Interview with Nathan Shedroff

In advance of the Leading Design conference in London on the 24th-26th October, I caught up with Nathan Shedroff to discuss his background, experience and thoughts on the subject of Design Leadership.

Tell us about your first design leadership role? Who did you model yourself on?

It was probably a project I worked-on at TheUnderstandingBusiness way back in 1989. I was given an entire book to produce, OFFICEACCESS, and I had to pull-together the design, illustrations, text, etc. with a writer and illustrator. I managed the entire project. I’m not sure what kind of leader I was — probably more like a manager since it was a small team, a project everyone understood well, and everyone was diligent. In other words, there weren’t many issues and we all worked together well.

Or, perhaps, when I started my first company, vivid studios, where I was the only designer, an equal (one of three) founders, and the keeping of the creative vision for all of the projects (as well as most of the design work). That was more interesting and challenging because it involved negotiating not just resources and details but vision for these projects and for our company. I had responsibility for creative decisions on a lot the projects, but I accepted a lot of input. Still, my partners trusted me a great deal. Where we had conflict was more around the rest of the issues and decisions that drove the business (and where design decisions fit within those). I don’t think I had a model. Or, at least, I certainly didn’t think about one. A the studios I worked at, previously, there were open conversations and discussions but decisions were made, chiefly, by project leads and principles. Being such a small company at our start, that was a natural model. But, I think that the biggest influence on my leadership style probably came from watching and learning from Captain Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation. There’s a tremendous amount of great leadership advice worked into that series.

When I got to business school is when I really got training on what leadership means, in a contemporary culture. It wasn’t so different than I had tried to behave before that but I was never given tools and validation for these approaches until then.

What does a typical day look like for you? Is it all meetings?

Well, I’m in transition right now so it’s mixed. I’m leaving my chair position at the DMBA program after building this degree over the past 9 years. For that, yes, there were a lot of meetings and I was in the office nearly everyday (that I wasn’t traveling) even though I didn’t need to be. However, now that I’ve moved back to teaching full-time and starting a company, my time is much more flexible and things haven’t yet gotten crazy (with the new company). We’ll be smallish for the near future so it won’t be too difficult to get abreast of everything and everyone. Communication is key but the only real challenge, for the near term, will be to keep clear communication with our developers in Eastern Europe — and time zones can be a challenge.

Ask me again in a year!

Do you still get to do any “real” design?

Now, yes. I haven’t done much consulting over the past 8 years and I LOVE getting my hands back into product. I’m involved with all aspects of our new company’s work and it’s great to be realizing and implementing design work. In addition, because I’m so focused on development and not only production, I get to really think about future media.

What are the qualities of a good design leader?

The same qualities for any good leader:

• The ability to co-create a vision of the future that others want to be a part of and clearly communicate it.
• An authentic respect for people.
• An understanding that creativity and innovation are disruptive processes and can’t be normalized (though they can stick to a schedule).
• An appreciation for both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of work and life.
• Clear communication (again).

One of the best books to describe this is Rise of the DEO by Maria Giudice and Christopher Ireland.

What challenges are you facing at the moment and what are you doing to overcome them?

Juggling a lot of startup issues while trying to make time to think about the next products in our strategy. We’re currently waiting for the first product to be finished before we can take it on the road and sign-up customers and, at the moment, I’ve still got my past job for another month. So, the biggest challenge is that I can’t focus totally on the new company and, at the same time, I feel a bit disconnected as we wait for the developers as they plow through all the work they have in on their plates. So, simultaneously, I feel like I can’t focus and I’m in a kind of start-and-stop purgatory of waiting.

How is your design team structured and how is that working? Anything you’d tweak?

I’ve thought a lot about this in planning this company. As a kind of media company, design needs to be represented at the top of the organization. It’s critical to our product strategy and client services. it will be it’s only “vertical” but it will only work if the people within it have a keen understanding and respect for all of the other aspects of the business. They cannot become a silo that sequesters themselves in their only little design world. I think that the entire company will want to be some part of the design that gets done, notsomuch in terms of oversight but in terms of pride of accomplishment. This is similar to how design functions at Teague, the oldest design firm in the world, which I’m a member of the board. At every board meeting (5 times each year), we have a creative review so that the leadership of the company experiences what the entire staff produces and we can appreciate both the work and the issues that enable it. It’s also pretty exciting and fun to see, even though we’re not a part of that work. I’d like to make sure that my company works similarly.

What are you most proud of achieving as a design leader?

That’s easy: the DMBA programs. I got to create a business program for the 21st Century focused entirely on creating better leaders. My staff and faculty have created an amazing curriculum, which they teach in innovative ways, and an experience that helps people develop the skills they need to be effective leaders of innovation. Whether people have a design background or not, they’re prepared to lead organizations, not only the design function. It’s been an incredibly interesting and satisfying ride for the past 9 years!

Any advice for a new design leader?

Yes, design is poorly understood by some designers and it’s your job to help them understand it. Yes, you need to learn more about business (though you don’t have to go get a degree) in order to understand your peers’ issues, vocabulary, and culture. You need to help them understand that they, too, are creative, and that their objectives can’t be met only by “managing” operations.

There is a kind of war between the quantitative and qualitative parts of business and society. There are many, many people — especially in business and government — who don’t trust anything but numbers and don’t “see” the factors that can’t be expressed by numbers. It’s our job as designers to bridge this divide and help our peers “get” that there’s more than what they see and that the only thing to focus on in organizations are the quality of the relationships that organizations create.