Load-Bearing: The Leadership a Practice Depends On
Leadership By Design 2027
Thursday & Friday, June 24–25, 2027
Online

Every design practice runs on structures somebody built: hiring standards, review rituals, decision rights, career paths, quality bars. Good ones are invisible until they’re gone, and then the practice absorbs the damage one person at a time.

Load-Bearing is about that construction work: who builds those structures, how they’re maintained under pressure, and what a team can stand on while the org around it keeps changing shape. Less about the inspiration a practice runs on, more about the agreements it rests on.

Two days of leaders who have built something that held, including the parts that didn’t the first time.

Who it’s for

Design leaders carrying more scope than they were given headcount for. People who inherited a practice and are deciding what to keep. Anyone who has been told to scale quality without being told how.