Job Matrix: Building a better ladder

The key to rolling out effective career matrixes is to base them on impact rather than knowledge.

A great deal has been written about job or career matrixes. In the last couple years the design community has caught on to their value to ensure both clarity and transparency for assessing performance and planning career growth. In addition to being great tools for managing a team, they also provide a clear signal to the organization about what designers actually do (and don’t do), where they add value and how they are expected to contribute both strategically and tactically. As a manager, they are invaluable at help to ensure you are providing clear, objective assessments for the people on your team. And when taken on the whole, they can provide a clear assessment of a department’s overall standing in regards to its make-up and can provide a clear a gap analysis to help in identifying staffing needs and hiring priorities.

What is a Career Matrix
While they go by different names; ladders, frameworks, matrixes, etc. They all share a common goal of mapping out where an individual is in their growth and what is required for them to progress to the next level. Fundamentally they are a table with one axis showing the job levels—from entry or Junior positions up to Senior or Principal levels some even include Director and VP level. On the other axis are the various competencies that comprise the role. Commonly a competency is a combination of skills and knowledge. The goal is to define the specific level of proficiency needed at each step in the career path so people can work with their managers to first understand where they are at today, and to map out what they need to do in regards to their professional development in order to achieve their career objectives.

The two most common approaches to a job matrix

Is your matrix objective?
Regardless of what you or anyone else believes about your performance, it is what you have done that should really count.

The most basic job ladders allow you to place a checkmark in the table to indicate where someone is at in regards to the different levels—at best these are capable of providing a subjective assessment.

A career matrix is a direct measure of a manager’s commitment to their team. It takes time to help grow and develop people, to ensure they reach their full potential. Taking the time to map out a comprehensive career matrix means that manager has taken the time to think about what it will take for the people on their to each be successful in their career. Whether it’s pursuing an individual contributor track or a management track, a manager who has taken the time to map out how to advance next level is foundational to their ability to help mentor and develop their team.

Since there are no agreed upon descriptions of what is expected for the various competencies at each level, it is up to the individual manager to define what it means to be performing at each level. They do nothing to ensure every member of the team is evaluated equally. Imagine you have multiple first level managers in your design organization, each is responsible for assessing their team’s performance. With only a simple check box, there is no expectation that these different managers share the same definition for what it means to be a Designer verses a Senior Designer. Managers are free to play favorites or at the very lease, get unintentionally tripped up by their various biases, recently biases, personal biases, hindsight biases, etc.

If you encounter an organizations that chooses use the simple check-box approach, you should treat it as a red flag.

Adding descriptions
To make it less subjective, more advanced career ladders provide a description at each levels for the different competencies. Since both the managers and team members now have a shared understanding of what is expected at each level, theoretically this will allow for a more objective assessment. However, frequently these descriptions, while well intended, lack specificity allowing for interpretation and again introducing room for subjectively.

Descriptions need to be discrete and focused on outcomes. Below is an example from a Career Ladder I was asked to redesign for a client. While on the surface these may seem perfectly workable in practice they are vague and allow for subjective assessments:

	Associate Designer	Designer	Senior Designer	Manager
Direction	Recieves close direction	Recieves direction	Self-directed	Provides direction to practioniers
Communication	Developing skills for communicating rationale to team members	Confidently communicates decision rationale to team members	Communicates rationale to leadership	Communicates comfortably at all levels of the organization. Uses storytelling and persuasion

This is an example of two items from a client’s Career Ladder.

Direction and Communication are two common competencies tracked across multiple disciplines. For design Direction can have many connotations and is very context dependent, creative direction is very different from direction associated with project management,

Reading the description for Direction, the different levels are not only vague, but when you consider Direction is context dependent, the rating becomes ambiguous. What does it mean to “Receives close direction”? does that mean they are OK being micromanaged? “Close direction” could mean many things to many different people: micromanagement and inspirational leadership are both forms of close direction but have very different impacts on their team. And what happens if the individual and manager don’t share the same understanding of what is meant by “close direction”? Receiving direction—close or otherwise, is not the same as taking action on that direction; it is basically the same as that unopened letter that gets tossed in the recycle bin. Was it received, yes. Did you do what it asked, don’t know; you didn’t say I had to do anything.

