The words both start with L-E-A, but can leadership really be learned?
As a consultant, I have the pleasure and challenge to work with a variety of different teams. I am a team of one, but I collaborate with agency teams (such as Happy Cog, whom I’m working with on the US Holocaust Memorial Museum project), internal client teams, freelance designers and developers.
Sometimes I’m brought in by an executive on the client side. Sometimes I’m brought in by an agency who has already won the client. Sometimes I’m brought in by a consultant to the client, who is helping them to build a team.
Almost every time, it’s incredibly unclear who’s leading.
I mention Happy Cog above because I fall over myself with excitement every time I get to work with them. Not just because they’re some of the most talented, most professional, most revered people working on the web today — but because everyone’s role is crystal clear, and every team member can point to the project lead in under 3 seconds. Not only that, every team member respects the project lead and follows their lead. It is in NO way a dictatorship, but it is also not a sociocracy — “a system of governance using consent-based decision.” It’s a meritocracy, where the lead becomes the lead because he demonstrates that he can lead, and that he’s willing to.
It’s a deep honor to work with these people, and have the opportunity to do things right, and well. But at the same time, it has made me acutely aware of the leadership problems that I have faced on almost all of my other projects.
Since I am always brought in as a consultant, I am never the true project lead because it is ultimately not my responsibility to implement the solution and integrate it into the business. One day I would very much like it to be, but that’s simply not the case right now. While I do currently get to lead almost all of the user experience phases of these projects, I still have an overall project lead that I report into — and in order for my work to be successful and impactful, the leader has to possess some pretty specific qualities.
My expectations for a leader are:
To set clear goals, and to continually articulate them in written and verbal form to the team
To motivate the team to believe in their vision
To recognize and nurture the expertise that each person on the team brings to the project
To assign actionable tasks with measurable results
To express their appreciation for the contribution that each team member makes
To be decisive and confident
To ask team members for their input on key issues, but to always take responsibility for making final decisions
To stay calm
To ask for help when they need it
To put the needs of people above the needs of things
I very rarely come across people who possess these qualities, and who take pride in not just what they do, but how they do it. I’ve been spoiled by working with Happy Cog, and I worry that I’ll have a really hard time working with people who don’t meet these expectations.
Part of my responsibility as a consultant is to clearly and respectfully communicate to my clients what I need from them in order to be successful. But I have to ask myself: Can leadership be learned? If it can, do I have the authority and chutzpah to express my expectations to the person who’s supposed to be my leader, or should I simply use this list as a rubric against which I evaluate potential projects and working teams?
I’m sharing my thoughts with you as I’m going through a period of discovery, so not all of this is entirely clear in my mind. I would love your honesty and guidance in helping me thinking through some of these issues.
Thanks in advance for your advice and understanding.
In thinking about my upcoming travel schedule, the classic French adventure novel Around the World in 80 Days (Le tour du monde en 80 jours) popped into my head.
Then I quickly looked at the calendar and counted the days – exactly 80 days from today.
I have a few upcoming speaking engagements, a couple weddings, and a couple awesome personal trips planned.
If you live in any of these cities or are going to be at these events, I’d love to grab a local beer with you when I’m in town. Just make sure to let me know in the comments or on Twitter @whitneyhess.
Follow my adventures on Dopplr, and of course Flickr.
You have no idea how little your users really know. And that shows just how little you know.
You work in technology for a living. You’ve been using a computer since you were born. You are obsessed with learning new things. You are a nerd and you hang out with other nerds. You constantly think about the future. You love math. You spend the vast majority of your day staring at screens of varying sizes.
In other words, you are not normal.
You are utterly convinced that the things you know are obvious, but meanwhile you think you’re brilliant. That doesn’t make everyone else around you stupid; it just means that they know different things than you do. Trust me, you don’t know everything.
“The man who knows something knows that he knows nothing at all.” — Erykah Badu
“And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know.” — 1 Corinthians 8:2 (King James Bible translation)
If you do anything at all in the field of technology — if you are a designer, or a developer, or a writer, or a product manager, or a marketer, or a business strategist, or a venture capitalist, or a lawyer, or an entrepreneur — you are helping to create products and services that people use. If you don’t give a shit about those people, please do the world a favor and go away.
You think your target market is “everybody,” yet you have no idea just how little “everybody” knows. You tell yourself that your product or service is for the “average person,” but you really mean that it’s for yourself. You cannot possibly imagine how little domain knowledge about technology the average person on the street possesses. You need to watch this video that I recently saw on Matt J. McDonald’s blog:
Do you still think you want “everyone” to use your product or service? Are you using language and concepts that they’ll even understand?
What are you doing to find out what your users know and what they don’t?
Death to assumptions. You don’t know anything until you ask. Start today.
Last April I had the honor of contributing a guest list on the 10 Best UX (User Experience) Design blogs [the list, my blog post] for Six Apart’s Blogs.com.
I still regularly read almost all of the blogs I listed, but recently realized that there are many new, revamped or lesser known UX blogs that really deserve some attention. Another year, another list.
Here are my picks for the UX blogs to watch in 2010, in alphabetic order:
52 Weeks of UX For each week in 2010, co-writers Joshua Brewer and Joshua Porter each offer a highly focused post that packs a lot of punch.
90 Percent of Everything Harry Brignull illustrates Sturgeon’s Second Law — “90% of everything is crud” — with periodic insights on how to create the 10%.
Bobulate Liz Danzico’s scrapbook of seemingly disparate ideas brilliantly broadens the scope of experience design.
Johnny Holland An international group of writers explores the meaning of interaction design and aims to have its (sometimes incendiary) essays start new conversations.
Pure Caffeine Nathanael Boehm shares his thoughts on the intersection of social experience design and Government 2.0.
UI&us Keith Lang talks about technology trends and how they relate to cognitive psychology and user interface design.
Usability Post
Dmitry Fadeyev provides weekly tips and resources on how to make your products more usable.
Uselog.com Jasper van Kuijk posts design examples, news, and observations on consumer product usability as he works on completing his PhD.
UX Booth Andrew Maier, Matthew Kammerer, and David Legget are three fresh-faced guys behind the blog that’s becoming one of the most widely read UX resources.
Winning Content
Colleen Jones shares demonstrates the crucial role that content strategy plays in creating positive user experiences.
Wireframes Magazine
Jakub Linowski proves that there’s no right way to wireframe with regular samples of practitioners’ UX deliverables.
Did I miss one of your favorite blogs? Feel free to tell me about it in the comments!
Many, many thanks to Wendy Taylor, editor of Blogs.com, for her generosity and guidance.
My cousins have an adorable Boston Terrier named Luna. She likes to play tug of war, and fetch, and tear her toys apart. And unlike the dogs I had growing up, she also likes to poop outside.
Over the summer my cousins were taking Luna for a walk and I noticed their completely amazing leash.
Made by a company called Bags on Board, the retractable leash has a built-in doggie poop bag dispenser. Imagine: no more napkins or Ziplocks or oversized grocery bags — or worse, having nothing at all!
I mean, it’s no Pooper Scooper, but it sure does save the pocket space and make the whole process more efficient. I find it pretty innovative, and I’m shocked it took this long for someone to invent.
The best ideas are always so obvious, aren’t they?
Cat owners, you’re in luck. They make a litter box scoop with a built-in baggie, too!
My name is Whitney Hess. I'm an independent user experience designer, writer and consultant based in New York City. I make stuff easy and pleasurable to use.
