DESIGN MANAGER JOURNEY
So you wanna be a design manager?
Motivations & realities on the journey from lead to manager
I’ve been managing designers, design managers, and design teams for more than 10 years now. Unlike many people in my field moving into management was a purposeful and intentional decision. Many things make being a design manager an amazing and rewarding experience. The ability to see across many portfolios and projects simultaneously can be extremely impactful. Having the opportunity to help grow designers, support and steer their careers, help them grow in their roles, and improve their craft is one of the biggest joys of the job.
I decided to move from being a designer to a design manager when I felt like I was at the end of my ability to be impactful at the scale that I wanted. I would have needed to clone myself to be able to address all of the design problems and opportunities that I saw in the world, in a way being a design manager is kind of like cloning yourself; you’re able to share the best things that you’ve learned about approaches and problem-solving and teach others, striking the right balance of saving them from struggling and giving them the right opportunity to fail and find their own way. You also learn a lot from them.
When thinking about the journey from design lead to design manager the most critical thing is to understand is your own motivations. In many companies in the world, management is often seen as a promotion or a more senior role than an individual contributor (IC), hopefully, by the end of this you will be of the same mindset as me, that design management is its own craft with its own skills, problems, growth areas, and opportunities, rather than an obvious logical step for everyone, and certainly not a promotion.
When you think about your career you have to think about your own motivations… Why do you think design management is for you? There’s a lot of pitfalls, thinking it’s a quick way to a promotion, thinking that it’s an easy way to have more impact, or even something as simple as wanting to move away from the day-to-day of individual products. If you go into management seeking power or seeking to control others, you’ll be sorely disappointed, in my opinion, design management is like public service, you work for those you manage not the other way around.
What it isn’t…
If you’ve only had managers who themselves were still acting as individual contributors or were micromanaging you might think that a design manager is just “a more senior designer.”⁽¹⁾ While I have encountered managers who were contributing personally to the day-to-day design output I’ve found they can only do this successfully long term when their team remains very small (usually 5 people or less) and their teams’ work is very closely overlapping thematically with their own. I’ll talk more about IC Lead managers later, but for now, let’s put that aside. As a manager, my role isn’t to know more about the product area of any of my team members than they do, it’s not to have a higher level of craft in their area of expertise than they do, and finally, it’s not to have stronger relationships with their peers than they do. In many cases, I don’t even feel like it’s a design manager’s role to be the “final decider” when it comes to product decisions, but more on that when we talk about delegation.
What it is…
As a design manager, my day-to-day is usually an endless series of back to back meetings, the “work” that you do takes a very different form⁽²⁾ than what you likely did for the previous phase of your career, conversations, compelling writing, and inspirational decks and talks will be what the artifacts of your day yields.
Being outgoing can be helpful, but I’ve seen amazing managers who were shy or introverted. Listening is one of the most critical skills for a manager, and most of the successful introvert managers I’ve worked with are experts in this area.
I’ve found that my time is broken down into a few key areas:
- Translating business goals into projects
- Translating individuals goals into initiatives
- Understanding what motivates people
- Knowing when to step into the project space, and understanding how to be useful there (being a rock in the stream)
Design management is a different path
If you choose it, you may have some remorse you’ll find yourself drifting away some time from what designers care about and get excited about⁽³⁾, that new prototyping tool, new research methodologies might take a distant second place to you pondering, “how do I get this project done that no one wants to do?” “How do I get the shy newcomer to the team to speak up in critiques, they clearly have great ideas” Then you realize, you can apply the same design problem-solving methodologies to management⁽⁴⁾ as you do to the problems and challenges you faced as a designer, and this can make you best suited for these types of problems.
Does this mean you’ll never create something the way you did before? Maybe… How close or distant from the design process is often up to you. I personally would feel very disconnected from design if I didn’t occasionally participate in a sprint, join a crit, or draw a wireframe or two when there is a need and an appropriate moment to do so, but that’s just me. I have to ensure that those times are appropriate and that I’m not stepping on someone’s toes by doing them, I have to be invited.
Biggest challenges
By far in my career, the hardest challenges have been the “people ones” from mediating interpersonal conflicts⁽⁵⁾ to educating cross-functional partners (Product Managers, Engineers, etc) about what the role of a designer (and design managers) are and are not, managing low performers, and demystifying some of the difficult decisions that get made that affect people’s projects and careers.
Comparatively the challenges that come up in the product design process can start to seem simple and small. It’s important to remind yourself that for everyone, the problem in front of them often is the one that feels the biggest and most daunting.
Storytime
I had a very senior designer join my team, they knew their product space better than any designer at the company, likely better than most of their cross-functional partners did as well. In our 1+1s they would often ask my opinion of product and design decisions that they’d made, and would sometimes become frustrated when I would defer to them, or ask more questions than giving out answers. When it came time for performance reviews this designer was critical in one area of our structured feedback about me, their manager which addresses that “technical expertise” as perceived by the report toward their manager. When addressing this feedback with my manager, they were quick to suggest that I dive deep into this designer’s product space to get up to speed, understand the intricate details, become known to and close with this designer’s cross-functional peers and seek to be seen as a technical expert in this niche but important product area. I heard them out, but chose a different path. I knew that this was an untenable solution long term. There was no way that I could scale this approach to the dozens of other product areas that were in my portfolio, and above all, I knew that “being a better designer than my designers’’ wasn’t my job. It wasn’t how I could bring them value. Instead, over the course of the next month, I made extra time to teach and understand from this designer what my role was and how I could provide them value. Introductions, sponsorship, role-playing tough conversations, guidance on how to approach the “people problems” that often become reasons design doesn’t get implemented. There was a clear moment where the realization “oh! That’s your job” came over them, and our 1+1s took on a very different tone from that point on, rarely did we focus on the designs themselves, rather we talk about what we could do for each other to unblock, amplify, and leverage each other’s skills to move the projects and the designer’s career forward.
