The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You [Book]
By Julie Zhou, formerly VP of Design at Facebook and now cofounder of Inspirit
Related: The Looking Glass
Team Structures and Operating Models
by Andrew (Andy) Warr, Sr. Staff Design Researcher at Uber • UX Collective
Read his other stuff, too.
The Business Impact Of Design: Five Best Practices For Measuring It [Report, 17 pgs.]
By Gina Bhawalkar, Forrester • via InVision
Business Thinking for Designers
InVision
The Anatomy of a Large Experience Design Organization — 2.0
By Jesse Kaddy, Associate Director, Product Design at Wayfair
A Tactical Guide to Managing Up
First Round Review
Make a user guide to working with you with this article from First Round Review and this from Julie Zhou
Staff.design – Navigating the Individual Contributor Career Path [Website]
A fantastic project by Brian Lovin
Tips for managing a team of very senior designers [Twitter thread]
By Stan Rapp, Product Design Manager at Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
Lattice’s Library, including their collection of ebooks and templates — great resources for managers and HR pros
Cross-pollination between design teams can be a real 10xer. Try a design fika (from the Swedish coffee break), using this guide from the Webflow design team.
The Manager’s Handbook [E-Book]
By Alex MacCaw, CEO of Clearbit
Design Leadership Handbook [EPUB]
By Aarron Walter and Eli Woolery • Published by DesignBetter.Co by InVision
Performance Management as a New Manager, Part 1, 2, 3, 4 are incredible [Articles]
By Jasmine Christensen
The US military is one of the best researchers and teachers of operational leadership in the world. People significantly underestimate how much of the US military's effectiveness has depended on how they've made operational leadership a science. Wharton Business School (routinely itself ranked #1 business school) called Marine OCS some of the best leadership training on the planet. Because of the nature of the military, they love documentation (manuals), and because it's the US government, nearly all their materials are freely available in the public domain.
To name just a few. Google around—there's so much free coursework on leadership.
One caution here: the military is great at operational leadership, which is designed to achieve efficiency and order, and which benefits from strictly hierarchical, top-down leadership. Design organizations usually have very different leadership needs focused around collaboration and innovation, which benefits from a flat, egalitarian, and informal structure. Knowing both types and when to use what tool is key. Lots of friction in design leadership happens at this liminal space, between operations mindsets that hate ambiguity and creative mindsets that benefit from it. Becoming proficient in both helps you navigate both worlds and designer leaders often under-index on the operational side.
