What’s next?
(To clarify straight up: I have to stay in Austin, but I don’t mind working remotely. And I’m not looking for a “UX Job”.)
So 2 weeks ago, when I found out I was laid off from my 17month long (or was it short) tenure at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, I wrote a short piece announcing my availability. In that announcement I let people know I’m looking for work in some vague capacities and that I’m available in the short term for consulting, teaching, etc.
Since that I’ve been getting great feedback from friends near and far about my pitch, what my real value is, and where might be the best place to apply that value so that I will get some joy in return. I love these types of conversations. They are awesome.
If you haven’t done a round of speed mentoring recently, I highly recommend it.
Speed mentoring is when you mine your network for people near and far (though I recommend near over far) and pick people’s brains for an hour at a time at most. Sure, they are under the guise quite often as information interviews and what not, but you learn so much along the way. And each time you learn something, you turn that into a hypothesis that you play off of the next round in the speed mentoring. Did I just make this up?
Here’s what I learned:
- There is definitely a need out there for someone with my set of strengths and experiences.
- It is not easy to find necessarily a position that enjoys the focus that I bring with this limited set of talents and skills.
- I still have to work on language that people will understand, but that being said, almost everyone I spoke with about my skills didn’t take long to get it, and in fact many instantly added onto my talent set descriptions in ways I hadn’t previously considered.
- My value proposition might be best served in a consulting model. This means me considering more strongly going either the rogue route, or get hired by a very smart consultancy/agency organization.
So now what?
I have 2+ months where I am getting paid by my now former employer. During this time I plan on doing the following:
- Look for a full time position within an organization that sees the long term value I can provide that they are most likely not taking advantage of in an impactful way within their existing organization
- Consider the possibility that becoming a consultant makes the most sense, and look at the few leads that are growing hot in my pocket to see if these can be converted into an independent venture.
My offer for full time employers:
- Strategically & holistically minded design practice lead, who can help raise the bar of your existing teams to the next level, while helping your organization provide measurable value to your customers and partners.
- Change agent, who can help analyze existing corporate cultural issues and create strategic planning for how to move the needle on cross-functional teams by bringing in new tools that leverage creative agency and a culture of learning to provide rapid innovation that impacts the bottom line.
- I can help to strategically grow your design teams so that they provide value to your organization and to your customers. In so doing bring the tools of creative thinking combined with empathy throughout your organization so that all of your teams are armed and ready to be innovative, customer centric, and effective.
My offer to people looking for short term engagements:
- Come in and teach one-off workshops on strategic planning, storytelling as design tool, team development, interaction design foundations, and custom courses as well.
- Mentor your teams around strategic design
- Help advise and assist in the creation of new teams, or improve/grow existing teams.
- Infuse design thinking and learning cultures inside your organization.
I believe right now design teams are growing by leaps and bounds, but most are growing more like weeds, with little strategic consideration to make sure that they are providing the value promised by the literature and pundits. I can help organizations big or small, take the first or next steps to strategically add design &/or grow design so that your entire organization infuses itself with the best that design culture has, while retaining the advantages of technical and business thinking has to offer.
You can read about my thinking on here on Medium or in my recently released book by the fine folks at UXPin. Feel free to contact me to learn more about how I can help you.
