need to make it work
Confidence that this is what you want
Are you ready for this transition? Do you believe you have the peers and leaders necessary for you to safely take this leap? If this career change is necessary beyond your role at your current company where else could you get the skills needed? Education? Another job? Be sure that you’ve explored your options before you dive into the effort ahead.
Be sure it’s what leadership actually wants
Align with your leadership on what success looks like. Comprehend their primary concerns about the current state of management at the company. Ask for specific examples of success and failure modes. Outline your idea of what a transition would look like and if it matches their expectations. Be specific. You do not want 6 months to go by and have the goal post moved on you.
Learn the tools
For some managers who may have been out of the individual contributor role for some time they may need to refresh on some key designer tooling like Figma or Adobe XD. For those that have not undertaken business tasks they may find diving into data tooling important. Not all companies track their data in the same way so connecting with your business analytics team will help. You may want to take courses on Google Analytics or education fit to whatever tools your team uses.
Learn the people
Being tactical isn’t just about execution, it also requires a form of politics. You will need to know who the influential members of your org are when it comes to driving a net new vision or reinvigorating old ones.
Each project area may have unique influencers. For example if you have compelling data that a universal search function would increase workflow efficiency and please several key clients, you’ll likely want to find anyone that has suggested the idea before and understand what went wrong. This turns UX from a passive org to proactive org that consciously seeks out gaps and opportunities to fill them with their own vision.
What execution looks like
Align with the goals of SLT
Business objectives are at the heart of successful execution. Being tactical on a managerial level means chartering into the unknown based upon the key metrics that drive SLT’s nightmares. For a UX leader seeking opportunity in a product org, the treasure you seek is nearly always in the cave you fear the most.
Knowing what metrics they want to drive this quarter and this year are critical. Make sure your information is up to date and reflects the top priorities of the moment. Thinking too far ahead or addressing issues long buried is an easy way to get senior leaders on your bad side for going rogue on subjects they deem unimportant.
Stand for something (not everything)
As you begin to research tactical opportunities you may find yourself in a sea of opportunity without a clear heading. Pick your shot. Don’t spread yourself thin across a dozen opportunities. Align your vision to the goals of SLT and put your effort into projects that have a high likelihood of success and impact rather than big risks or historically maligned initiatives. Don’t be a hero for your first attempt!
Use tools/workshops to narrow your focus:
- Eisenhower Matrix
- Facts vs. Assumptions
- Challenge Maps
- 5 Whys
- Customer Interviews
Become PM’ish
One trend we’re seeing in the UX industry is a shift for UXers to become more like PMs. To focus not just on the holistic user journey and optimizing for customer experience within the product, but also understanding the business goals and strategies behind features and initiatives.
Align your project to one or more of the following KPIs:
- Increase revenue
- Increase number of customers
- Optimize/Reduce cost
- Increase customer retention
Understand costs:
- Connect with engineering partners to understand the problem
- Are there pre-existing technical barriers?
- Have we tried it in the past and how much did it cost then?
- Create rough POCs to help engineers comprehend cost
If you don’t have absolute confidence that your ideas or projects will impact key business metrics (or if you can’t find a compelling way to track the metrics), find a different opportunity.
Speed and momentum matter
In the early stages of your transition you must display competency and accomplishment early and often. Prioritize your work to get low hanging fruit done quickly so you have data to point to. Quick wins will allow you to build a reputation and garner the respect and faith in your other initiatives.
Don’t drop the ball on your people
You are still a manager. You must still facilitate your people’s careers, enable their success, and ensure their stability and happiness at your company. Your people can be an asset to the tactical vision you define, however you must be careful to call them into the process with care and respect. Their time is highly valuable, and you must utilize it wisely.
Measuring your success & getting feedback
Create a plan with your director
There is a distinct hope in this effort that you have a competent and empathetic manager who is helping you elevate your talents in this direction. Be open and honest with them about your struggles. Work with them to define what success looks like and create regular check-ins to monitor progress. Run your ideas by them asynchronously to make sure you’re on track mid week.
Data & Money
Tie your objectives and goals to monetary output. For the vast majority of companies this is what matters at the end of the day. Don’t get bogged down in trying to define obscure success. If what you’re doing can’t be easily tied to monetary outcomes, consider other priorities.
Brag-docs & Testimonials
Track your feedback and positive output. Any data you can gather that indicates your recent changes are having impact on your colleagues or the product will be beneficial to justify your journey and prove to leaders that you’re taking the adjustment seriously.
In summary
Being tactical means “Pastoral+”
You must not forget the value of pastoral management, the upskilling of your reports, the cohesion of your UX team. You must continue creating excellent team culture, ceremonies, and standards, while developing a coherent and impactful product strategy.
If your company has called for these changes, you’re already late.
Senior leadership reporting out a need for change is a lagging indicator of your performance and expectations. If you’re hearing about it, they’re already dissatisfied. You must make changes quickly and begin showing success as soon as possible. If you have not heard leaders mention this issue in your organization, it may be time for you to probe for understanding with your director to know if you too need to shift your focus.
If this transition isn’t right for you, start looking (but don’t hold your breath)
Pastoral management is about operational success. It can be organizationally beneficial and personally rewarding to focus on processes, governance, and best practices. There are many companies out there that are in painful need of these skills and influences. However, in the current economic climate more and more leadership teams are looking for tactical and direct business impact from their UX managers. You may find that the company you know is better than the one you don’t.
Check out Shreyas Doshi for product strategy resources
Easily one of my favorite product leaders in the world. Shreyas has tons of free resources on X (formerly twitter) and a great interview with Lenny Rachitsky on Lenny’s Podcast about key ways to uplevel your product strategy.