Elpha invited me to write about leading an effective design organization. Here’s what I had to say: Leading a large organization is a hell of a job. Sometimes it’s fun and exciting, like when you get to invest in a big project to imagine a new future for healthcare that’s built around the real-world needs of people no matter their socioeconomic status, ethnoracial identity, gender identity, or the intersection of those. Sometimes it’s empowering, such as when you get to address pay disparities by ethnoracial identity and gender identity within your company. And sometimes it’s infuriating, lik ..read more

Layoff. Reduction in force. Redundancy. No matter what word you put on it, a layoff is one of the hardest things for a manager to lead through. It’s natural to feel overwhelmed in this situation, regardless of whether you’re the decision-maker on who is leaving the company. You will have your own feelings about what is happening, at the same time that you’re working to support team members who are leaving and team members who are staying. When you’re a manager in this terrible situation, give yourself grace. Take time for yourself. Invest heavily in self-care for the next few weeks. (Yes, week ..read more

Finding your next role is a difficult but important challenge. How do you know what you’re looking for? You could simply look for your current job title, or maybe the next job title on the ladder, but that doesn’t help you know whether that’s a good job for you. When I’m trying to figure out what I’m really looking for in my next role, I spend some time doing a deep review of job descriptions. Here’s my process: Search for jobs with relevant titles. I like to cast a wide net and look for different titles, different levels, and different size companies. LinkedIn is a great place to start for t ..read more

As a leader, delegation is one of the most important things to do. You have to learn how to delegate effectively, what to delegate, how to support someone who you’ve delegated to, and how to hold them accountable. As a recovering perfectionist, I’ve also had to learn how to let go of how I imagine I would do a task if I had infinite time and resources so that I don’t measure success against that. When I’m trying to decide whether to delegate a task, and what to do if I think the person who I’ve delegated to is having some trouble with it, I ask myself the following questions: Does this task n ..read more

One of my mentees, a newly-minted director, asked how to evaluate the performance of the managers who now report to them. We were discussing some of the differences as you move from manager to director and how to make the shift in mindset. Measuring the effectiveness of individual contributors (ICs) is relatively straightforward. Are they getting their work done? Are they helping others get their work done? Are they helping those around them build their skills and be more effective? Are they taking feedback? Are they giving high-quality actionable feedback? Measuring the effectiveness of manag ..read more

The most recent episode of the Awkward Silences podcast from User Interviews has a brilliant interview with Holly Hester-Reilly about common mistakes that are made when planning, conducting, analyzing, and sharing user research. When she discussed planning user research, she talked about needing to understand what decisions would be driven by the user research. This point is one that I see researchers and people conducting research miss frequently. Knowing what decisions will be made helps you frame your research well and ensure that you’re asking the right research questions. You can always g ..read more

Setting career goals is hard, especially when it’s time to do it as part of the usual performance review cycle. As I’ve coached my teams through goal-setting, I’ve observed several different reasons why it can be hard to set goals. These reasons include: Analysis paralysis. “I could work on any number of things, but which ones are the ‘right’ ones to work on?” Future hazy, try again later. “I really don’t know what I want my future to hold, so I’m not sure what goals I should have when I don’t have a three- or five-year plan.” Too much happening right now. “I’m already in a period of personal ..read more

When I think about what it takes to move to Senior Researcher, Senior Designer, or Senior Engineer, there are some traits that often don’t get captured very well in a career ladder or other career framework. The following are the most important differentiators to be great at the Senior level: Don’t avoid the hard conversations. Great senior-level folks manage their own discomfort with the hard conversation. They make the conversation productive so that everyone can move forward. Give actionable high-quality feedback. Great senior-level folks give appropriate feedback to those around them. Tha ..read more

I’ve spent much of 2022 in hiring mode: adding designers, researchers, product managers, and leaders to my team and my company. So far this year, I’ve interviewed well over 200 candidates, from those just about to graduate from college for their first entry-level role to highly-experienced leaders for director and Vice President roles. When I’m the hiring manager, or the executive to whom the hiring manager reports, I do the following to improve the success of my hiring efforts. First of all, I do most of the outreach to the most interesting candidates personally. Candidates almost always like ..read more

Recently, I was talking to a new researcher who is struggling because they feel siloed off from the rest of their organization. “Is this really what research is like?” they asked me, after describing a research process conducted almost exclusively by themselves. One of the things that I like the most about research is how collaborative it is. I shared several ideas for making research more collaborative, including the following: Make the planning process collaborative by involving others (other researchers, designers, PMs, anyone who is interested!) in the creation of your test plan.  Ma ..read more