Some things I value as a leader.

Relevance

  • Work should have meaning at some level, and teams should understand how their work contributes to success

  • I prefer mission-driven companies, even if it is just providing value to customers. Time is a great example, it’s priceless, so building a product that gives customers the gift of time is a good mission

  • It is important to help partners across the organization, from individual contributors up to the C-Suite, understand the relevance of our work, and that we understand them

Fairness

  • I value people, regardless of who they are, a team’s success is driven by its members

  • Structural Inequality exists – address at the top of the hiring funnel to ensure a balanced candidate mix, and provide supportive environment and opportunities to help them blossom

  • Make sure people always understand the “why” – both within my team and in our interactions with the organization

Openness

  • Provide and solicit honest feedback, and invite feedback by providing self-criticism

  • Clearly communicate trust in the team and give them the space and freedom to assume ownership and responsibility for their work

  • A big part of Openness is listening – to what people say, how they say things, and what they don’t say

Experimentation

  • Experimentation is the engine of innovation

  • Encourage the team to push the envelope – they should lead with the blue sky, but have a practical fallback ready

  • Provide an environment for teams to fail safely, for them and for the business, but also the guard rails to ensure their success

Building teams.

I strive to create what I call the Heist Movie Team – in most heist movies, there is an extended sequence of the leader and sidekick building the team. Each team member they recruit is an accomplished thief, but each also has their own special talent that they bring to the caper: a safe cracker, a computer/tech expert, accomplished driver, an explosives expert, a forger — you get the idea.

I often use this metaphor to describe my approach to building a team with a diverse, but heavily-overlapped set of skills. A good team typically has members with similar core design skills, but with a varied set of specific expertise. Some team members might be experts in information architecture, some in user research, others content strategy, etc.

All my teams have been comprised of some combination of UX, UI, UX Research, Information Architecture, Content Strategy, Design System, Design Ops, Front-end Development, or Quality Assurance, and they have ranged in size from 7 to 27. Some were flat, others had Managers and Directors reporting to me.

Developing people.

People need to grow vertically and horizontally.

They want to get to the next level, but they should also increase the breadth and depth of their expertise. In alignment with the principle of Openness, my job is to make sure that they understand what their growth path is, regardless of their level or nature of their role, and ensure their success by providing coaching, mentorship, escalation, and advocacy.