Leadership Values

It brings me joy to help people achieve their full creative potential.

My design leadership style is people first: people are foundational to building great things. With people at the center, I operate using what I've coined as the 4Ps of Leadership: Success for People, Partners, Projects, and Processes.

And this style is backed by substance: I've honed my leadership approach over many years of experience in multiple tech sectors, company sizes, and scenarios.

Leadership Style: The 4Ps

People Success

I achieve success for people by:

Developing high-performing leaders who pass the elevator down
Co-piloting the careers of my direct reports
Caring about my team, peers, and partners as people
Recognizing team members for good work
Providing timely and helpful feedback, delivered with empathy and encouragement
Building inclusive and diverse teams that have diverse design skillsets and backgrounds

Partner Success

I achieve success with and for peers and cross-functional partners by:

Getting design a seat at the table as a key part of product development process
Ensuring design, product, and engineering work well together
Amplifying the business and operational goals we are striving for together
Keeping our goals aligned through regular 1:1s and planning meetings
Surfacing issues early, and working through them together
Cultivating an environment of trust and accountability

Project Success

I achieve success for projects by:

Aligning projects to roadmaps, and quarterly and yearly planning goals
Ensuring designers have enough maker time as opposed to meeting time
Catalyzing project retrospectives to foster more learning and self-awareness
Design, product, and engineering have a shared sense of ownership over project success
Having design archetypes inform project staffing.
Helping increase the level of craft and business impact of each designer's project work

Process Success

I ensure we follow the right processes, such as:

Ensuring product development is customer-driven by incorporating user research and strategy properly
Solving design debt, developing design principles, ensuring quality is upheld
Aligning design ops, work flows, and structures with business goals
Representing design in town halls, strategy decks, planning cycles, and org design
Helping designers prioritize competing priorities from multiple stakeholders across multiple projects
Evaluating processes for their ROI, and removing or simplifying cumbersome processes

Foundations of Design Management

These are key indicators of the performance and potential of a design team, which underscore success for people, partners, projects, and processes.

Product Ownership

The trio of design, product management, and engineering should have shared ownership over what gets built. Regardless of who comes up with the winning idea, all three parts of the trio need to be involved starting at the concept phase, through product release.

Out with the old school method where ownership gets passed from department to department, and in with an inclusive product development process that has fewer blind spots and that has shared accountability for both ups and downs. This partnership model enables success for people, partners, projects, and processes.