One Designer’s Path to Management
Six years ago, Barack Obama started his second term as president. Six years ago, Tim Cook finished his first year as Apple CEO. Six years ago, Animoto started its Product Design team. And six years ago, I joined Animoto.
I didn’t know this then, but six years ago is when I also found my design home.
Animoto gave me the opportunity to fully transition my career from Industrial Design to UX Design, but this is also the place where I would push a design team to evolve and grow its craft; where I would work on bigger, more complex, and more ambiguous problems year after year; where I would get the opportunity to launch multiple video creation products; where I would work directly to shape the core of our video creation engine; and ultimately, where I’d be given the opportunity to lead a team as a manager.
Preparing for management
I’d always set my eyes towards leadership, but I would soon learn that leadership comes in many forms.
Leadership can mean setting the vision of where your team should go. Leadership can mean pushing the team to do better, and leading through example. Leadership can mean mentorship and helping grow younger designers. But leadership can also take the form of management, which focuses primarily on employee engagement, performance, and retention.
Questions to ask yourself
If you’re considering making the move to management, here are a few questions you should explore:
- Do you find fulfillment and enjoy teaching and helping others?
- Are you good at reading people? Can you uncover what motivates people, and do you feel satisfaction in helping people get there?
- Do you enjoy creating the space others need to succeed, and stepping out of the limelight?
- Do you feel like you can advise on almost any design problem?
- Do you have experience working on a wide range of problems? Would you be able to coach a younger designer by drawing on past experience?
- And, most importantly, could you be happy being the conductor of the orchestra, rather than being the 1st chair violinist?
I recommend that you work with your current manager to explore these topics, and ask for their perspective on management.
Skills to develop
Soft skills: Read everything you can on effective communication and relationship building, and practice these lessons! Your success as a manager hinges on your ability to influence. If you have to give critical feedback, you need to be make sure it is heard. If you need to address issues with other leaders/managers, you must make sure it is heard. If you need to advocate for change, you must make sure it is heard. Your ability to be influential hinges on your ability to build positive relationships. Three books I’ve found valuable are Radical Candor, Crucial Conversations, and How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Learning when to coach, teach, or unblock: As a manager, you’re responsible for the success of your direct reports. They will come to you with problems that block them. The challenge for you is to quickly figure out if all they need is a gentle nudge through socratic questioning; if there is a gap in knowledge/experience, and they need you to teach them; or, if you need to get actively involved to unblock them, which can mean setting up time to work directly on their project, all the way to involving yourself into the conversation.
Principles for managers to live by
The real learning, however, happens after you actually start managing people. Everyone is different, and each one of your direct reports will push you in different ways. The challenge of onboarding a new employee will be very different from the challenge of retaining a long time employee, and the challenge of growing a younger designer will be very different from the challenge of finding ways to keeping an experienced designer feeling challenged and engaged.
But in my time as a manager, I’ve learned 4 principles that are useful to share:
Principle 1: Creative Satisfaction is critical for retaining Designers
Designers have an inherent need to create with our imaginations, and it hits each of us in different ways. It’s something that stirs deep within our souls, a great discontent we live with, and must be satiated. As a Manager, drive to the heart of your Designer and discover the conditions under which your Designer feels most Creative Satisfaction. Then, create the conditions that allow for your Designer to experience this.
Principle 2: Use Autonomy to drive Creative Satisfaction
Design work asks us to consider a large number of perspectives, constraints, and goals from a cross-disciplinary team. It asks us to pull all this together and weave an elegantly simple solution to push our work forward towards a better place. The Designer sits at the center of this, and is best situated to solve the problem at hand. To be successful in this, Designers need the Autonomy to decide the best ways to solve problems and make decisions based on their understanding of the problem space.
Micro-management, on the other hand, strips the Designer of this freedom to explore ideas, to create, and to ultimately connect with their intuition to solve problems and turns a Designer into a pair hands.
It’s also important to note that too much Autonomy can become paralyzing. It can lead to indecision, endless conversations that spin in the mud, and poor decision making. Therefore, it becomes the Manager’s responsibility to provide just enough direction to keep the Designer aligned with the Product Vision and Company Objectives. It’s also critical to watch for moments when the Designer needs guidance. Sometimes, all that’s needed is a perspective shift, or a reframing of the problem. Other times, it can be push to keep exploring, or a nudge to move forward in the process. However, the goal is to always position the Designer to feel challenged, yet not overwhelmed, with the level of Autonomy you’ve provided.
Principle 3: Drive Growth through increasing levels of Autonomy
This sweet spot of just-enough-Autonomy is critical for Growth. For Designers, Growth means always learning, exploring and expanding the Designer’s world view, skills, and personal experience. This allows the designer to expand the pool of knowledge upon which their intuition can draw from, which allows the Designer to produce better and better work, which ultimately is what drives Creative Satisfaction.
This growth doesn’t happen unless you push the Designer to explore beyond their comfort zone and push the Designer with increasing Autonomy, and larger and more ambitious scopes of work. The success of this strategy hinges on your ability as a Manager to pay attention to the right levels of Autonomy you’re providing, and being available to jump in at a moment’s notice to keep things on track. One common example of too much Autonomy is a Designer who becomes overwhelmed with the project scope, constraints, or outside feedback/perspective, and can’t find a path forward. A single afternoon of spin can easily turn into weeks of wasted time, if support is not available.
Principle 4: Care deeply about your direct reports
Most importantly, care deeply about your direct reports. Find out what’s important to each Designer you manage. Find out what gets them excited to work; find out what drives them mad; find out what their hopes and dreams are.
Once you know these things, work your damndest to position them for success; push them to chase their dreams, find opportunities to support their dreams; get excited and share in their successes; and provide emotional support, get upset and get involved to help alleviate their frustrations. The care you provide is what builds loyalty, drives engagement, and ultimately keeps retention high.
Conclusion
As I reflect back, a lot has changed in my day-to-day responsibilities since I’ve become a manager. One thing is that I have a lot more meetings, and pure design time for me is now infrequent. But, the best part about management is that I get to stretch my skills and use the design process to imagine a better future for the team, a better future for Design at Animoto, and a better future for each of my direct reports.
I’m excited to grow the Animoto product design team, to continue improving our craft and making a larger and larger impact on the company through design.
And oh yea, we’re hiring =)
Like Brian said, we’re on the hunt for talented designers! Click here to check out our open roles.
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