Communication the other side of the coin in this matrix; this is the transmitter side of the Shannon-Weaver model. A Designer may assume “confidence” means leaving no room for discussion and simply telling their colleagues “I am designer, and I have final say”. Confident? sure. Effective, not so much. Or a design manager may launch into a lengthly narrative about personas and the happy path they get to take through the product, while the leadership is expecting to hear from actual customers with a detailed assessment of why they prefer a competition’s design. Story told, check. Net impact, zero.

The descriptions for competencies should not leave room for interpretation, they should include outcomes as way to showing what it means to effectively do the job so there is no wiggle room. Additionally they should be progressive subsequent levels should build on the previous ones, so they in fact build a ladder, a path of career growth. Competencies should clearly reflect those capabilities the executive team require before they make a decisions about approving someone’s promotion.

Focusing on outcomes

In order to best support your team, it’s important to provide transparency and set clear expectations for why they need to master the various competencies. I have found telling them what that success looks like at each level to be the most effective way to ensure alignment. When you are building your team’s career matrix take the time to work with your leadership and peers to ensure you have their support for what is required to move people forward within the organization. By aligning everyone in the decision making process—your team, peers, human resources, and company leadership, it will not only remove the subjectivity and ambiguity in assessing performance but it will set you and your team up for clear, and self-evident, promotions.

I have found rather than being focused on someone’s ability gain knowledge or acquire skills (the outputs), it is more effective to focus on what they do with that knowledge and skills (the outcomes). By highlighting how people add value, not what they know, you provide greater alignment and transparency to everyone on your team, and across the organization setting clear expectations for not only what your team will contribute and why, but also what expect in regards to your teams’ progression. Providing the rest of the organization clarity about what your expecting your team to deliver underscores how everyone should expect them to contribute in identifying and solving problems, setting strategy, and impacting the product portfolio.

Building on the example above, I redesigned my client’s career ladder. After talking to various stakeholders in the company it was clear that what they were really looking for was the output from the collaboration between the designers and their manager, and the designer and their peers on cross-functional team. As human beings, communication is on par with breathing—if you’re not doing it something is seriously wrong. And as an employee, simply taking direction is not going to get you promoted. By taking a step back and asking what the organization was really looking for from their design it was clear that it was about the ability for design to have an impact on their strategy and products. Focusing on the intention and the outcomes, I combined the Direction and Communication to provide greater clarity of purpose and a definition of success with a measurable means of creating value. The result was called Influence.

	Associate Designer	Designer	Senior Designer	Manager
Influence	Achieves influcence by consistently demonstrating effective listening and comprehension skills. Never making assumptions without getting confirmation. Engages with others in productive dialogues around project and team objectives, asking clarifying questions to increase the shared understanding.	Creates a well-rounded and comprehensive, rational POV for their design solutions that they use to gain support from their project team. Can quickly and effectively answer questions about their designs, how they address project objectives, the benefit customers and the business. Can identify and effectively describe alternative solutions that are viable and feasible when needed.	Develops a comprehensive POV for the entire product that represents the cross-disciplinary team's perspective as well. Gains and maintains trust and admiration from their peers in other disciplines. Clarifies issues, priorities and trade-offs to colleagues and leadership. Holds themselves accountable for successfully gaining buy-in from the team and leadership for thier design strategy and implementation.	Consistently influences teams, managers, and executive leadership to adopt their recommendations for designs, design strategies and priorities. Demonstrates clear track record of success in gaining the confidence from peers and organizational leadership as demonstated by their being giving increasing amounts of responbility. Able to generate a well articulated vision, direction, plan for solutions they are responsible for, garnering buy-in and budget. Walking through the trade-offs, resources allocations, and impact. Steadfastly pushes self and other for top quality results; develops effective leaders from within their team.

This models assumes all the previous outcomes continue to apply as you move up levels, so a Manager is still expected to ask clarifying questions This places the individual in control of their performance. They are equal partners in the act of gaining direction, proactively asking clarifying questions—a skill which continues to server even the most senior executives. As the individual progresses, the scope of their responsibility is a reflection of the influence they have within the organization. This is not a one size fits all scope, for some its being trusted to deliver objective and unbiased customer insights for others it could mean taking over larger teams, for others still it could be driving innovations. Admittedly this approach initially takes longer to produce, and it requires authentic conversations with your team, however the investment is well worth it.

