Design Leadership Through Fostering Culture
I am beginning an on-going piece on leadership in UX Design. The first of these begins with a conversation with John Sexton. John is a Creative Director with specialities in UX/UI, Product Design, and Marketing. You can visit his site to learn more about him at johnsexton.net.
During our conversation, the topic that really emerged to the forefront was culture, specifically design culture. John had many experiences and ideas about what works in making a great design culture.
Create Affinity
Teams that perform well together tend to like working with each other and that does not happen by chance. People are hired into companies at different moments with different experiences at different places in their careers with different skill sets and perspectives. It is in these differences that they can challenge one another create something greater together then they are capable of as individuals. And if these differences go unacknowledged and unappreciated, they fall into the background and the indifference, or worse, the resentment between different people contributes to the company culture.
Affinity in company culture does not necessarily mean you’re madly in love with your co-workers, but it implies a respect is there amongst colleagues.
In the middle of my conversation with John he was receiving a text from a former team member who shared that things are not the same without him at his former organization. He shared with me that he takes his team with him for coffee on a regular basis or out for a beer and during that time they have discussions, not necessarily work related, but they all get a little closer to one another and they have an opportunity to be heard.
Additionally, John expressed the importance of hiring for a cultural fit. In a previous experience, he was hired with a number of designers through a third party recruiter and none of the team members had met until joining the company. Over time, it was clear that things were just not working with the team and it all had to do with different views and different approaches that could not be conciliated. Eventually, team members were let go. John said it doesn’t have to go that way, but the people need to meet each other and be interviewed for culture as well as skill sets to create an effective design culture.
Allow Ideas To Come From Anywhere
People like to have their ideas heard and great ideas are not limited to the directors, managers, or even the design team. Great ideas can from anywhere and the diversity of an organization is one of its greatest assets to producing those great ideas. John emphasized his impetus to create environments where everyone’s contributions are considered. A critical piece starts with getting everyone in the room during the early stage of a project. Often organizations have a tendency to want to bring certain skills or certain people in during later parts of the process, but they miss a golden opportunity to get the magic going from the beginning. And great ideas are not even limited to just the people that will touch the project at one point or another, but they can from anywhere in the company.
“There was a time where I sent emails to the whole company about any project we had come in.”
In one of those times occasions, John’s team received a project-critical idea from the receptionist who is going to night school studying the exact topic the project covered.
Give People An Opportunity To Do What They Love.
For many of us, we don’t need to a reward to do what you love doing. The opportunity for the task is enough to drive us to action. Designers, choose to be designers because they love it. I’ve never met a designer that regretted not following their passion to be doctor or a lawyer but instead chose the path of being a designer. While many of us enter the field bright-eyed and passionate, we get hit with the reality when project work can seem redundant, repetitive, and just unchallenging. Yet this work must get done regardless. What do you do as a leader when you see employees disengage?
A wonderful example of leadership came through for John in a moment like this. A young team member of his was assigned to do a large set of user flows for a seemingly dull user experience. John sensed his dismay and looked at the project. He said I want you to design these flows and also create a new branding experience for the company. The young designer took the challenge on with joy. Not only did he completed all the user flows, but he also put his full attention into creating a great re-branding concept. Of course this ideas never pitched to the organization as a possible rebranding, nor was it ever expected to be. But the great part all this was that this little project was incorporated into his design portfolio.
These are all important pieces of making a great design culture and there are many more things we can do as leaders and designers to foster environments which call forth the best designs we can produce.
