Leadership Philosophy
While I have been told by teams over the years I’m a natural leader, I’d like to think my approach was born out of a few bad experiences with my own managers early in my career. A general lack of support with job duties, lack of clarity surrounding responsibilities, taking credit for work I did, pitting teammates against each other via an ultra competitive environment, and the list goes on. After having such experiences, I told myself I would never be like that should I ever find myself in a leadership role.
“Jim not only is talented and passionate about his work in UX design, but he readily transfers knowledge by coaching/ mentoring his teammates. My professional growth took a huge step forward because of it. In 1.5 years, Jim was able to teach me almost all the knowledge a UX designer would take to learn in 3 years.”
Support, Teach, Empower, Praise
My management style is typified by these four simple words.
Support
Humans by nature, like to feel supported, and there needs to be a supportive foundation from which to grow. This is no different in the workplace. Young entry level talent straight out of college are looking to experience professional work environments but with guidance that allows them to build skillsets with confidence. In the realm of software products, specifically product design, I like to put designers in situations that will challenge their skills and allow for growth, but have proper railguards in place to allow for both failure and success. Ideally, fail fast with continuous improvement towards successful outcomes. When people work with me, they always say “Jim, you are so good at this and very fast” or something to the like. My response is always the same. “Do you actually think I was good when I first started? Of course not. Getting to this level takes reps and experience, and if you’re lucky, a few good mentors along the way. Listen, learn, and ask questions, especially why.” So in a nutshell, I like to provide knowledge, skillset, and project support, so my teams can take the necessary risks to create innovative products. I never want them to be afraid. When my team fails, it’s my failure, plain and simple.
“Jim is a great director and an outstanding mentor with rich experience. I have learned a lot of UX/UI skills from him.”
Teach
Throughout my entire career, I’ve taken mentorship very seriously and it’s always been a core value in how I approach leadership. It’s ok to say “I don’t know”, heck, I say it all the time. The key is to find out. Sometimes that’s learning yourself, or in other instances, it really is hiring the necessary expertise. From tactical moments during design iterations to spending my time off hours taking Interaction Design Foundation (IDF) courses alongside my team, I’m always ready to teach.
For instance, at eoStar, there wasn’t much of an onboarding program, especially when it came to understanding the beverage industry domain, let alone the massive ERP system that is eoStar. Instead, people were told to watch a bunch of marketing videos which provided little more than a sporadic view of the software products, let alone a big picture of how and why features were used. So I created a 7 day bootcamp focused on Industry/Domain and the eoStar suite of products surrounding how they were used in a typical day, hence “Day in the Life”. Initially used for the product team I was building, this training ended up being used by the company as a whole for all employees.
“Jim is an incredible manager, coach, and mentor. He is a fantastic teacher and genuinely enjoys helping others develop into strong employees.”
I also developed a number of other training materials aimed at entry to junior level hires, specifically Business Analysts and UX designers. Below are examples from a 4 part series for business analysis in a software context and a separate series for UX design. Specifically for the UX side, this means an introduction to the discipline with exercises for the various phases from early research to hi fidelity comps. For this entry to junior level talent, these sessions help to serve as a refresher from collegiate education or for those who came into UX from work experience alone, provides a principled foundation to skills they’ve already started to build. Of course, these sessions bring quite a bit of, “this is what you learned in school and here’s how it really applies in the real world, and especially at this company. You don’t need to create hi fidelity prototypes for everything.”
This also applies to how I help people with career and goal setting. Very few of the companies I’ve worked at did much with this albeit some formulaic performance measures to be used in the annual review process. Well, I just created my own. For example, at eoStar, I developed a goals worksheet directed at my performance in supporting individual team members, what they like and don’t like to ensure a decent work mix, and of course, several professional goals which I would support to completion. Sure, I do the typical biweekly to monthly coaching sessions, but this goal work was core to a person’s career growth. Just like with users and external stakeholders, expectation management with team members is paramount for creating successful outcomes.
Empower
I provide direction and guidance, but leave it up to team members to come up with their own solutions while allowing them to make relevant design decisions. I believe designers need autonomy to express their own creativity, but also to make sure they are aware of the various constraints (time/budget, existing system configuration, technical debt, platform limitations etc.). People, especially creative talent, don’t want to be told what to do, so I’ve made a habit of asking one simple question. “What do you think we should do?” Now, my team members know there are situations where I exercise veto power and sometimes there is a wrong answer, it’s a business we’re supporting after all. We can’t have someone spend 3 weeks creating a single empty state visual that is going to be seen less than 5% of the time. However, the idea is, I let designers make decisions providing feedback if there are scenarios or circumstances they might not have thought of via questions. Of course, if someone says, “Jim, I don’t know what to do?”, I’ll provide a level of decisiveness that leaves them confident in the direction. I even do this with my own design work, leaving micro-design decisions open where possible to let my team make the decision. It’s about building buy-in and team confidence with decision making.
“Jim saw the potential in me from day 1, not only as a UX Designer, but he also knew how to push me to polish my UI skills. He always gave me the flexibility and trust to do my own thing while making sure I was solving the right problem.”
Praise
I love all the high five moments. Finally solving a complex UX problem after feeling like you’ve beat your head against a wall. Those moments of triumph are probably one of the best parts of management, seeing someone you’ve mentored succeed, creating something awesome, you cannot help but be proud. Just like with a sports team (I captained 4 sports teams in high school), it’s about making people feel the sense of accomplishment, the win. Sure, everyone loves monetary rewards when it comes to raises and year end bonuses, but that’s only part of what I’m talking about when it comes to praise. It’s making sure people know your appreciation for all the little things they do. Those decisions, tasks, work, etc that can easily go unnoticed but I always make it a point to see. Whether it was a few awesome questions asked during a user interview, selection of proper icons for a screen, to highly detailed and annotated user flows, it’s not the size of the work that matters, it’s that a teammate did a great job, which needs to be recognized. Like everything in life, there needs to be a certain level of moderation, but in the end, it’s making sure hard work is celebrated, no matter the size or scope.
“His out of the box thinking and creativity leads him to designing great products. Working under him is fun, challenging and gives one the sense of accomplishment.”
Design Mentorship
I take design mentorship seriously and enjoy helping others reach their potential. Check out the examples below.
Approach to Hiring
While cultural and team fit are the most important, I look for designers who are aligned to the following:
- Take pride in your designs (quality, performance, etc.)
- Have the willingness and ability to learn (new technologies, domains, processes, etc)
- Understand the difference between UI and UX design
- Clearly understand the importance of business domain and impact on UCD and IxD
- Absolutely love a team based approach to design and software development
- Put product needs over your own ego
- Are a hard-working, curious, thoughtful person who wants to create great software products
- Absolutely love learning and being challenged everyday
- Are solution oriented with strong problem solving skills
- Excel at providing highly analytical and creative ideas to designs
- Love working on complex UX problems more than commoditized design