Leading Design 2019

What Justine said…

Our Head of Design, Justine, came back from the Leading Design 2019 event and handed me 22 pages of notes. My task was to condense those into some key takeaways from the event and how they’re going to positively impact us here at Code Enigma.

Leading Design is a sell-out gig for anyone with their finger in the design pie with an influence on the direction it's taking, be it design-specific direction or those responsible for instilling a culture of design. Some big brand names can be heard talking at this event, which boasts speakers from Netflix, IBM, Design Studio, Spotify and Google to name only some.

The list is both too long and too impressive to copy, so you can see the calibre here.

The main driver for the event is for these speakers to part with some wisdom to help upcoming design leaders to find talent, build a design culture and to structure their teams in the right way, meaning their leadership style facilitates the management of stress and the maintenance of their personal wellbeing equally, if not more so than their day-to-day tasks.

I’m doing the conference an injustice by transforming a plethora of valuable information into a bullet-pointed list, but the key themes this year were:

• Empowerment of teams
• Acknowledging the value design gives to an organisation
• Understanding the needs of individuals (including how to manage Millenials).
• The impact of group dynamics on decision making
• Cultural biases
• Failing is learning and failing is inevitable
• Some key processes and business strategies that put design at the heart

Justine came back full of inspiration on how to get some of these into not just her everyday life, but more widely in how we function here at Code Enigma. Ultimately this means we’re being mindful and adaptive to ensure we’re always making improvements.

Thank you to the organisers!