Companies using behavior based, outcome focused matrixes report employees have greater transparency into what is expected from them, greater engagement, and a more optimistic view of the organization. And managers report having a clear playbook for guiding their team’s professional development and career planning. Indeed many managers also report having a new perspective on their own impact in the organization.

The focus on outcomes, also gives greater objectivity and consistency during assessments, especially in larger organizations where there are multiple managers within the same organization evaluating people on multiple teams. When combined with weekly 1:1’s and a practice of real-time feedback, team members can maintain a clear picture of where they are, where they are making progress, and the areas that still need to be addressed. It also give managers a clear focus on the material they should be supplying to their team to help them gain the skills and aptitudes for their development.

Below is a full Career Matrix for a design organization with 4 levels.

Generic v. Tailored.
The culture of the organization you are working in today is different from your last company, and it will be different from your next company as well. Rather than simply copy and paste another organization’s career ladder, you need to work with your peers across your organization, as well; as your manager and their peers, as well as your human resources team, to develop a matrix that reflects both your profession as well as the culture of your organization.

Tying in the organization’s values and paying special attention to what your leadership takes into consideration when determining a promotion, it is important to make sure both the competencies, and the corresponding outcomes accurately reflect what it will take for people to move forward on their career path.

During this process you will likely discover some of the competencies you consider core to your profession may not be part of your leadership’s thinking in determining promotions. Don’t freak out, this is a good thing. This will help you create a prioritized roadmap for working with your leadership to help them better understand the value design brings to the table. And you can also coach your team to more effectively communicate their work and its value to their peers and management throughout the company.

As I mentioned early, remember the career matrix is different from professional development. While some team members may feel it is important to acknowledge their skill levels with particular tools, software packages or processes, rather expand the matrix with skills—some of which may not apply to everyone on your team, it is more effective to create a single professional development category. This will ensure your people understand that you and the company have a vested interest in professional development with their participation in courses, conferences, tutorials, etc.

Using the Matrix
This approach does more than remove subjectively in performance reviews, or give people a clear path forward to reach their career objectives. Taken on the whole, this model gives you as the manager a clear overview of where your team is at relatives to their ability to achieve success and deliver value to your customers and the business. .

• You can prioritize project assignments to align a person’s development objectives with a peer who can mentor them, ensuring they can make meaningful progress without being overwhelmed.

• If a number of people in your team share an area they wish to develop you can bring in external resources, training material, etc. And if you share competencies in common with other teams, you collaborate on training programs,

• Likewise you can identify potential mentors from across the company to help your people in their develop objectives.

• You can identify gaps in your team, allowing you to make adjustments in your hiring plans.

• Plan your interviews to screen for the competencies that will deliver the greatest value to your team and the company.

• The matrix can also be used to on-board for new hires introducing them to the areas that are critical to their success

An individual team member’s assessment showing areas for potential development

An overview of a team’s assessment showing clear gaps in Knowledge & Skills, while also identifying potential mentors within the team

Summary
A career matrix is not just an internal tool to be used by the design team, it should serve as an external description for your team’s contribution to the organization. A well crafted career matrix establishes the scope and expectations for the job family making it clear other teams in your company what they should expect from the people on your team. Sharing your team’s career matrix with product management, marketing, engineering, etc. will let them know how you are expecting your team to contribute, providing leadership, strategic direction, etc.

Taken collectively, a full set of these matrixes gives the company leadership clarity about where the various teams are at and how the organization needs to evolve as a whole. Over time these matrixes can provide greater insights to how the company is operating, what it really values, and where it needs to focus in order to achieve its long term growth and revenue objectives.

I have enclosed a link to the Career Matrix I have developed over time working with multiple organizations, both large and small.

