LEADERSHIP HIGHLIGHTS
Part of my design “dream team”, in the Toronto office following the 2023 RGD DesignThinkers conference. Front row, left to right: Shweta Nanajkar, Peter Buk, Michael Tretiak, Sanjali Sharma, and Alexa Tang. Back row, left to right: Louise Bonnamy, Marlene Aubin, Raika Sethi, and me. Together we built a truly magnificent design and research organization. I miss you all!
Vision & Strategy
▸ Built high-performing design teams from the ground up at two multinational accounting, consulting, and professional services firms.
▸ Grew a small team of designers siloed by product into a significantly expanded globally distributed UX team consisting of Product Design, Design Operations, UX Research, UX Content (technical writing and documentation), and Localization (translation).
▸ Led the ongoing transformation of Caseware from a development-driven to a user-focused organization, functioning as a champion and evangelist for the value of UX throughout the product development process, and providing design thought leadership across the company.
Operational Excellence
▸ Restructured the Product Design team to improve operational efficiency, provide designers with broad cross-platform experience, and improve consistency in the look and feel of the company’s products and platforms.
▸ Operationalized Caseware’s design system, leading the development of its component libraries, patterns, use cases, and code base, and ensuring all elements meet WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility guidelines.
▸ Integrated translation memory databases into Caseware’s translation software platform, reducing text requiring manual translation by 94% and dramatically improving the quality, speed, consistency, and efficiency of every translation job.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
▸ Redesigned the design process framework and architecture to reduce the length of the design phase of the software development life cycle and improve collaboration with other teams.
▸ Established a cross-functional collaboration model for the Product/Design/Engineering triad, eliminating silos among functional areas, and resulting in improved communication, decision making, and effectiveness at solving complex problems along with a significant decrease in technical and design debt.
Focus on the Customer
▸ Created an entirely new UX Research competency by demonstrating the need for and value of research, and integrated continuous UX research into every stage of product development.
▸ Developed a robust user testing program with users of Caseware products, as well as with users of competitor products.
Mentoring & Management
▸ Made key team leadership hires as well as recognizing, developing, and promoting existing talent into leadership positions.
▸ Developed a system for career development using parallel management and individual contributor career tracks, with clear guidelines for progression and corresponding performance criteria.
▸ Increased employee engagement across the UX team from 58% to 77% and reduced employee turnover to zero.
My Rules for Creating a High-Performing Design Team
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Hire and promote the very best people, and enable them to be successful. If they’re smarter than you, that’s a good thing.
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When hiring, look for diverse backgrounds, interests, and points of view.
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Avoid micromanagement. Instead, empower team members and help them work through challenges. Trust your team.
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Make your people look good — give them full credit for their achievements and praise them in public. Their successes are your successes.
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Take the concept of “servant leadership” very seriously. Your job is to ensure your direct reports and their teams are successful. Check your ego at the door — it’s not about you.
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