Get on the plane…
I have often been asked how a designer can move into a company leadership role. Today, with AI many, designers fear their role will be eliminated. In reality your fate is in your own hands. Design's 360º understanding that comes from holding the people and problem in balance, combined with their ability to evaluate infinite solutions, generated by them or by AI or some combination of the two. Designers are empowered to build their own future: to transform their role. They can materialize their visions into solutions that can change people's lives. They just have to get on the plane.
Once upon a time there was a designer at a healthcare dot-com. The company focused on the payer side, but he pulled together a small team to build a patient offering to drive engagement with physicians. The company was mid-acquisition of two other companies when it decided to merge with a company that was itself buying three more companies. This was the middle of the bubble. Times were a little crazy, not unlike today's AI chaos.
The designer got wind of a meeting planned for the different consumer teams, the goal being to draft an integration plan for one unified website. But his team’s portal wasn't invited. So he made a decision: get on a plane.
He flew to Portland.
He has also looked up the other attendees on LinkedIn and they were all a VP or Senior Director. So on the flight he decided he needed a comparable title as well.
The next day, the designer walked into the room and took a seat among the dozen-plus other VPs and Senior Directors. The woman running the meeting had everyone introduce themselves and describe what they were bringing to the table. It quickly became clear there was a lot of great content to work with; medical dictionaries, PDR, thriving on-line communities, even a medical news bureau! He introduced himself as his company's VP of Consumer Products and demo’ed his team’s apps and their consumer health record, which added the third leg to the site’s content and communities.
But nobody else could see how all the pieces fit. How to turning 1+1 into 3.
So the designer, grabbed the white board markers (all of them) and started sketching a site map. Overlaying it with workflows for different personas and scenarios. Focusing on the medical news, symptom checkers, vaccine and pregnancy tools. Syndication points to medical journals. including demarcations between peer-reviewed content, news, and community content. Connections to the physician portal. And one-way gateways from the payers' systems. By the time he put the marker down, the room had a workable first draft. Everyone was nodding as he walked them through it
As the meeting closed, the woman who'd organized asked to speak to him in the hallway. She told him who she really was: the GM the board had just tapped to run the whole consumer business, briefed on every team from every company. And she wanted to know who he was. And what he thought he was doing crashing her meeting.
He figured he'd be hitchhiking home, but after answering her questions, and explaining his background, his vision, and his desire to really make something meaningful. She smiled. She was impressed. She told him that while he'd walked into that room an IC, he was walking out as her new VP of Consumer Products & Innovation.
Sometimes all it takes is vision, and the willingness to get on a plane.
I share that because today designers are being presented with the same opportunities they had during the bubble; design is the only one of the professions in tech that has a solid, 360º view. Now with AI they are empowered to build themselves, to transform their vision into prototype code into shipping code in a matter of hours.
Get on the plane.
