Advocating for your designers to the business

A design leader lives in two worlds: product design and the business. It’s your job to mediate when the needs of designers and the needs of the business compete.

Designers want to make great products

These people are probably why you became a manager. You love design, you work with great designers, and you want to use your experiences to help grow their skills and careers. Designing great products can turn into more repeat and new customers: a happy business.

No one knows the actual work better than the people doing it. You as a manager can use your experience and birds-eye-view to evaluate the health of the people and the work. Regular one-on-ones help support the growth of your designers but also understand the temperature of the work being done. Designers need context and understanding for why their effort matters. It’s your job to explain how their work fits into the overall business goals.

Directors want to make great business

You want to help your designers do work that supports your company’s mission believe success is possible.You can’t and don’t need to know everything happening with the business.

It’s your director’s job to help you understand their decisions and goals that impact your team. If they don’t: ask. Conversely, it’s your job to share how your designers and their projects are doing as it relates to health of the business. However, it’s very important to respect what your designers tell you in confidence.

You live in both worlds

You were probably promoted to a leadership position because of your experience and good judgement. You raise people up around you and your recommendations (based on experience) leave things better than how you found them. This motivates designers to trust your mentorship and the directors to trust you with more responsibility. Nice job!

Advocacy Strategies

It’s just as easy to blindly exclaim “we need more user research!” as it is to say “NO!”. Understanding both worlds helps you decide what to negotiate and how to relate it to your directors’ and designers’ needs. Let’s say your designers are over worked:

• Tell specific stories that advocate for your designers: Alex is the only designer on the Catsbnb. Alex is a great designer and is managing to support the iOS and Android platforms while working on the new meow feature. Alex is holding up but in my experience, it’s very hard to support two platforms at once let alone create on a new feature. Design will become a blocker from shipping important features that support the business. This will earn you understanding an empathy.
• Relate the problem to something your director understands: The engineering and design worlds are actually quite similar in some ways. Both of us do really well when getting in flow and focusing on one problem at a time. Right now we have so many features that need urgent design attention. Imagine if Reese had to support the work of the entire engineering team! That would be pretty challenging and that’s the situation Alex is in right now. This will help your director visualize the problem.
• Make specific recommendations that relate to the business:
  1) We need reduce the scope and reprioritize the project goals so it’s possible for the team to see some success. I talked to Alex, the meow feature could probably be done if with one focused week of design time. Can we put the iOS and Android updates on hold? They’re likely to get delayed anyway if we keep all three going at once. This shows your director the problem will not solve itself.
  2) Another idea is to move Quinn from the Birdbox project Catsbnb. Quinn is excited about learning Android and did such a great job on Birdbox that things are running pretty smoothly and would be ok without a designer for awhile. This gives your director choices inside of other information you don’t have.
  3) Ideally, w could hire more designers. Catsbnb, Whalechat, Giraffestragram, and Owlbook would all ship faster and better if we had more designers today. I know it’s not in the budget but has been a problem for two quarters. Plus the big myBunny project coming up would benefit from having more designers trained already. This shows your director the scale of the problem.

Kindly Compromise

Rarely do we get exactly what we want, when and how how we want it. You’re also a leader because you’re flexible. Again, nice job!

Sometimes, even after all this work the situation can’t change much. But now you also understand why. Come back to your designer in a cool and level-headed state for a follow up conversation:

• Explain the decision or new proposal: Alex, thanks for letting me how you’re feeling and what you need. I really appreciate that. I talked with the directors and made a few staffing and hiring suggestions. Unfortunately I can’t get another designer on the team right now because of the myBunny project coming up. But the good news is that Quinn is excited about Android and can spend 2–3 hours a week with you on Catsbnb. I realize the situation is not ideal but we really want to bring some relief to help you be successful. What do you think?
• Make room for their response: Be quiet. Make space for your designer to think quietly and out loud, and ask questions.
• Tell a shared story: It can help to share a personal story from a similar experience. It shows that you truly understand their challenge, have internalized their problem, and in the future are available to talk about it more.

When designers can’t do good work, the product suffers. When the product suffers, the business hurts. When the business hurts designers are under supported. The cycle continues. As you live in both worlds, it’s your job to close the design:product:business loop wherever you step in. If this sounds hard, it’s because it is. But your best effort is already the best thing possible.