Design Leaders Must Act Like Business Leaders
by Marcin Treder
From Mark Templeton of Citrix, Brian Chesky of Airbnb, Jeff Veen of Typekit to Scott Belsky of Behance, we’ve seen designers make great business leaders.
In fact, Maria Giudice claims that CEOs with design background (“DEOs”) have a competitive edge over traditional CEOs due to their empathetic problem-solving skills.
It definitely makes sense.
Delighting customers and employees is easier if you’re focused on the human being in front of you. Business leaders with a design background see “numbers through people,” rather than “people through numbers.” This difference might look small, but in the age when customer delight helps companies like Apple or Airbnb dominate unforgiving markets, empathy can really make or break your business.
So far, I’m telling the story with broad strokes. But it’s actually very personal. I’m a designer, and design manager turned into full-time CEO. I truly believe that today’s’ designers will be the product and business leaders of tomorrow.
In this article, I’ll identify traits that differentiate Designers-CEOs from classic CEOs. I’m hoping it will help designers become more successful business leaders.
And now, a personal story
In 2012, after years of working as a UX Designer and UX Manager, I followed the steps of my design idols and became a full-time CEO.
While I didn’t have any previous experience running a business, UXPin (the design collaboration platform I co-founded) was growing like crazy and needed my full attention. The change had to be immediate, and there was no going back.
I said my farewells to design craft and design management to lead the company.
The beginning wasn’t easy. Operating a small company requires extreme multitasking skills and a broad attention span. In the early days, you have to take care of everything. From the strategy, through fundraising, to marketing and even cleaning up the office.
Yet, in the span of 4 years, we’ve grown to one of the leading product design workflow platforms. We started with the team of 5 working in a tiny apartment. Today, we have over 70 people working on the platform to empower product teams in 150 countries (including companies like HBO).
Even now, after four years, I still see my design background continuously influencing every decision I make. For me, running a company is just a complicated, long, and demanding design process. I’m definitely a Designer-CEO.
How my design background influences my business leadership style
Working as a designer changes the way we perceive the world. To paraphrase a famous saying: “when you’re a designer, everything looks like a design problem”.
There’s no way and no reason to fight it. As designers, we have particular traits that improve our odds of successfully running a business.
In my own experience as the CEO of UXPin, the following principles heavily influenced my leadership style:
1. No problem is impossible.
Mentoring design interns and junior designers through the years taught me that experience creates calmness.
After running dozens, if not hundreds of projects, you just get a cool head.
It’s an incredibly powerful trait for a leader who needs to reflect that there’s no place for panic and despair. Focus on describing the issue, deepen your understanding of the problem, plan the solution, and measure results. My design background definitely gave me this focus on problem-solving.
2. Understanding users is non-negotiable.
In the early days of UXPin, I personally contacted every user who tried our product. I had to know if we were doing anything of value.
To this day, I still like to spend time with our customers, directly through meetings and calls, or indirectly through research run by our team. I can’t even imagine operating a business without the constant effort to understand the customer. For a designer turned CEO, this is non-negotiable.
3. Attention to details.
Every designer knows that the greatest products perfect the details.
The harmony of the design and the delight of the experience comes from consistency. This sort of quality is very difficult for early stage businesses, where a “good enough” MVP is great. Even if your first release is slightly embarrassing, keep quality in your immediate vision as you balance the cost of development.
UXPin 1.0 in 2011
UXPin 3.0 in 2016
4. Ready for constant change.
Designers know nothing lasts forever.
Today’s positive client review might take a completely different turn tomorrow. The hottest trends today might become the jokes of tomorrow. Requirements, trends, technology, tastes — designers are used to the constant change. Nothing can scare us, and this is extremely empowering in business. If you expect change, you’re never surprised and always ready to act.
5. Make the complex simple and govern chaos.
We designers always strive for simplicity in form.
We despise overly complicated, chaotic objects, services, and processes. Our entire experience tells us that chaos must be governed by a planned and perfectly executed form. It seems common sense in design work, but in business, it gives us a surprising advantage over anyone else.
How to Become a Business Leader
The five traits mentioned above are not unique. All designers have them.
Here’s how to channel those traits as a business leader:
1. Apply problem-solving discipline to every task.
Whether it’s redesigning an onboarding flow or analyzing a spreadsheet of monthly churn, never accept anything at face value.
Get to the core of the problem, consider a few viable solutions…you know the drill. Sooner or later this becomes second nature. It sets the precedent that a logical story must support every decision.
2. Connect UX research and business analysis as often as you can.
Understand the business implications behind user research insights. While all UX issues should be fixed, reality dictates that we prioritize ruthlessly between annoyances and revenue-crippling problems.
- Using your in-app analytics, check the frequency and breadth of use for features that don’t perform well in usability tests.
- Try to assign a dollar cost to the affected feature. For example, let’s say the average revenue per user is $22. Currently, the hypothetical app has 1000 paying customers. If a poorly performing feature is used 38 times a week on average by 620 customers, you start to gauge the potential lost revenue if people churn due to loss in productivity.
While UX is by nature a blend of art and science, try to see the bottom line whenever possible. The math won’t always be perfect, but you’ll find common ground more quickly with business stakeholders. You’ll be speaking a language they already understand.
3. Practice the analysis — synthesis routine.
When you face a complex problem, dissect it into smaller user stories first. Look into the data and examine the events unique to each user story. Make it a habit and you’ll be surprised at what you find.
Whenever we’re facing challenges, we try to break them down into measurable and solvable issues. Once we see individual chunks of the problem, we start designing a recovery plan.
I always encourage our designers and product folks to regularly weigh the time cost against expected returns. Based on the hourly breakdown of salaries, how much will each sprint cost us? Based on the dollar value of a trial signup and customer lifetime value, how many signups and subscriptions are required to justify the work?
Again, the math isn’t perfect, but it does help guide us towards the most valuable problems first.
Final Words
For designers to succeed in business, they need to shed the perception of being a design expert and portray themselves as a business consultant who knows design.
Luckily, all the traits we need are already within us. Just like we train our design sensibility, we can also fine tune our business sense with the same skillset.
Good design might make a business successful. It’s great designers who keep the business successful.
For more advice, download our free e-book UX Design Process Best Practices.
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