Example Design Job Matrix for Four Levels

	Associate	Senior	Lead	Principal
Analogy	Can tie basic knots. Shown complex knots	Calculates rope strength. Knows a lot about knots	Understands rope making. Can tie any knot you can think of	Knows more about rope than you ever will
Typical Experience	Typically requires a minimum of 1-2 years of experience. Undergraduate degree in design, psychology, HCI etc. preferred. 12 month accredited UX certificate program acceptable	Typically requires 3-5 years of experience. (Less with related degree in design, psychology, HCI etc. Masters preferred)	Typically requires 6-8 years of experience	Typically requires minimum 8+ years
Ambiguity	Working with well defined problems and outcomes, can develop clear cohesive plans of action for developing the solution. Will occasionally need guidance from manager/peers to explore edge cases within plan or implementation approach.	Working within established strategies, identifies problems and defines outcomes. Trusted with more autonomy to explore means of increasing our customer value. Seeks direction as needed. Triangulates work against larger business objectives. Is not afraid to ask questions, effectively synthesizing insights and communicating plans to the larger organization.	Confident in taking risks, and building toward long-term business objectives. Has the ability to make decisions and move forward. Strong situational awareness, connecting adjacent and analogous patterns. Demonstrates ability to plan for the future while remaining grounded in the present. Quickly identifies mistakes and makes appropriate course corrections.	Architectural strategy is not defined. May not even know what the problem is before starting. Delivers with complete independence.
Strategic Thinking	Successfully applyies existing design language to a well defined product. Is capable of delivering workflows wireframes and detailed design specifications. Demonstrates ability to stay informed on emerging trends, updates from competitors, and analogous products/services. Has comprehensive understanding of customer segmentations.	Delivers innovative, well-considered designs for new products (or the evolution of existing products). Can assess their own solution against well established best practices for human centered design. Understands how their designs fit within the larger portfolio. Successfully balances innovation opportunities, expanding the company's design patterns by leveraging external patterns. Deep knowledge of market segmentations and customers. Identifies areas for new research. Champions the customer's POV to their teams.	Develops realistic & high quality recommendations for improving the user experience within our products, proactively thinking through the implications. Collaborating with User Research, Product Management, and Engineering to drive customer research and develop new user experiences. Champions the customer's POV to leadership.	Works across the organization to improve the overall user experience and developes recommendations for improving the experience of existing products, including potential new market opportunities, proactively thinking through ROI and market implications. Drives user experience for multiple product lines with no or minimal help. Incorporates best practices and patterns from adjacent and analogous products and services. Works with cross-functional leaders to successfully identify and prioritize new products and services for inclusion on the roadmap.
Execution	Operates independently but with regular check-in with manager/leadership. Driving well-scoped design tasks you may require help to get things done. Take responsibility for their own personal learning, indentifying programs or cources that will help gain the necessary skills. Takes advantage of development programs offered by the company. Translates product requirements into workflows wireframes and detailed mock-ups. Pays attention to the details, ensuring the accuracy and comprehensiveness of their designs. Communicates assumptions to your manager and team in a timely manner. Gets clarification on tasks up front to minimize the need for rework.	Operates independently with minimal supervision. Responsible for multiple large and medium sized projects including the overall design direction. You are able to unblock yourself to drive projects to completion through research experimentation or seeking advice from others. You have a bias toward learning and taking action, and know when to focus on each. You demonstrate strong execution on your projects, ensuring your designs are feasible, viable, and desirable. You communicate and work well cross-functionally. You keep the organization apprised of your progress and ensure alignment with other initiatives. You proactively identify problems (e.g. lack of clarity inconsistencies limitations) for your own work and adjacent work and you communicate these issues early to help course correct.	You are able to unblock yourself to drive projects to completion, optimizing tradeoffs in order to address risks and challenges. Responsible for multiple large projects including their strategic design direction. You view increasing the team’s ability to deliver best in class design solutions on time as being part of your personal charter. You understand the tradeoffs between competing needs and develop solutions that take all of these needs into account. You identify and propose strategies around problems that affect your team communicating standards and getting buy-in on your solutions along the way.	You inspire autonomy in others by unblocking them and providing them with tools and techniques to unblock themselves. Responsible for core mission critical products including their long-term strategic design direction. You prioritize time-to-value effectively thoughtfully question assumptions and successfully guide discussion of tradeoffs in a way that meaningfully influences the direction of major work. You are responsible for the user experience of multiple products/solutions. You primarily act as a multiplier by building systems authoring tools or introducing processes and practices that raise the level of productivity of the entire team or function. You are effective at communicating and influencing both upward and across the organization.
