A Playbook for Design Leaders — An evolving proposal
It’s considered fairly standard in the UX industry to view “the portfolio” as the singular crucial measurement of a UX designer’s worthiness for a job opening, in addition to a variety of other factors, of course (like responding to impromptu unrealistic exercises and banal questions by rushed PMs and Devs focused on sprint deadlines, for instance ;-) But the portfolio is the ceremonial calling card, whether presented as a website or a PDF or some other format inviting peer review. It’s a first round pass-fail assessment to get to further rounds of interviewing.
However, I’m not convinced it’s the proper vehicle for someone positioning themselves for UX strategy & leadership roles that step beyond hands-on production. Is a portfolio the proper way to convey one’s professional credentials when the challenges addressed are abstract, conceptual, strategic, organizational, and even philosophical? Hmm. I wonder…
Please note, my bias against the portfolio is borne of the context of Silicon Valley for the past decade, which I’ve witnessed firsthand as both a hiring agent and candidate to be hired — it’s basically devolved into a simplistic “dog and pony” show of cool visuals embellished by a rote templatized story of applying canonical UCD steps and supporting business metrics, with anecdotal skirmishes with pesky tech constraints. It’s become standardized as a set of basic grammars around the “proper” statement a UX design candidate should present and convey their story so as to come across as articulate, knowledgeable about business and tech matters, and who can work in a collaborative dynamic environment (read: unmediated chaos of insufficiently planned sprints prompted by daily artificial urgency — am I wrong?). And the hapless candidate and their presentation is judged as such — is it following the now accepted template? Hrrm!!! Cue the arched eyebrow and hasty Slack DM to the hiring manager…before rushing off to the daily standup.
For someone pursuing leadership roles at the Principal, Architect or Managerial levels, I’d suggest the portfolio framed as such is not the best method to gauge one’s worthiness of such positions/roles. For someone operating at those levels, they have transcended the grammars of design delivery and production towards the rhetorical and dialectical arts of conversation and facilitation, proactively anticipating insights gleaned over years of informed wisdom (read: painful teachable moments with earnest regrets). In other words, they have seen some serious shit. And hurt plenty for it. And aim to do better and achieve more. But they don’t have the most beautiful visuals or a templatized narrative worthy of peer judginess.
But they have a case study, or series of narratives of conflict and resolution with (like a classic hero’s journey) lessons brought back from the edge (or depth) of despair, for self-improvement or more…punctuated by artifacts but they are not the center-stage hero, as in a typical portfolio.
Indeed, when I look back up on my own career, spanning more than 15+ years at a wide range of companies (Large Enterprise, Chaotic Startups, Multifaceted Agency), and the kinds of problems tackled and situations addressed, I realize that I’ve reached a point where I have a “playbook” of methods & approaches developed per a) practical expertise and b) personal mannerisms (aka “style”). Together they form a distinctive statement of how I navigate ambiguity, wrangle complexity, and strive for beauty at meta-levels of vision, strategy, process, culture. It’s not about pretty artifacts wrapped into a conveniently pat story, but instead how I have built up a set of “plays” that I will pull out of my back pocket, because I’ve seen that situation before, or some variation thereof. And thus, I can spark a productive dialogue on how to proceed with senior leadership members.
In sports, coaches have a “playbook” of specific calls, strategies, tactics for defensive and offensive maneuvers that speaks to the coach’s way of tackling (literally in football ;-) various situations that come up again and again and again… And it’s based upon what they’re comfortable with and their signature style. From Phil Jackson’s “triangle offense” to Steve Spurrier’s “fun and gun” or having a soft spot for running “the option”— each coach was hired for their signature approaches to dealing with various situations. It’s not Phil Jackson’s beautiful photos of Jordan mastering the fadeaway jumper that got him to LA to work with Kobe and Shaq; it was his meta-level expertise that led to that even happening. (and the resulting trophies :-)
In a nutshell: If you hire a UX leader of repute and expertise, you will hire a certain set of approaches to problems that’s unique to how s/he handled them, per lessons learned and insights gained. Call it informed intuition, which is simply reflective expertise over time. I’d wager this is true for many design leaders in the field who now have developed a considerable repertoire that makes them distinctively who they are — and worthy of hire and compensation.
So what is a playbook and what does it look like? I’m still developing that “template”, but in essence it’s a composite of your approaches and methods that define your ethos, your attitude and aptitude to tackling inevitably complex & ambiguous situations. How you respond given your repertoire, which is gained over years of experience, exposure and interpretation of a variety of hands on contexts — not just theory but really endured, and deciphered critical lessons, which might be implicit but you know how to elevate into explicit, realizable teachings for guidance.
It’s a statement of who you are, what design means to you, how you apply design leadership, what are the values and processes you stand by. How you enable and empower your triad peers (Product and Dev, at executive levels). How you contend with politics and personalities. How you influence strategies and nurture best practices. How you set others for success while looking ahead to your own career path development. How does this map to UX org maturity (or lack thereof). When you’re dealt with a situation, what’s your play? How did that work out? What did you learn? How do you tackle the challenges of cross-functional dialogues and agendas?
It might be more of a series of case studies, but with less emphasis on “pretty pictures” and following canonical UCD steps. After all, to achieve real impacts often requires breaking standard rules, with an artful balance of conversational influence. How YOU do that is part of your unique stamp, as you define your playbook of achievement and learning, which is ever evolving in your career. [more soon…]
