Speakers
Peter Merholz
Design organization consultant, Humanism at Scale, LLC
Peter Merholz has worked at the intersection of design, technology, and humans for over 25 years. Currently, he’s an independent consultant focused on improving the effectiveness of design organizations. His clients include JP Morgan Chase, Ceridian, The New York Times, Roblox, and Starbucks.
He co-founded Adaptive Path, the premier user experience consultancy, acquired by Capital One in 2014. After leaving Adaptive Path, he served as a design executive, leading teams at Groupon, OpenTable, Capital One, Snagajob, and Kaiser Permanente.
He co-wrote Org Design for Design Orgs, still the premier book on building in-house design teams, and co-hosts Finding Our Way, a podcast exploring design leadership.
Oh, and yeah, he coined the word 'blog'.
Speaking at The Rest of the Fest
The Atomic Unit Of Design Is The Team
At the heart of most agile development frameworks are small, cross-functional squads. And in those squads resides a lone designer, collaborating with a product owner and engineers. This model has lead to the quest for the Unicorn designer, the broadly skilled individual who can do interaction design, visual design, and maybe even content and research as well!
This trend has potentially terrible ramifications on the practice of design in companies. In this talk, Peter will explain why the Team, not any one designer, is the Atomic Unit of Design Organisations. Drawing upon his experience from shaping teams at Adaptive Path, through his work as a VP of Design and now management consultant for design orgs, he'll walk through the process of intentionally creating a strong, diverse team, what behaviours and norms enable a team to behave at their best, and explain why the Team Lead is the most important role in your design organisation (yes, even more than Head of Design).
Q&A with Peter Merholz
Andy will take your questions for Peter.
Masterclasses
Design Leadership Fundamentals Part 1: Leadership is about Relationships
When designers become design leaders, they often don't realise that the skills that got them there aren't the skills that will carry them forward. To be a great designer is to be a remarkable craftsperson and problem-solver. To be a great design leader is to excel at relationships.
In this, the first of a two part series on Design Leadership Fundamentals, we'll focus on two crucial sets of relationships: with the team you lead, and your cross functional peers. We'll discuss strategies and tactics for best engaging others, and provide an assessment tool to grade yourself (and your team, afterward).
This Masterclass is structured not as a workshop with activities, but a facilitated conversation among peers. Peter will provide brief presentations to set the table, and then lead a discussion to find out your challenges, your successes, and take advantage of collective intelligence to better enlighten us all.
Now sold out
Design Leadership Fundamentals Part 2: Leadership is about Leverage
When designers become design leaders, among the difficulties they face is letting go of doing the work, and shifting their focus to creating environments that enable others to do great work. It's not about how good of a designer the design leader is; it's about their ability to make their team more effective and impactful.
In this, the second of a two part series on Design Leadership Fundamentals, we'll tackle three key areas for creating leverage. The first is how you manage up, working with executives and other stakeholders, to ensure your team has the space it needs to do great work. Then we'll discuss the challenges of supporting design teams as they scale, and the need for systems and structures that maintain effectiveness and high quality and not drown in communication overhead. Lastly, we'll look inward, on how the design leader is managing their most precious asset: their time.
This Masterclass is structured not as a workshop with activities, but a facilitated conversation among peers. Peter will provide brief presentations to set the table, and then lead a discussion to find out your challenges, your successes, and take advantage of collective intelligence to better enlighten us all.
Now sold out