How can you “try before you buy”?
How do you know if design management is for you? Given what the job entails, it can sometimes be difficult to “try before you buy” but more on that in a second. It can be difficult to include non-managers in manager spaces due to sensitive information about policy, peers, and other privacy-centric topics
There should be many opportunities to dip your toe into Management before taking the plunge, this is often one of the most common conversations I have with senior reports. Once we’ve talked about what management is and isn’t about, once I’ve let them know that it isn’t a promotion or explicitly a way to elevate their career, once I’ve told them all the boring, difficult, stressful, and sometimes heartbreaking things I have to do as a manager if they still want to proceed, their next question is ”how do I see if I like it without making it official?” While these options aren’t available in every situation I treat them as a gradient of difficulty and responsibility to try with my reports who want to learn more about themselves.
Mentor junior designers on the team — find one or more junior designers on the team and provide structured mentoring via 1+1s, reviews, critique, and coaching. This is great because it takes some of the time commitment off me and other project leads in my group to be responsible for these activities and gives the junior design more one-on-one time with a mentor who is excited to share their knowledge.
Run a low stakes recurring meeting — Pick a frequently recurring meeting, like a standup, weekly review, or team meeting, something that rarely has participants from outside your team or discipline and delegate it to them to run, start by being present but mostly silent, only jumping in if directly asked questions, or for critical corrections. After a while, start manufacturing reasons why you can’t make it to the meeting now and then, a meeting conflict, a sick day, etc. Ask that the prospective manager who’s been running the meeting send you notes and action items from the meeting. Do this for a while coaching them about what went well, and what didn’t if things continue to go smoothly, officially delegate the meeting to them, and make sure they or any meeting participant can request your presence ahead of time if there is something critical that only you can provide.
Manage the day-to-day of an intern, contractor, or other temporary employees on the team — One of the most important things about being a manager is career coaching, since interns and contractors time at a company tends to be more limited, you usually aren’t required (and sometimes aren’t able) to provide career coaching or performance management for them. For a prospective manager on your team, this is an opportunity to try out some or all of the behaviors of a manager without the worry or burden of having a failing or misstep affect that person’s career at the company long term.
You can try a mixture of these types of activities, just be sure to take adequate time for coaching and retrospection about how each scenario is going, possibly designating a portion of 1+1 time or a separate meeting to focus on “path to management” coaching.
What if I choose wrong?
It’s important to think about how the company you work at treats job and role mobility. In an ideal world and at many of the companies that I’ve had the opportunity to work and manage at, becoming a manager isn’t a one-way trip. People might lead for the length of a project, a period of years, or the rest of their career. They might be a manager in one context and an individual contributor in another. The most telling thing about a company when it comes to who the managers are comes down to two things for me. Management should be seen as a lateral move, not a promotion, and people must choose to be managers, rather than be forced into the role due to circumstance or skill as an individual contributor.
Ask yourself these questions:
- Have I seen someone move from Lead to Manager and it not be treated as a promotion?
- Have I seen someone move from Manager to Individual Contributor and it not be treated like a demotion?⁽⁶⁾ ⁽⁷⁾
- Is it a celebratory and supportive moment when a well-liked, talented, and successful person chooses to leave the company or team?
- Are role expectations for managers and individual contributions clear, and distinctly differentiated from each other?
At most well-run companies the answers to the above should all be a resounding yes. If they aren’t, it doesn’t mean design management isn’t for you, but it might not be the right step for you to take at your current company…or maybe you’re just the right person to help make these cultural changes yourself.
Ok, now you’re ready, what’s next?
Once you’ve done all the introspection above, spent significant time on the “safe to fail” experiments that you and your manager come up with to “try before you buy” then what’s next? How do you actually make that leap? The process of becoming a manager at every company is different, but some things are pretty universally applicable, irrespective of the logistics at your company.
Do the job before you get the title — What are most of the activities that your manager does day to day that you could do in your current role, things like running meetings, defining roadmaps and setting vision, on-boarding new team members, running critiques, improving processes, approval mechanism, creating success rubrics for people and projects.
Be in the right places — Once you’re this far along in your journey it’s completely valid to ask your manager to include you in appropriate manager-only forums. Spaces like roadmap planning sessions, less sensitive parts of your performance review and promo process, manager and leads meetings, etc. Learn what is expected of people in those forums, ask yourself, how is it different from what you expected?
Hopefully, now you feel more confident in your next steps on your journey.
Further Reading
(1). 5 Myths About Design Management by Jason James
(2). What Great Managers Do by Marcus Buckingham
(3). 10 things they didn’t tell you about design management by Alastair Simpson
(4). Applying Design Thinking in Career Management by Michelle Beralde
(5). Managing a Top Performer Who Alienates Their Colleagues by Rebecca Knight
(6). Making the Move from Manager to Individual Contributor by Jennifer Ernst Beaudry
(7). From Manager to an Individual Contributor — A Step Backward or Forward! by Priya Singh Pundhir
