Hey 👋 

What a week to be in the UK. I’m writing this from a glorious Essex! ☀️

We’re shaking things up. We’ll now be releasing 2 newsletters per week:

(That’s the aim anyway - currently being up a bank of newsletters)

• 1 “Community Insights” edition

• 1 Q&A/Insight article.

“Community Insights” will be a curated list of great insights from smart people off the back of my social media questions, as well as any links to new podcasts I create, books, articles etc.

In this mail:

• Leading design teams with no design background

• Companies hiring designers with the EXACT experience

• A SaaS company with NO PMs

• You’re invited to the Verified Community

Is having someone run design from a non-design background that bad?

Alex Morris: Depends if it's a purely people management role or requires someone who needs to have an opinion about what good design is. If it's the latter then no, it can't work

David Hamill: I can well believe it. As an observer to this, I see a conflation between craft competence and leadership skills that is less likely to happen when the leader isn't expected to have competence in the craft.

Designers don't get promoted to leadership positions for being good designers, they are promoted for having leadership skills. But when they get promoted, the assumption is that they are experts in the craft. But there are often people in the org below them who are better at it. When the leader is not a designer, this doesn't happen. The leader lets people who are good at their job, just get on and do it while clearing the obstacles that are stopping that.

Design teams often crave an exec-level designer to represent them at the top level. Until they get one. Their imagination of how their life would be if that were to happen is often quite different from the reality when it does.

Jason Clauss: In most branches of the United States Armed Forces, there is an extremely senior noncom role called Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman. Their role is to advocate for enlisted personnel at the highest level of military command. This should be a template for companies.

Every company should have a single top designer whose skills and interests lie more with design than management. They should have the same pay the CDO or VPD (whichever is the highest rank in design). They should be present at company leadership meetings but their focus should be on shaping the product design goals and policies while CDO focuses more on building the organization and procuring the resources needed to further those goals.

While some (rare) companies have inched in this direction with principal, distinguished, and fellow levels, this takes it to its fullest extent by creating a single role and putting it at bylaw-enforced parity with the highest execs.

Osandi Sekou Robinson: How can you have human-centred value, when the leadership hasn't invested in a single track of learning what it fundamentally is?

It's like having someone who wants to open and operate an authentic Thai restaurant, yet has never set foot in the country to understand how the food SHOULD taste and the context it is most experienced in.

Rogier van der Heide: Indeed Tom, designers say "people do not get us". They do not just say it: they use the statement to explain or even justify lack of success, lack of recognition, lack of budget, anything. But in the first place, all of that is due to design leaders themselves. 

Not long after I joined Philips, I set up an internal campaign led by two of my venerable design directors, Guillaume and Brad. The campaign was called "Design is not Optional" and it basically encouraged execs and senior directors to visit the design studio and discover the value of design. Everyone in my organization took part: welcoming management, showing them around, and asking them questions to understand their real pain points. 

It was the start of a journey that quadrupled the spending on design by the business. It helped of course that I moved design from a separate building into the headquarters's ground floor, separated from the lift lobby only by a transparent glass wall. It also helped that our two sofa corners - with espresso makers - were bookable as meeting rooms in Outlook, for everyone who wanted a "cool meeting place" to impress a customer, or to get inspiration.

Think bold, think in experiences, think from the other's viewpoint, and get everyone involved.

Why do companies love to hire people with the EXACT experience?

Helen Arvanitopoulos: Doing the same thing, with the same mindset, without any other experiences. Thank God I had someone with a brain that literally said, I hired you because you're an expert in what I'm looking for, not because you know "e-commerce". The transformations we've done.

Jesse Lewis: Tom, I agree that 'companies love to hire people with the EXACT experience they desire.' I think that often is a symptom of short-term need or demand and failure to recognise the longer view and strategic advantage that they can bring to the broader leadership and business.

You are not hiring based on experience alone. You are hiring for the positive influence that an individual can bring an alternative point of view or just because they will ask, 'why?' of all levels. 

The opportunity for you, design and the business, is to support them in their growth, to gain relevant experience in their new role, and expertise to develop a myriad of new skills in the time they spend with you.

Scott Parker: Amazing things happen when you hire from outside the industry. A new, sometimes naive perspective can take your products and services to places you never expected.

Igor Koshelev: In our rapidly evolving tech landscape, isn't adaptability and the ability to learn quickly more valuable than years of experience in a specific domain? How many times have we seen industry veterans struggle with new paradigms while newcomers thrive?

James Parillo: One of the core problems is that HR gatekeepers continually fail to understand that design is about creative problem-solving, not checklists of keyword skills. We are not data entry clerks, we are tasked with engaging critical thinking to solve problems.

Graham Reed: It's a lack of intent to progress their staff. They want people to come in and give give give, not train and mould. This is a big red flag IMO, and companies that say this claim to support their staff, develop their staff, invest in their staff, and plainly lying.

Jason Mills: If you keep hiring people from your competitors, you're only going to keep doing the same things as your competitors.

