The designer conundrum: state of career tracks in our industry

It’s a pretty classic conundrum — a technical expert is promoted until they’re a junior level manager, and suddenly finds themselves out of their depths on the ‘softer’ skills side of things: managing people and teams. So what can we do differently?

During my career, I’ve worked in a wide variety of design teams, agencies and organisations, and have noticed something along the way. In many of these places, there’s been very little understanding or clarity in how a person progresses in their design career, or what makes good design leadership.

A quick note about when I say ‘design’ — I’m using it as a catchall to include many different areas and capabilities within the field of product and service design, including (but not limited to): user experience design, product design, service design, user research, marketing, communications and content design.

In a pattern I’ve seen play out a few times, senior practitioners are promoted upwards in recognition of their expertise and respective seniority to the people they work with, until they become management. And suddenly, after building expertise and experience in their field for years, they’re actually holding a role for which they have little to no education, expertise or experience.

Managing people, operations and delivery involves an entire set of capabilities and skills that aren’t taught to or picked up by your average design practitioner, including:

• Managing people, including day-to-day HR responsibilities like employee entitlements, leave and performance
• Strategic leadership, including setting an overall direction
• Task management, prioritisation and delegation
• Capability building, mentoring and guidance
• Resource and budget planning and management.

While every manager learns these skills at some point (we hope) it can be hard on the teams and people they manage while they’re picking them up.