Leadership
Here are some of my thoughts, philosophies, methods, techniques, and exercises.
Every experience matters!
My mantra is, "every experience matters." Delight comes from the extra attention that we give something or someone. Starting with how we value the people we work with to the little details that are often looked over but create incredible experiences.
Communication
This is the single biggest challenge and responsibility that designers have is to communicate effectively.
It is our job to listen, understand and empathize. It is our job to collect feedback and ideas from everyone. It is our job is to share the stories, the vision, and the validation with our teammates. It is our job to demonstrate vision, and creative definition. It is our job to align teams on direction. It is our job to communicate the benefits, and impact. It is our job to align with company objectives and strategy.
Discover, learn, and share
Discover, learn and share. One way we can improve our entire team is to create an environment that we continually learn from each other.
Collaboration
In the spirit of teamwork, we discover, plan, create design, and build together. Transparency and understanding are byprocucts of working together. Support is a byproduct of collective ownership. And through collaborative reflection we grow together.
Inclusion
The best ideas come from many experiences, backgrounds, ideas, and perspectives; for this reason, it makes perfect sense to create a culture of inclusion in our process.
Case and point, designers often focus on what tasks are expected of the users, while developers often focus on what tasks the machine can perform. Taking ideas from both of these perspectives allows us to optimize for the ideal Human Computer Interaction.
Personalization
Personalize. There are many personality types and traits, so it makes sense to personalize each employee's experience. Appreciate what each person brings to team.
Creative experimentation
It is essential to provide safe opportunities to experiment and to stretch the boundaries of what is expected. People need the freedom to try, and even fail. Getting it wrong happens, not a problem as long as we and learn and gain insights from it.
Innovation
Innovation happens when individuals or teams learn to capture creative thoughts, and foster these new ideas while continualy iterating, learning, and improving.