Antipattern #7: Forgetting about the value of design and design leadership
Too often, transformations focus heavily on product management and engineering, leaving design as an afterthought.
Note: this is the seventh article in the series on anti-patterns when moving to the product model. Here’s the first anti-pattern: "Giving too much autonomy, too soon".
Designers are my tribe, my people.
And I feel for them. It hasn’t been easy.
I’ve been a designer for a large chunk of my career, growing from an individual contributor to a design leader. Designers have always wanted a seat at the proverbial “table,” to have more of a say in what to build next. The reality is the constant tug-of-war between product management, engineering, design, and other functions—each vying for the final say. The question: who gets the last word?
Over the years, I have heard utterances such as:
“Design should come at the end when we are done coding.”
“Design, that means colors, fonts and stuff, right?”
“Designers are troublemakers. They always challenge the requirements. It’s frustrating.”
“Designers love their processes and workshops. Can’t we just work?”
Throughout the last two decades, common operating models for product development have been terrible for designers. In Scrum, there’s no mention of a designer. In SAFe, there might be a small double-diamond somewhere in the gargantuan diagram of their process.
Where does this all stem from? My assumption is that it comes from some antiquated notion that the “value-adding” people in a project are the engineers—the ones who produce code.
“Discovery,” “idea generation,” “research,” or whatever you choose to call it, is hardly ever valued in such a setup. The traditional product development mindset is that requirements are already defined before coding work begins. As a result, designers have faced a great uphill battle to prove their worth—until now.
With the advent of the product model, design and designers are now integral parts of the competencies needed to succeed. Designers are finally valued.
However, because of biases and how product development has historically been viewed, there’s an anti-pattern: investing in hiring serious designers and design leaders often gets pushed to the side. As recently as yesterday, in a client conversation, I heard a senior executive talk about adding more “resources” to fix their challenged initiatives. And likely, what that means is staffing more engineers to the problem.
When I was a design leader, I fought long and hard to hire designers and researchers for my teams. On the other hand, my peers in engineering and product management had much easier conversations to get their hiring plans approved.
When helping companies in their change journeys, I see similarities. Leaders are investing in leveling up their product management capabilities and growing their engineering teams.
When coaching organizations, I receive questions like: “Is it OK if one designer services multiple teams?”
Now, let me put my foot down and say, “No!”
In the product model, a fundamental concept is to have healthy collaboration between the product manager, product designer, and engineers. They do both discovery and delivery together. If you don’t have a designer on the team, corners will be cut.
What I’ve seen happen:
You lose sight of the end-to-end experience.
You miss important edge and corner cases.
You lose consistency of style and interactions.
You lack quality in translations and micro-copy.
In essence, you will lose attention to detail if there isn’t a designer on your team.
If you are serious about moving to the product model, be serious about your design capabilities.
How to avoid this anti-pattern
The companies I’ve worked for, or with, that have had the happiest customers and the strongest momentum in the market were companies with strong design cultures. Design is part of their DNA. Design leaders have a seat at the table. They are respected. Engineers understand that design is not only about look-and-feel, it’s also about shaping products from customer insights—their needs and pain points—through to a holistic perspective of their entire end-to-end customer experience.
Fostering such a culture takes time. As always, it starts at the top. One or more senior leaders need to advocate for investing in the company’s design capabilities.
Hiring a Head of Design
As a first strategic step, I recommend hiring a Head of Design if you don’t already have one. This should be a seasoned, charismatic design leader who not only deeply understands the craft of design but also has the ability to build and scale a design organization. They should be inclusive and foster a culture of collaboration across competencies, emphasizing that design plays a facilitative role rather than needing to have all the answers.
These individuals are hard to find, but they are out there.
How do you find the most suitable Head of Design? Let me share a secret hiring criterion I’ve used throughout my career. I overheard this from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic at a panel discussion at SXSW. He argued that if you want to hire the best people, they should be: smart, driven, and likable. I have applied these three variables in my hiring with great success. It’s a simple way to assess a candidate.
Smart: They have a track record of solving hard problems. They showcase that they are conscientious and understand problems deeply before moving to solutions.
Driven: They show a bias for action. They get stuff done. Indicators could be their extracurricular activities, such as writing, working on side projects, or speaking at conferences and meetups.
Likable: Is this someone you would enjoy working with? If there is an after-work activity, would you have a nice chat?
Once you have onboarded a strong candidate as your Head of Design, another recommendation is to set up a product trio leadership structure.
Setting up a product trio leadership structure
I’m a strong proponent of this setup because it fosters diversity of thought. A PM looks at a problem differently than a designer or an engineer. Having a healthy debate from different perspectives sparks new ideas. The PM will lean more toward business value, the designer will empathize with customers and end-users, and the engineer will focus on technology scalability and feasibility. Of course, there are gray areas. For instance, many engineers I’ve worked with have been champions of design and user experience.
A product trio leadership structure means that the product leader, the design leader, and the engineering leader meet once a week to primarily address two main questions:
How are the teams progressing toward the intended outcomes?
Do they have any roadblocks that you can help remove?
With the trio setup, they not only view their function’s part of the equation but are also exposed to what’s going on outside their immediate sphere of influence.
Empowering designers to facilitate product discovery
In a shift to the product model, one of the most important changes is that, as an empowered product team, you’re no longer handed requirements, instead, you are tasked with solving a particular problem. This shift requires engaging in product discovery activities as a team to understand the needs and wants of customers and end-users, gauge stakeholder perspectives, and ideate and experiment with solutions. For teams historically shielded from customers or the business, this can feel like a daunting task.
To address this challenge, empower your designers to facilitate discovery. Designers are well-suited to train, coach, and mentor teams in product discovery. Product discovery is in their DNA, as it naturally incorporates “design thinking.” Designers excel at conducting research, mapping customer journeys, facilitating ideation workshops, and defining experiments.
Wait, so the product manager shouldn’t “own” product discovery?
The answer: If your organization is new to working with product discovery, a practical initial step is to empower designers to take on a greater role in facilitating these initiatives.
Embed design in teams, but create strong forums
There are three main organizational structures for designers:
Studio model: Designers function like an agency, assisting product teams on an ad-hoc basis.
Embedded model: Designers are fully integrated into specific product teams, working with them 100% of the time.
Hybrid model: Designers are embedded in product teams but dedicate at least one day a week to collaborating on shared design initiatives.
I’m an advocate for the hybrid model because it strikes the right balance:
The studio model fosters a “project-driven” and reactive culture, creating silos between designers and product teams.
The embedded model often leads to designers losing touch with their peers and the internal design community.
The hybrid approach nurtures a strong team culture within the design team while ensuring that designers remain integral parts of their product teams.
So, there you have a few key recommendations for amplifying your design capabilities. If you're serious about adopting the product model, investing in design and design leadership isn’t optional—it’s essential.
Key takeaways
Don’t overlook the value of design and design leadership when transitioning to the product model. Too often, transformations focus heavily on product management and engineering, leaving design as an afterthought. To succeed:
Hire a smart, driven, and likable senior design leader who can scale the design function and foster a strong design culture.
Set up a product trio leadership structure to encourage diverse perspectives and collaborative problem-solving.
Adopt a hybrid model for staffing designers to balance embedding them in teams while maintaining a cohesive design community.
What’s next
Next up, I’ll shed light on the pitfall of “going all in at the same time”—putting all your eggs in one basket, a move that can jeopardize your entire transformation.
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