Meet Wrikers: Umberto Abate, Head of Product Design
Before coming to Wrike, Umberto led design teams in Autodesk, Microsoft, Skype, and startups. Check out his personal journey of going from designer to Head of Product Design, the goals he has for our design team’s future, and why he decided to join Wrike! 👇
Hi, I am Umberto Abate. I’m based in Italy, and I joined the team at the end of 2020.
What made you want to join Wrike?
When Wrike approached me, I was so impressed by how open and authentic they were, and we started the conversation. I liked how they were very interested in seeing if we were a good fit for each other (compared to how most other companies would just see if I checked a few of their boxes).
…once I started meeting the team and saw the genuinely positive culture and their design team’s potential, I knew this is where I wanted to be.
And, the more I saw about them, the more I was interested too. Wrike is defining a new way of organizing work, teams, and people in the digital world.
Then, once I started meeting the team and saw the genuinely positive culture and their design team’s potential, I knew this is where I wanted to be.
How did you become a Head of Design?
I started out as a product designer, but I was always interested in understanding how teams work and trying to help them improve.
While working at Skype, I started weekly “Show and Tell” sessions where people could talk about what they’re working on and get constructive feedback from other team members. After that, I led a group that focused on strategy and innovation.
At some point, my boss strongly encouraged me to start looking into a more managerial career path. I wasn’t sure if that was the path I wanted to take, but my boss reassured me that if I figured out that it wasn’t for me and I wanted to jump back into my non-managerial role, I could do that. So, I started my journey managing people.
Once Skype became part of Microsoft, I had more opportunities to help take care of people, connect work across initiatives, and help the team realize the higher purpose of their work. Things went very well, so it wasn’t long before I was promoted to Principal Design Manager of a growing team. I had a lot of great support along the way, with help from great leaders, coaches, and programs.
At some point, I wondered what it would be like to build a team from the ground up, so I joined Tandem Bank, an ambitious startup with an even more ambitious mission, as their Head of Design. There I built the team, discovery and delivery processes almost from scratch, across service, product, brand and communication design. I made sure that when we did research work, the results would actually have an impact on our business model and strategy.
After that, I joined Autodesk as their Director of Design, where I built and ran the design team of one of its cloud platforms for media and entertainment.
Wrike’s executives actually listen to what you have to say and value your contributions.
Now, I’m here at Wrike, helping to change how people around the world work.
How does Wrike support your career goals?
Wrike really makes sure that the people that work for them have everything they need to do well (training resources, equipment, face-to-face time with HR, and more). And, the executives actually listen to what you have to say and value your contributions.
Even though the team’s scope is much larger than anything I’d worked on before (we have 22+ cross functional teams working on the product), I’m thoroughly enjoying working closely with and scaling a group of talented international designers.
What is the hardest part of your job? What is the most rewarding one?
My work starts with people, like the team, stakeholders, and customers. The better relationships I can create between these people, the better the results.
Unfortunately, because of the pandemic, I haven’t met anyone in person yet. So, all of the changes we’ve been making so far have been built on fully remote relationships. Thanks to Wrike and other communication tools we are making this work surprisingly well, as we are keeping meetings mainly for the essential parts around feedback and alignment as well as generating ideas and development. Most of us are also in the same time zone, which helps a lot.
How would you describe Wrike’s design team and culture?
Very ambitious and hungry for positive change. The team wants to do more and do it better. They’re very comfortable with recognizing the gap between where they are and where they want to be. The team is also brave enough to admit that while they don’t know what they need to do to get there, they’re willing to try whatever it takes to grow and develop.
One place we’re seeing some improvements is in relationships between designers. Our designers have always worked very well in their cross-functional teams, but they hadn’t developed their relationships with each other as much. Once we started investing in those relationships, we saw almost immediate positive results. Luckily, that means everyone likes each other, and they just had less obvious channels or opportunities to do things together.
We’re investing in leadership, capacity, and specialization.
I’m very glad that the team has a great range of skills. And, for the skills that they don’t have, we have a hiring and development plan in place to help fill those gaps.
How do you think the team will continue to grow and mature?
We’re investing in team growth in a few areas, including leadership, capacity, and specialization.
We’ve just created discipline guilds that help people learn more about their realms (like UX architecture, design systems and prototyping, design language, UX research, and UX writing).
We’re also investing in formal review / informal feedback processes, clearer career development paths for UX specialists, architects, and people managers.
What does a typical workday look like for you?
On my laptop screen, if I’m not on a Zoom call, you’ll see some Wrike tabs. On my second screen, you’ll see I always have a Slack window open so I can communicate with my team easily. I’ll also work in Figma and Google Docs a fair bit. I barely open my email.
I spend a lot of my time:
- Building relationships with team members and stakeholders so we can reflect on problems and move things forward.
- Developing team members and hiring new ones.
- Reviewing product decisions, designs, and processes.
- Thinking.
- Creating.
Most days don’t include all of these things, but every week does.
If you were going to give someone who just decided to join Wrike one piece of advice, what would it be?
Continue making good decisions.
