An experiment in light expression

I have a hard time explaining to people how ‘design management’ is different from project/program/people management, and yet inclusive of all of them. I think design management and design leadership cannot be considered separately - if design managers are not empowered to construct and execute design ideas with great thought leadership, they can easily become execution machines.

Erin Malone’s post on ‘So you think you want to be a manager’ is a good reminder of all the trade-offs of being a design  manager, including the heart burns and the sacrifices and the moments of joy. I recommend you read it along with an earlier post of hers ‘Modeling  the Creative Organization’.  And if you’re still with me here, I strongly recommend The Ten Faces of Innovation by Tom Kelley, one of the IDEO brothers (David is the venerable professor at Stanford).
In my two and half years doing design and user experience and project and people management first at PeopleSoft and then at Oracle, I find my job to constantly juggle between people issues (designers are a sensitive, creative, fun, demanding, idiosyncratic lot!), project issues (balancing the formal choking of project management practices with the million opportunities for improvisation), design issues (should we do a user interview or talk to Strategy/Pre Sales hacks?), and all sorts of shit that hits the ceiling when you have 8 interesting, fun, young designers working directly with you. Did I mention the notion of ‘managing your managers and your managers’s super bosses’. That one’s reserved for another post : )

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