How to Be Your Team’s Favorite Boss / Client / Collaborator

Your team will love working for you if:

• You value design as a strategic differentiator, and that’s built into your product vision. You are 100% confident that design will make your business more successful.

• You expect Designers to go much deeper than colors and fonts. You invite them to be involved from the very beginning of the process: conducting research, creating models, collaborating with Engineering on what’s technically feasible, designing workflows, and developing systems.

• You expect Designers to be ultimately responsible for the Design of your entire product. 

• You expect Designers to work closely with Product Management and Engineering, and vice-versa.

• You collaborate on how requirements are developed and delivered.

• You might start a conversation talking about screens, but what you really want to discuss is intent (no treating Designers as pencils).

• You ask lots of questions during feedback sessions.

• You understand that Product Design and Marketing are different skills that are almost always best handled by different teams.

• You ask what your Design team needs from you.

• You don’t think of yourself as the perfect token user.

• You are an expert in the market and subject matter, and you are happy to share what you know.

• You are interested in what you can learn from your Design team.

• You are interested in what you can learn from users.

• You minimize the number of reviewers, but protect the review process.

• You understand the relative importance of various decisions, and you value your own expertise as well as others’.

• You don’t get stuck in derivative thinking (just refining old ideas); you welcome big new ideas when they’re appropriate.

• You trust in Design and the Design process.

• You have lots of ideas, but don’t value them above others. Your ego is separated from your ideas, and you value your team’s input and feedback.

• You help the team get the resources (data, budget, user access, etc.) they need to do their jobs well.

I write much more about this, and about how to work with Designers at every level, in the book. Please grab a copy for yourself or a friend, or get in touch.