Design at Scale 2021-Journeying from Management to Individual Contributor (Edward Cupps)

—> We are hear to tell our stories and this is mine
  • It’s a conversation about personal discovery from being director of UX to that of an individual contributor, or IC, and leading from that context
—> As teams scale, we need to talk about what an IC leadership track looks like

 

 

—> Three audiences:
  • If VP, director, or manager of ICs who are looking for their next step
  • If you are in management, but miss the IC career path
  • If you are an IC, and wondering where your career might go, this talk is also for you
—> As we scale there must be path for IC leaders to scale as well. As industry we need to give them a path to reach for
  • We’ve done well in management, but need an IC leadership path with the same level of attention
  • I’m not the first to bring this up, as I’m just another messenger

 

 

 

—> Everyone has their  own element

 

—> My own element is creativity, design, and solving ill-defined problems
  • For longest time I tried another path, where I learned many things

 

 

—> Path began when I joined Workiva, having been in some form of UX for the past 25 yers
  • Held creative director role for a decade
  • People management in prior roles was someone else’s job but it interested me

 

 

—> I was brought into Workiva to become the lead at a growing start-up. It was exciting stuff!

 

—> People were encouraged into management, and there was traditional path for going into management, with tons of precedents

 

—> I would do less individual contributor work, and would coordinate people, and lead with host designers

 

—>I liked management and senior leadership encouraged me. I was promoted and the work came naturally to me

 

 

—> In truth, I started with a hybrid role as the company was growing
  • Did management and design with work
  • For small company, the hybrid role worked
—> But as you move forward and gain more responsibility, hybrid roles, if not scaled, lead to burnout

 

 

—> Soon, I didn’t design that much, and got away from what I loved

 

—> I tried to make me happier through contributing to my team’s progress, and organizational challenges

 

—> But I really missed design, and would rather be a designer
  • Management wasn’t really my element, and design brought me happiness
—> Leadership and peers encouraged design, so I tried to do both roles (design while having the responsibility of management)

 

—> For long time this worked, or at least I thought it did, but more success, brought more responsibility

 

—> I was doing all of the things, and it was unsustainable and I was burning out from the work, and starting to make avoidable mistakes
  • Work was a drag and I felt stressed
  • But I felt locked into path in advancement, and felt responsible for reports, company, but not to myself

 

 

—> So lets go back to December 2019, and it all came to a head
  • I realized I couldn’t do everything and couldn’t serve everyone all at once
—> My boss noticed me slipping, and asked me to name a role that best described what I liked to do

 

 

—> I picked the character of Winston Wolfe, the fixer in the movie  Pulp Fiction, who crafted a successful solution to a thorny resolution

 

—> My boss said this role really wasn’t management.
  • I was craving creative leadership, but not people management
  • The C-suite recognized my success as a creative leader
—> I took the hint and was open to another path

 

—> The plan was to move me to  principal role, take on major projects, and others would take over my current role

 

—> I was lucky, and my boss was willing to craft a creative lead role for me, but I couldn’t stick with both roles

 

—> My company made directors and principal designers equal in the group, so I felt I could step aside

 

—> I was now doing what I loved, and was supported by management
  • I was practicing leadership, in the form of my life influencing others

 

 

—> My case was one of many, in these sense that advancing career through management was the only apparent path I had

 

—> All roads seemed to lead back into management

 

—> But you can influence without being the person who signs off on vacation requests
  • Leadership is not a title, but a passion
  • As leader you influence others, and be the person that people want to follow
—> We must empower those with the passion for the craft, to build impact, influence, and leadership skills. We must give them a path

 

 

—> I was lucky, but as an industry we require work with IC leadership

 

—> How might we scale the creative soul, and a career along with it?
  • What does it mean?
  • What are the benefits?
  • How do we empower them?

 

 

—> The principal path is focused on craft, leadership and influence
  • Not management, but involves leading people nonetheless
—> You show creative leadership to be parallel with people leadership, and teaching others

 

 

—> Designers love Venn Diagrams, but we have to acknowledge craft and people leadership leverage different abilities
Manager Duties Include:
  • Responsible for people and processes
–> Principal Duties Include:
  • Focus on craft, and stewarding the team culture and driving the creative direction
  • Passion for big problems and make hard strategic decisions

 

 

—> Let’s talk details, as Senior ICs can be
  • The best natural leaders,
  • They have deep knowledge of craft, and have cross-functional networks across the industry
  • The have the ability to lead projects assigned to them or that they kick off
  • They demonstrate that they can communicate empathy across disciplines and across the ecosystem

 

 

—> ICs can also act in the following ways:
  • Through team lead coordination others with expertise. Leads don’t have to be manager, but rather can be a domain expert
  • They can be a point person on initiatives, and guide the vision architecture, and strategy
  • They can also lead growth and skunkworks projects to move a project forward

 

 

 

—> Managers don’t have to go it alone, and can use ICs to their benefit
  • ICs can take key assignments
  • ICs can act as experts for team feedback and guidance
  • ICs can partner with management on coaching and mentoring

 

 

 

—> The model is that IC leadership is rewarded as being parallel with people leadership

 

—> Like a lattice that encourages people to try and switch between different paths, and alternating between management and IC work
  • People should be encouraged to do this

 

 

—> Let’s start with what a lead is
  • Person who owns a specific product
  • Lead high-impact and tactical work of product area
—> Principal would own UX around broad tiers of product and drivers the strategic work of the product

 

—> UX architect and creative director who would own UX at an ecosystem level and architect broad based experience and report to a senior director/VP of UX

 

 

—> My embrace of the path has challenged me and shown me opportunities

 

—> The number one challenge was letting go of doing all the things, especially with reports who were invested in doing them

 

—> Opportunities included being able to focus on being a creative leader
  • I could now persuade based on my experience, as opposed to relying on explicit authority

 

 

—> So what were the results?

 

—> After over 18 months I was leading product initiatives, had direct impacts overall, and provided an example to others and made a bigger impact overall

 

—> I’ll end with a call to action to point out who the talk is for

 

—> For UX leadership: Try to build in career paths and a ladder of leadership that includes IC leadership, to help drive productivity priorities and direction

 

—> Would give ICs to reach for, and don’t make it a one way street

 

—> For Management who want to do IC: Moving sideways can be way for your career. It could be key for getting back into your element

 

 

—> Leadership is not management, but I learned a lot from it. Both paths are valid if different in focus.

 

—> Look for teams that embrace both rich management and IC Career paths, and  try them out

 

 

 

  1. For the Principle level IC role, what qualities and responsibilities are defined for this individual contributor level at your company?

 

—> Someone who has built a boat on their own and ridden it around the world

 

—> Someone who has shown leadership throughout the career, and people know what they are doing

 

—> Collaborative person who knows craft intimately

 

2. As a Principal, what decisions do you have authority over? Who (if anyone) can overrule that authority?

 

—> I never have been overruled by  a manager. If you can persuade them, they will give the same trust that  has been given them

 

—> Ask about what’s best for the user, data to back it up, and professional opinion from data

 

3. Do Super-Senior ICs report to someone that they are on the same level as? Or do they report a level up?

 

—> Way he has it set up, it’s set at the same level and responsible for moving the career forward
  • Wanted designers to report to same person
  • So far it’s worked very well
—> Set up differently at other companies