Path to Leadership
Designers have long had the potential to becomes leaders within organizations. In fact Industrial Design was commonly placed in a leadership roles in traditional manufacturing companies. The same held true even with the emergence of digital products— with Industrial Designers like Jony Ive in the C-Suite and UX designers like Catherine Courage, Arin Bhowmick, and many others holding CDO roles.
From my experience there are two ways for a designer to move into a company leadership role:
The first is to manage people. To put it simply the single most valuable—and thus most expensive to replace, resource of any digital company is its people. Being able to demonstrate you can effectively transform resources into greater value is a critical skill for any business leader. Managing people is not like managing an investment portfolio. People need trust, engagement, growth, motivation, respect, to be seen and heard, as well as a clear definition of success and the means to achieve success. The first step toward attaining a company leadership role is knowing what people need to successfully deliver the greatest value—and making sure it’s there when its needed.
The second way is to have someone in the C-suite advocate for you to work with the organization’s leadership. This requires you to first be recognized as having significant intellectual horsepower in a given domain beyond that of the other members of the company’s leadership (in this case design). And second, an agreement amongst the leadership team that your experience will accelerate the organization’s ability to accomplish its goal. Today most organizations provide non-management career paths (i.e., Principal, Architect, etc.) but simply having the title is not enough, you will still need to have a track record of delivering value to be taken seriously by the C-Suite. This can be challenging since Principal and Architect roles often function as shared resources, advising multiple projects but with minimal deliverables.
It is important to understand that with this second path to leadership, if loose your champion, you loose your role. Where as with the management path, you have greater control over your progress—even if that means moving to a new organization in order to move up. As a manager, accomplishments travel well. As a Principal or Architect, expertise doesn’t carry the same weight in every organization.
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