Val Head: CREATING YOUR OWN DESIGN CAREER PATH | SIC 2024
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The document outlines strategies for advancing a career as an individual contributor (IC) designer, emphasizing the importance of leadership without formal authority. Key concepts include carving out a specialty space, building trust through collaboration, and identifying personal impact within company goals. It discusses various archetypes of principal designers and encourages self-assessment to define personal career success.
Val Head: CREATING YOUR OWN DESIGN CAREER PATH | SIC 2024
- 1. Creating your own design career path Val Head • Principal Designer, Adobe Seattle Interactive 2024
- 3. Leading without formal authority
- 4. Leadership is always part of the job
- 5. Embrace it to strengthen your leadership presence Ignore it and risk diminishing your leadership in fl uence or
- 6. Individual Contributor (IC) A designer, on any level of the career ladder, who is not required to have direct reports. Principal Designer The job title given to the top rung of the IC career ladder. Typically equivalent to the Director or Senior Director level on the management career ladder. Two useful de fi nitions: (Your company might have di ff erent names for these things, but these are the terms I’ll be using today.)
- 7. Foundations of leading without formal authority Carve out your specialty space • Build trust and connections
- 8. Carve out your speciality space
- 9. • Establishes your expertise in a crucial area • Acts as a foundation for a broader internal audience for your work • Attracts collaborators and establishes potential common ground What a speciality space does for you: Leading without formal authority
- 10. Imagine you were going to hold open o ffi ce hours for the community or internally at your work: 1. What topics would you be most excited for people to come talk to you about? 2. What would you want to keep talking about for hours? 3. Of those things, which are both exciting to you and relevant to your company/product goals? An exercise to fi nd your specialty space
- 11. Your area of specialty helps you de fi ne what success means to you. Leading without formal authority
- 12. Build Trust & Connections
- 13. Technically, no one has to listen to you… (But that doesn’t mean no one will!) Leading without formal authority
- 14. • Avoid imposing big solutions out of the blue • Believe in the collective expertise of your team • Be transparent about what you’re trying to achieve Building trust takes time Leading without formal authority
- 15. • Start projects with workshops and listening tours • Get input from contributors early on and keep them informed • Credit collaborators meaningfully Some examples of what building trust looks like Leading without formal authority
- 16. Being good to work with means addressing problems and di ffi cult topics constructively Leading without formal authority
- 17. Building skills for IC leadership The Principal Designer archetypes
- 18. Thought leader/Visionary Coming up with new future-looking ideas and looking ahead to where current industry trends are heading. Evangelist Exhibiting the con fi dence and prowess to get your work attention to a wide internal audience, and/or promoting a speci fi c idea, product, or feature to external audiences. Researcher Forming hypotheses, gathering data, and participating in research e ff orts for new ideas or products. Entrepreneur/Innovator Presenting a solution or strategy for a net new business idea or product based on industry trends or gaps in the market. Strategist Orchestrating plans to execute on a new initiative or product. Subject Matter Expert Being the go-to person for answers and opinions in a speci fi c knowledge area. Principal Designer Archetypes
- 20. “As a Principal Designer, how strongly do you identify with each archetype in your work on a scale of 1 to 10?” Principal Designer Archetypes
- 21. Principal Designer Archetypes Individual Principal Designers shape the role di ff erently
- 22. Principal Designer Archetypes self-assessment exercise How strongly do you identify with each archetype in your work on a scale of 1 to 10?”
- 23. Climbing the IC career ladder Track your impact • Connect outside of your bubble
- 24. Climbing the IC career ladder
- 26. Business impact, not just design impact Climbing the IC career ladder
- 27. • What topics are top of mind for the top leaders of your company? • Is what you’re working on connected to those topics? What kind of impact does your work have? Climbing the IC career ladder
- 28. What you’re working on What’s most important to company leadership Climbing the IC career ladder
- 29. 1. Make a list of things your company leaders mention as top goals or top concerns. 2. Make a list of your current projects and their expected outcomes. 3. Can you directly connect what you’re working on to those goals or concerns? An exercise to assess your impact
- 30. Connect outside of your bubble
- 31. • Find opportunities for unique solutions or collaborations. Seek out the common problems internally, or the external trends that are valuable. • Conduct relationship experiments • Follow the momentum Use your unique vantage point Climbing the IC career ladder
- 32. Taking ownership of your career path means moving forward with intention. De fi ne what career success means to you. Create your own design career path
- 33. Thank you!