Designers Are Leaders

As product designers, we play a crucial role in ensuring the product organizations we belong to remain focused on what should always be their primary goal: meaningfully improving the lives of our customers.

Our natural inclination toward discovering and solving problems is often oriented exclusively toward problems found in-product.

However, often glaring organizational issues get in the way of making improvements to our products or, at the very least, slow the process dramatically. These problems can occur within product teams, between product teams, or within some larger structure.

I believe it is accurate to say that leadership within the product organization is responsible for solving most organizational problems.

I would also argue that designers are already leaders, and it’s the top-tier designers who embrace this leadership mentality.

Designers are Leaders

The de facto leaders of almost every product team are the product manager, lead engineer, and product designer. This group, sometimes called a “trio,” share responsibility for their team’s roadmap, culture, processes, and outcomes. As a product designer, the quality of your product team will have a significant impact on the success or failure of your projects and your career.

A product team that struggles to release anything that has a meaningful impact on customer outcomes will not be providing your current leadership with an excuse to promote you, nor will it provide your portfolio with something interesting for future employers.

Is it unfair? Absolutely. Especially when you consider that it’s often the same product leadership that is getting in the way of product teams being successful, or at least not providing the support that is needed.

In the end, placing blame won’t matter.

The right approach is to instead take responsibility for your team. Embrace the notion that you are a leader and work with your peers to make your product team into the best possible version of itself.

The Grass is Never Green

No organization ever reaches perfection. Far from it.

The truth is that every organization has huge problems: lack of resources, frequent changes in direction, unclear vision and strategy, etc.

“Reorgs” might happen, or they might not. When they do, they might be effective, or they might not.

None of that really matters because it always comes down to the individuals within the organization to make a difference.

Regardless of which product manager you are paired with or the quality of the engineers on your team, you have the opportunity to be the kind of product designer that helps elevate the people around you.

Designers, embrace your role as leaders.