Leadership/ Mentorship	Seeks out and accepts feedback is a proactive learner takes on tough assignments to improve skills turns mistakes into learning opportunities; adapts to ambiguity is open to new ideas handles pressure. Actively seeks out mentorship and guidance from more senior PMs. You engender trust and respect in all working relationships.	Takes on tough assignments; adapts to ambiguity is open to new ideas takes on new responsibilities handles pressure adjusts plans to meet changing needs. Drives projects and team meetings with clear goals and focus. Actively seeks out mentorship and guidance from more senior PMs and cross functional peers.	Keeps knowledge and skills on the leading edge; deals well with ambiguity; is open to new ideas. Is able to take on multiple assignments. Assists others in handling pressure and advising them on potential adjustments to their plans in order to meet changing needs. Takes an active interest in mentoring entry level team members (UX PM UR etc.) and is open to mentoring cross-functional colleagues.	Effective in high-pressure and/or ambiguous situations; anticipates and adjusts long-range plans to meet changing complex and interdependent needs; able to take on and lead multiple large scale assignments. You contribute to the growth of others and are recognized as a role model and mentor to every member of the team.
Complexity	You work on problems where analysis of situations or data requires a review of a variety of factors. You exercise judgment within defined practices and procedures to determine appropriate action.	You work on problems of diverse scope where analysis of data requires evaluation of analogous or adjacent factors. You successfully capture and prioritize the edge cases and quickly develop mitigation plans for addressing them. You demonstrate good judgment in selecting methods and techniques for arriving at solutions.	You work on issues where analysis of situations or data requires in-depth evaluation of variable factors. You exercise judgment in selecting methods techniques and evaluation criteria for obtaining results. Successfully balance tradeoffs between development customer and business needs.	You work on significant and unique issues where analysis of situations or data requires an evaluation of intangibles. You exercise independent judgment in methods techniques and evaluation criteria for obtaining results.
Scope & Autonomy	You are trusted to own well-defined work items and you deliver them effectively with quality and timeliness. You know when and how to ask for clarification.	You own day-to-day work and receive general instructions on new assignments. You operate with autonomy in low-risk situations; in higher-risk situations you rely on manager review and input on decisions.	You are the recognized owner of a set of projects or services within your team. You determine methods and procedures on new assignments and may coordinate activities of other team members. You drive toward results with a focus on our customers.	You view the success of your team’s projects and components as part of your success. You operate with significant autonomy and act independently to determine methods and procedures in increasingly complex scenarios where judgment is required for solving both current and emerging problems.
Knowledge & Skills	You are developing your professional expertise and you have knowledge in your designated area as well as the overall function. You apply standard practices to a variety of issues. You have a basic understanding of user experience design including usability principles and best practices.	You are a seasoned experienced professional with a full understanding of your area of specialization. Has a deep knowledge of topics and challenges related to interaction design but continues driving to expand current knowledge and skills. Can successfully communicate the behaviors of the products you are responsible for designing including edge cases. Ability to explain existing standards for UI design to others.	You have a wide range of experiences and combine that experience with professional insights and rational processes to resolve complex issues in creative and effective ways. You leverage your knowledge to seek out improvements to drive greater efficiency.	You have broad expertise and/or unique knowledge and can add perspective across functions. You use your experience and skills to contribute to cross-functional objectives in creative and effective ways.
Collaboration	You solicit feedback from others and are eager to find ways to improve. Works well with immediate team but may need help with extended team. Though still learning you give timely helpful feedback to peers and managers and are beginning to teach across the team.	You take opportunities to share unique talents and interest across the whole team in the form of offering tools providing education or leading group discussions. Works exceeding well across all cross-functional teams. You keep others informed about issues technologies and trends that will contributes to the increased performance of the team or function.	You make others better. You provide feedback on projects outside of their core area and may mentor other team members to contribute to their growth. You proactively share your time talents and expertise to improve the knowledge and practices of others on the team.	You lead conversations internally about the direction of major areas of work drive team-wide consensus to adopt this direction and motivate and align team members with this direction. You educate those outside your team on your team’s priorities initiatives and products.