Leadership By Design 2020

We'll open the doors a little early and let folks in. Sometimes, we have surprises, sometimes, we play music, sometimes it's a little quiet. Get there a little early to be ready for kick-off!

Announcements and gratitude, schedule for the day, and general information about the event.

15 minute break.

How can organizations encourage innovation at all levels? This talk will explore the concept of “engineered serendipity” and how a non-linear leadership model can often yield the most creative results.

We know that, as designers mature, they need to understand how to tell a story about their work. But how do you coach them in storytelling when stories can take so many forms depending on the phase of a project? In this presentation, Dani Nordin of athenahealth will share a framework she’s created to help designers at athenahealth craft a compelling story at various phases of a project—from design scenarios to research plans to portfolio case studies.

You’ll learn:

The fundamental types of stories that tend to show up in our work;
How the elements, attitude and altitude with which we shape our stories impact their effectiveness;
Common pitfalls to avoid when crafting your story.
Along the way, you’ll laugh, cry and see some cute animal pictures.

15 minute break.

Spend time with the CEO of a Digital Transformation firm who is actively working through a dramatically changing landscape and an executive coach who is helping other senior leaders do the same. Facilitated by Jabali Williams, discussion, presenting the tough topics we could all use some advice on, while also surfacing your questions as well.

Civic Creatives produces experiences, tools, and platforms that help cities and organizations engage more intimately with communities to address social injustices within the built environment.

30 minute break.

Originally I’d planned to discuss the systems that keep HubSpot’s 120 person UX team focused on the right things for our customers. Then the world tilted back in March, and 2020 has served up a series of unprecedented obstacles.

So how did those systems fare under the extreme pressure test of working with needy pets, homeschooled kids, and a constant thrum of anxiety and grief? So far, it turns out that leaning into these challenges with vulnerability and transparency proved to be our greatest leadership tool, and our culture is our most important “system” of all. I’ll share how external turmoil has shaped my framework for allocating leadership attention across infrastructure, process, culture, impact, and vision. Sometimes you have to fall apart to truly come together.

Designers have always had to be creative and thoughtful about finding their next project, job, or opportunity. Any illusions of control we had disappeared when the pandemic struck. We have always lived in an uncertain world.

Not everyone can do what you do. Think about how to use your skills to seek out places to help in your organization. Your cunning, creativity, and willingness to experiment are critical to aiding companies looking to navigate, survive, and hopefully thrive beyond today’s crisis. I’ll focus on a few small but scalable approaches around mingling and triage to help you design new responsibilities. Think about what problems you are uniquely suited to help solve, identify places where you can use your skills, and, most importantly, look at the variety of ways you can add value. Reframe, review, revisit, invert, and explore how we work, support each other, and help our clients and customers.

15 minute break.

“To admit that you’re afraid gives you strength.” — Counselor Troi to Lieutenant Worf (Star Trek: TNG)

As a leader, being/feeling/appearing vulnerable can be uncomfortable and make us doubt ourselves. Strong emotions aren’t typically on display in work environments. That hasn’t necessarily been the case since the world has flipped upside down. Many of us are working from home full time, for the first time. Seeing your coworkers in their homes on video conferences is surprisingly humanizing. More so than when they are working from home and calling into a conference at work. Seeing every person you work with, their homes, pets, kids, hobbies (i.e. guitars on the wall, knitting projects in the background), makes everyone a little more human. A little more vulnerable.

How can we, as leaders, provide our teams with the compassionate, empathetic support they need in times of difficulty, while also taking care of ourselves? In this talk, I’ll focus on strategies to ensure you’re providing thoughtful leadership to your team, and help your own leadership understand you and your team’s needs.

Good design leaders know that designers must think beyond the interface and user needs and work on the business, not just in the business. We ask them to balance business needs, to design with intentionality, and make appropriate trade offs given the complex ecosystems that surround our organizations and their industries. We focus so much on hiring for tactical craft skills, but it’s the ability to be strategic within an organization’s business context that makes our design team members truly effective.

In this talk, we will learn how to conduct activities from day 1 to help designers understand the industry better, to apply critical thinking to their choices, and start working more strategically. I will share how, at Roadmunk, we use frameworks like Porter’s 5 Forces and Blue Ocean Strategy as part of our design onboarding process. This allows new hires to not only get acquainted with our industry, but to form early relationships with other departments, and hit the ground running.

15 minute break.

New Layer is a conversational podcast on everything related to digital product design, with hosts Jasmine Friedl and Tanner Christensen. We discuss design careers, tools, education, critique, and much more.

Wrapping up the day.