A diverse workforce brings new perspectives to drive innovation, new experiences and new products.

Lindsay Browning: The hiring managers who are open-minded to talent with skill and who are adaptable, curious and motivated will build a high-performing team with a diverse mix of perspectives and experience. Hiring is a skill that takes time to master and feel comfortable with, especially when hiring non-traditional profiles.

A SaaS company with NO PM’s

Dan Gough: 100%. Designers need to understand the commercial impact of design & know what will make the biggest difference for users and how to communicate that within their own team and with stakeholders. Product managers are often a wonderful bridge but designers need to be an active and powerful voice in that conversation - at all levels!

Thomas Wilson: Also, Tom Scott I'd like to acknowledge this post. When you fight for righteousness and what is best for customers and employees doing this work, it really warms my heart and it sends a message to researchers, strategists, service designers, UX designers who are being affected by unnecessary layoffs, in the millions now.

What is happening is wrong. There's no grey area here. It's wrong and the data shows it but no one reading this needs data. You know the systems and services you touch and EXPERIENCE YOURSELF on a daily basis, are not getting better overall. You know that if you work in these environments you are being asked to do things you know are wrong. They are not good for customers nor are they healthy for the psychological safety and growth of employees.

All it takes is for a few GOOD people with a platform and a voice to stand up and show courage. History will show where we stand right now. This is a pivotal moment in human evolution and we are being systematically denied the opportunity to make a preferred future. Instead, most are just kowtowing and capitulating for the sake of a check.

This doesn't happen in any other creative or innovative endeavour. It ONLY happens in technology and software DESIGN.

TJ Harrop: Love this Tom! A lot of people scoff at the broadly skilled product person, but I think that's exactly what a product designer is - someone who can design a product which makes sense technically has a strong market fit, won't go bankrupt (even if it isn't direct-to-consumer) and balances desirability, needs, wants, and the unsexy pragmatics of operating a product in the real world.

Milos Soskic: I think the product managers v no product managers line of thinking is a false dichotomy. You can probably find a successful org with no designers if you look hard enough.

What matters is having an org where the chosen functions work well together.

Kerry George: Without knowing anything about the stage of the business or product it is hard to comment properly but this is interesting and makes total sense for this to be wrapped up in design at a certain stage that a business/product is in but long term, is this where design should be spending their time? I wonder if the founder/HiPPO is an undercover product manager providing some product strategy and priority to design?

I have worked with and still work with some fab designers who could easily do product and come at product with all bases checked off. To me, they have the potential to be great product managers long term.

Ahmet Emre Acar: I think product needs to be owned by someone - either a designer, a developer or a subject matter expert who knows the customer and market extremely well.

A "generic" product manager is what corporates and mid-sized companies do. Product management activities are important, but I believe you don't need the PM m role in itself.

It goes against what I taught and practised with AWS customers, but they had different setups and grown structures.

I would advise a startup against a formal PM role. It should be someone who is hands-on in some aspect of the product, whether it is the design, the development, or the marketing of it.

I would also try and avoid getting to the scale that forces you to introduce one. there ought to be a better way of forming companies. I think DAOs might be one approach worth following

The Verified Community 🚀

I post a lot on social media about the business of design, careers, and portfolios, integrating design with the lens of sharing insights from the amazing ICs and executives I speak to.

But, LinkedIn is not set up for conversation. I like to think of LinkedIn as the “stage” and now we need to go backstage, build deeper relationships, and put together brains to create change in this crazy industry of ours.

My focus of the community is working together to integrate design. This could look like interviews, building data-backed reports to share with non-design executives, meaningful threads, interviews with non-design leaders etc.

We need to make noise, but, back it up with action.

I take my role in executive search seriously, we can’t make any change without the right people at the right time in the right place in the organisation.

I’m concerned with how neglected design is at the top of most companies.

So, you are invited to our new community. In this, we plan to:

• Host exclusive Q&As with design and NON-design leaders.

• Connect with like-minded peers over Slack.

• Have better dialogue on challenges we are facing in the industry.

• Access to our curated resource hub for design, careers + life stuff.

• Working on rolling out discounts and deals with certain companies.

• And of course, 2x newsletters per week.

• Invite to our invite-only talent network.

As we grow Verified, we will be developing new services for example we’re tinkering with a “personal agent” service for leaders right now, for people in our communities.

Who this Slack channel is NOT for:

• People who don’t want to contribute or seek out information.

• People want to sell services. Leave that for LinkedIn.

• Very early-stage designers, we’re keeping this at senior for now.

What the Slack channel will look like and process to join:

• You’ll join 10-12 channels. Focused conversation.

• One of the team will send you a welcome message with instructions and prompts on how to introduce yourself, where to find what etc.

If you’re interested in going “backstage” to have more meaningful dialogues please fill in this form - https://forms.gle/vfertSabAMcyPvMQ6

We’re going to wait until we have 200+ people interested so we can have healthy discussions and a healthy volume to get started.

Hopefully, see you there 🙏 

Peace + love,

Tom