Over the past couple of years I had the opportunity to work within large and complex organisations. Over time, my role has also become more senior or managerial. I think at this point everybody knows that design leadership is a vastly different role with opportunities and requirements in comparison to a UI/UX design role.
As an organisation becomes larger (more than a couple of designers, multiple channels that products operate in, over X amount of users) your challenges as a design leader within the org also tends to change significantly.
Particularly, I’ve noticed that the challenges are quite consistent across organisations in which design starts to become a more mature department in non-tech orgs:
The creation of a standard design process
Improving the way research is organised, completed and debriefed to stakeholders outside of the design org
Building a mature design system
Keeping said design system up-to-date and having the right processes in place to discuss (key) component changes
How to handle accessibility (WCAG)
Taking documentation within the team seriously
While the above are internal challenges within the design team - working with stakeholders outside of a design team can consistently be challenging. As a design team produces tangible results – making people aware of the significant challenges under-the-hood as listed above, can be tricky. This occurs especially if the rest of the organisation is solely interested in the output of the team: designed screens.
It all starts with giving design a correct place within the organisation governance - something that is often done badly within larger, non-tech organisations. When that isn’t an option, what I’ve noticed tends to work well is to apply any soft powers that the team has to go beyond screens and focus on customer experience as a wider concept.
If you’re no longer just the folks from the screens - but rather focus on the tangible benefits of getting insights in customer journeys with the corresponding desired customer experience - you’re essentially providing valuable business insights.
It’s starting to dawn on me why there are designers purposely avoiding leadership roles - in above contexts you spend a lot less time designing and a lot more time in meetings. The additional challenge is that it isn’t sexy work and progress can be painstakingly slow. Having said that however - the taste of success is that much sweeter when succeeding.