As our field grows, technology advances and users develop new expectations for the products they use, we are challenged to build teams that produce best-in-class products and services. When you look at what it takes to build successful, high-performing teams, you see that our opportunity for succ...

Between 2012 and 2016 Atlassian grew from 6 to 126 designers. In the last 2 years (to 2018) they have grown again to almost 200 members within their design team. Throughout this growth they didn't start with a blank canvas of brand new products and a small company. When they had only 6 designers ...

Let’s face it, whether you’re seasoned or newly minted, being a manager is complex and highly rewarding. Helping people to step into their best selves means that you have a lot of power, and it’s important for you to be aware of it. In this talk, we’ll discuss the ways in which managing can harm ...

Designers can supercharge their teams but helping them make better decisions faster. They do this by functioning in the three primary roles of facilitator (assisting others in refining and sharing ideas), steward (of a user centered creative process), and connoisseur (an expert arbiter of taste)....

Building engagement is a critical task for design leaders. However, the agile product development processes that many design teams must work within make that difficult. When agile is focused on cranking out features, it becomes a grind. But what if—with a bit of foundational work and a few tweaks...

In the words of Cap Watkins: “Congratulations. You got promoted – now prepare to suck at a completely different job.”

This is exactly what happened to Jane multiple times in her twenty year career. She has gone from being a designer, to leading a few people, to leading a team, and now as a direc...

Design leaders truly now have “seats at the table” in business, but those seats come with some unexpected strings attached. After convincing design can drive business value, how do we deliver that value team after team, project after project? How do we create sustainable design careers? How do we...

As a co-founder of Wert&Co., Judy has been working with the leadership of innovative companies for over 25 years. She has earned an international reputation as a trusted authority and executive search consultant in the world of design. Judy is also known for bringing an added dimension to her wor...

“…bamboo, bent even to the ground, will spring upright after the passage of the storm.”

Japanese proverb

Life, as a design leader, can be stressful. Juggling demands from multiple stakeholders with conflicting needs. Looking after a team that’s full of humans who need care and attention. Battli...

Health and wellness of an organization's or project's performance can be relatively simple. In a snapshot we can know a lot: dashboards and metrics tell us about how well our work is progressing, what milestones we're reaching, and what color-coded alert state of panic we should be in. And we can...

As the move to establish in-house design teams accelerates, it turns out there’s very little common wisdom on what makes for a successful design organisation. Books and presentations tend to focus on process, methods, and tools, leaving a gap of knowledge when it comes to organisational and opera...

Do natural born leaders really exist? If so, where does that leave the rest of us? Is our notion of leadership out of sync with the reality of humankind? The current view of what constitutes a leader hasn’t progressed with the rallying cry for diversity and inclusion. What message does this send ...

The next generation will live beyond 100, which will require an evolution of how we think about our work lives and longevity. Could you work for 60 years? Or be so effective in the years you did work that you could retire for that long? We’re already hitting our upper bounds as leaders and makers...

Hiring and onboarding new employees to your team is all too often treated as an afterthought, or best case, as an at-the-moment-thought. Employees deserve a well-thought out experience that includes them from the very beginning–from the creation of the position description—to that time after they...

Description: Even with a grand seat at the table, big decisions hinge on two overlooked factors 1) who at the table has the most power? and 2) how can they be influenced? Designers notoriously overlook how their lack of political acumen cripples their ability to make good design happen. But fear ...

Everyone wants to hire great talent. But how do we define great? Does that change over time? How do you know you’re recruiting and hiring the right people? How do you retain and develop talent, giving your team meaning, purpose, and ownership?

In the Design Career Journey, we explore a framework...