Developing Your Design Leadership
5 Tips on Being a Strong Design Partner
It’s far too easy to become caught up by the day-to-day humdrum of product development only to lose sight of contributing to meaningful product direction. Even when we do find time to focus on strategy or to look further down the road than the next release, we might find that the very people we need to collaborate with are not feeling up for that kind of task.
With the rise of consumer expectations, users’ expectations for seamless design experiences have risen with them. Employees expect the platforms they use at work to be as intuitive as the phones in their pockets. The work we do as designers, even in the enterprise space, is more central to our customers’ success than ever. It falls on us to break free from the everyday and invest in meaningful cross-org collaboration to consider the bigger picture (and design’s place within it). But the willingness (as well as the space and time) for strategic thinking at that level doesn’t come easy — it requires buy-in from everyone in an organization: the c-suite, big-picture types all the way to the on-the-ground doers.
How can you inspire people to invest in ideas? How might you work strategic design into your busy calendar? And what are the foundations of a successful design-driven initiative?
Whether you’re an overwhelmed designer or a leader trying to incite passion, I hope these tips will help you build positive cross-organizational relationships and become a stronger design partner within your organization — they’ve helped me while designing and building products at Salesforce.
Manage Expectations
Communicate your workload, defend your limits, and make it known that you (and everyone else) should be setting aside time to think about long term ideas or difficult problems, even if that time leads to nothing other than thinking time.
It’s okay to say “no.” None of us are endless reservoirs of human capital, nor is the design team an on-demand tool to be used by others when needed. Measuring your work in consistent ways (story pointing) is a great way to communicate workload as well as turn down anything that puts you beyond your limits.
We recently overhauled the way we track UX work at Salesforce and it’s having a positive impact on how we balance our lives. In fact, some teams have used it with quite beneficial outcomes:
Through the use of UX story pointing I was able to demonstrate to the Product Management team that we were overloaded and gain agreement to reduce the scope to the highest priorities for this release. That helped my designers, but as a business, we still needed the features that fell below the line. Recognizing that, the lead PM requested additional UX headcount for this team! Big win! — Callie Deardorff, UX Operations @ Salesforce
Understand Business Values
If you can communicate your work in terms of how it will positively impact your audience’s own goals, your work will be pulled along by the gravity of the larger business’ goals — assuming those things align.
In his book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” Dale Carnegie offers endless bits of wisdom regarding thoughtful communication. One that comes in handy often is the premise that, more than almost anything, most people care to discuss themselves or subjects that concern their own interests. Somehow, some way, tap into this urge and make the value of your ideas relatable to your audience’s values. Accomplishing this not only makes your immediate goal successful — it also works towards building a long-term relationship with your collaborators that will make the next project go even smoother.
On more than one occasion I’ve seen hours of work go into design-led projects only to stall out at presentation time. Don’t forget that everyone has their own goals including the business itself. Doing design work for the sake of design only pleases the designer. While there is overlap, try not to conflate art and design; art can thrive on emotion whereas successful design often requires equitable considerations for business goals, values, and relationships.
Create Conversation
Meeting time is sacred, use it wisely. A good sign that you’re doing well in that regard is if there is lively conversation. If you find that meetings are ending without action items or the need for follow up conversations, reconsider the format.
Meetings are expensive. An unproductive meeting is like taking another lunch break. Strive to fill the time meaningfully — people climbing over each other to talk is a good thing (though bad manners!). Ever wonder why other folks are late to your meeting? They may have just left another passionate one.
If your ideas are controversial or novel, try presenting such topics in the form of questions — you’re more likely to instigate a conversation as opposed to immediate rejection. Use supporting information to guide discussion or validate obvious concerns. While empirical data is ideal, you might also try lighter options such as a competitive review or referencing agreed-upon visions and values.
Speaking of visions and values, have you seen how Salesforce uses what we call the V2MOM to facilitate organizational alignment? Check it out, you might consider applying it to a project too.
Drop the Ego
Use your special powers as a designer to facilitate conversations. When you have an opinion, apply it to your work, but be logical in evaluating whether it can be improved. More than anything, listen to people.
Feeling defensive of the things you create as a designer is a product of human nature, however it’s antithetical to healthy design iteration. Many developers, product managers, and doc writers have equally valid perspectives (some, believe it or not, even have an eye for design).
The concept of product ownership is a trip down Ego Lane. Designers shouldn’t “own a product.” Groups of people own products and are the entity best suited to making the final call, which is why design reviews are so important. Try one with a room of developers!
Any given solution is right if it solves the problem at hand given all relevant inputs, which includes factors such as available resourcing, cost of development changes, or the history of the product which all require flexibility in design. Consider using research to validate strong opinions, but pick those battles wisely — every feature likely isn’t worth fighting over.
Succeed Together
Sell your ideas to others. Excitement is contagious — make people feel involved, important, and able to contribute. If nothing else, if your idea fails, you’ll have someone to go ride go karts with.
We can learn from Dr. Seuss when he assures us, “And will you succeed? Yes! You will, indeed! (98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)” and I’d wager that his implied 1 1/4 percent fail rate might just be allayed with the help of others. Collaborating with designers (and perhaps more importantly, other areas of your organization) can only sharpen even the best of concepts.
And it’s not just the concepts that benefit — building relationships with co-workers across teams, functions, and throughout the organization leads, yes, to better products, but also makes for a better and more fulfilling working environment for everyone. Try pulling your favorite PM to the side and telling her that you’d love to sit down and “noodle on some ideas” (the word “noodle” will bring down even the toughest of defenses). Or, jump into a room with a whiteboard and some of those intimidating looking developers — they love drawing with erasable markers too.
Plenty in life never goes smoothly and it’s all a learning experience. I’ve been using these concepts across multiple product areas over many years with varying success. Ultimately, my favorite metric of being a strong, happy, and healthy design leader is whether I go home at the end of the day with a smile on my face. Don’t lose sight of what matters and try to be nice — we’re all in this together.
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Want to work with us? Contact uxcareers@salesforce.com
Check out the Salesforce Lightning Design System
Special thanks to Alan Weibel, Tim Sheiner, Liz Khoo, and Michelle Chapman-Thurber
