Management Your guide to resourcing discussions as a design manager Budgeting and resourcing discussions are difficult conversations for most design managers. It’s hard for multiple reasons. First, nobody really prepares you for it. With engineering management, as an example,
Management Using a decision making framework: a deep dive into RAPID® I’ve been thinking a lot about operational efficiency and how to build more efficient organizations lately. The velocity of decision making in an organization is at the core of
Leadership The lonely leader and compassion fatigue Over the years, a common theme I’ve seen leaders across the industry talk about is the phenomenon of the lonely leader. Most leaders I talk to either feel or
Leadership Empathy at work In design, we often call out empathy as one of the core skills a designer needs to have in order to deeply understand their customers and hands on users. To
Management The five elements to good management: ask, listen, take action, empower, and follow up There isn’t one magic recipe for management. There are many of recipes. The challenge with giving advise to managers, especially in design, is the changing environment in which managers
Design Building our product design career development framework Note that this article focuses on our individual contributor career development framework. With a fast-growing team, building a robust career framework becomes a necessity. The goal of our framework is
Leadership Building psychological safety into the core of a team’s culture One of the most important aspects of any team is its culture. When teams grow, culture is generally a representation of what people believe the culture to be instead of
Thoughts Few questions to ask before preparing your next work presentation Over the past few years, I’ve been spending a bigger portion of my time either presenting or listening to presentations. The topics of these presentations are different and no
Leadership Productivity, not activity. How I try to ensure I am focusing on the right priorities. A few months ago, I had a conversation with a designer on my team about managing her work. She was subtly hinting to me that she’s overwhelmed with the
Design Building your team's skills matrix A couple of years ago, we began a movement to transform design at VMware and with it, transform VMware itself into an experience-led company. Anybody who’s been a part
Design Lead with context In design, context is key. When we design workflows and products, especially complex ones, we focus on providing the necessary context to users in order to help them make the
Management Ask for your next promotion This article will probably land a few more emails in my inbox over the coming weeks and months, but here we go. The more conversations I have with design leaders,
Management Leaders are great at one of three: Vision, Operations, or Coaching I ran into a tweet the other day that said  most leaders are generally great at one of three things: vision, operations, or coaching. Few leaders are great at two,
Leadership Delegating work One of the hardest skills to learn as a new manager moving from an individual contributor (IC) role is how to delegate. How to use the power of a team
