Day 2 Session Notes–The Quiet Force: Uncovering Hidden Leadership in High-Impact Design Teams
— Thank you and let’s jump right in and hidden leadership in high impact design teams
— Let’s take a mindful moment, to take deep inhale in and out
— Working in dops for six years, and managing people full time as an eldest daugheter
- Writer, futurist, sci-fi nerd
— Representative futures by nerding out about tech
— For all leaders who want team and all leadership types to thrive for high impact work
- How to create environment
- Identify types of leaders
- Amplify voices for super-high impact work
— Attributes about silent leaders are those who prefer actions over words, and who advocate in intimate settings, but their impact is always felt
— So let’s talk about environment
- Think of chef’s kitchen, where you have no idea what is happening to give you experience you are having
— Product design and dev feels like this for me, and requires tons of communication to be effective
— Correlation was watching the bear, which deals with converting restaurant into fine dining
- Chef as nurturing people from guests to staff, and people who help get food on the plate
- Fishers, foragers, and drivers
— What users see is final presentation and perfect plate, and so much work goes in, and people are unaware of full extent of contribution
— In September 2022, and joined Adobe and same week team would meet in first time
— Team filled with people new to Adobe and rest of team new to generative AI
- No recipe or formula, but just vibes
— Mystery box of ingredients to turn into successful initiative
— To build team started with few exercises to level set them more and understand what was needed for them to thrive
— Questions through Miro exercises and figuring out working styles
— Dana was solutions oriented designer and animation skills and clear expectations for doing the best work
- Exercise told a lot about team joining
— By doing exercise, told about environment to cultivate to let them do best work. Group of storytellers and animators who were easy going
- Info that I asked them to give
— What I needed to do was enable them to have hands-on collaboration and protect time through heads-down and seamless grasp of stakeholders
— After initial understanding, we were in
— Now needed to understand Generative AI at Adobe
— At time of team launch, GenAI was buzzword that people were throwing around and article every other week and in order to ground team a bit more had them go through a bit more to put heads together and team mission statement, success metrics, and what we needed to achieve
— Defined our mission as follows:
- GenAI to help integrate technology in digital imaging
- Working close with product and engineering for teams
- Success? Get creative community with materials and high active users for future and deep leadership trust and environment
— There was a list of don’ts to ground ourselves on, and not chase shiny options due to rapid market
— With clarity of what to do as team, set in motion bigger things than what we would have imagined
- In a month produced snippet of work at Adobe Max conference, our intention in GenAI in Photoshop
— First stage of vision at Adobe Max, and using generative fill in PhotoShop and felt their impact
— Seven months sneak and deliver journey on span and collaborate as team worked on design experience to scale it and produce content to teach users how to use new tool and Adobe Firefly site beta
- Delivering in May of following year
— Lot was done and a lot changed. Adapted and adjusted spaces to focus and be intentional about time
— Along seven months battled host of things like internal noise happening, but not as positive as we expected
- Knew would change PhotoShop, but had doubts if it was right
— Externally market was changing every single day with MidJourney evolving and new orgs evolving with take on Generative AI
— Was able to see new skill-sets on team, and Michael maintained steady flow on team through experience
- Davis provided world-class UX
- Dana as gardener and environment of high quality work and storyboarding skills
- Syashi gathering insights from competitors
— Mostly hidden team emerged internally in Adobe and leaders in design in Generative Ai space
— I emerged as delivery driver connecting dots and bringing leadership to stakeholders, and saying no strategically
— Right environment when intention of giving creatives access to tools they needed to inspire future of creativity
— We even did this, and patented world-class UX for imaging and generative workflows
— Users were dazzled by what was done
— Generative fill in Photoshop has become Adobe’s most used tool of all time and three million users of tool
- Once you set intention early on, will perform and commit to those things
— We changed how Adobe products would incoroprate AI technologies into experiences and influence other pro-groups as well and continuous innovation and rest of Adobe ecosystem
— Core UX principles were
- More inputs and creative control
- Enhance existing workflows
- Accelerate into future
— Knew users were legacy users that still wanted to have trust and safety in new tool and clarity to know feature and capability and okay to say that
— As delivery drive reflect on my role
- Cultivating a safe environment
- Identifying needs of team and unlocking new level of growth
- Amplifying their work and skills they already had
— With team like this, built with confidence and trust with shared principles and still grounded in work we established early on
— Next time for amazing experience, send compliments to all who brought food in their plate
Q&A
- Focus on helping four team members or broader teams? Relationship to more senior leadership?
— Started with supporting original four people but with roadmaps we built and established had butterfly effect on other teams and sharing it with work we were doing across the org
— Relationship with design and design manager of team and leadership embedded in team and Miro exercises done with other teams
- Should I watch The Bear?
— Yes, you can learn something about managing your team
