Speaking at the SDN Next Gen Conference 2025 on April 11. 
Use code ‘NextGen-Star’ for 30% off your ticket!
Grab your spot: https://www.eventbrite.de/e/sdn-next-gen-conference-2025-dare-to-impact-tickets-1117574307839
Excited to connect with the next generation of service designers!
Free Ticket Giveaway! 
I’m giving away a free ticket to the SDN Next Gen Conference 2025 where I’ll be speaking and mentoring!
If you’re an emerging designer or service design enthusiast, this might be your shot. 
This week's coaching reflection is all about how to move forward when you get into clashes and power struggles at work by using questions.
Bonus angry face and feline contact lenses from me in the thumbnail.
This week's coaching reflection is all about stopping asking permission to do your job. If you're in a leadership role, you are there for a reason, not to ask others what you should do.
When we using indirect, hedging language and people please, we can actually end up being selfish by accident, because we're asking them to do the emotional lifting to decipher our request.
The topic of this week's Coaching Reflections video is learning to ask for what you want: https://youtu.be/UTJaQw6Gw10
What are your tips for being candid without being abrasive?
Design leaders: Stop asking colleagues to take on more or change. Instead, offer them training, coaching, and support. Empower them to see the value in change themselves—no forcing needed. #UXLeadership #DesignLeadership
Design, at its core, is user-centric, creative problem solving. A great design leader applies their knowledge and experience to the advantage of their organization, identifying and meeting the needs of its customers. The design leader must understand how the organization works, and have the ability to tie design initiatives to business strategy.
The best executives have the ability to chase down a single customer support call, out of the thousands that may occur per day, digest what occurred, and then context shift to another decision which is based on the last twelve months of data. All of it is relevant. All of it is part of a mosaic.
#DesignLeadership #Leadership #ProductManagement
https://www.mostlymetrics.com/p/when-the-data-and-the-anecdotes-disagree
If you’re getting someone asking to justify how a profession makes an impact there’s a chance a decision has already been made. Maybe someone needs to sleep well with it and are throwing a fake bone.
But maybe it’s a legit ask. If so, ask them what they think. What’s their expectations? Sometimes money was given with expectations and that hasn’t aligned to what happened.
#ProductDesign #DesignLeadership #UXDesign
https://grillopress.github.io/2024/09/25/justifying-ucd-s-impact.html
Also, we passed another lovely milestone this week of 200 fully signed up and certified excellent subscribers. It is a daily joy to check out the names of the new signups and see so many people who I know are doing their part in making our industry better. When we reach 1000 subscribers we’ll have a design leadership memos beach party, so please don’t all rush to sign up until the weather improves in South West England.
Next week on designleadershipmemos.com I’ll be talking a little bit about Org. Design, and trying to outline the ways I’ve come to think about the ‘ideal’ shape and orientation of a design team. If there are specific questions you’d like me to answer on this topic feel free to drop a comment below and I’ll do my best to incorporate them into the post.
If you're a people pleaser or self-identified high achiever, this week’s coaching reflection, all about reframing saying no at work: https://youtu.be/LiXTHO5NQQ0
I’d love to know what works for you.
If you are any kind of design leader, consider starting offering a new service called the Strategic User-Driven Project Assessment (SUPA). This will move you from being seen as an implementor to a strategic lead. #DesignLeadership #SUPA https://boagworld.com/emails/introducing-supa/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=Paul%20Boag%40mastodon.social&utm_content=Introducing%20SUPA%3A%20The%20Service%20You%20Should%20Be%20Offering
To continue ignoring the repercussions they have on society and the environment is simply negligent. We must care as much about our impact as we care about all other design elements — the creative process and craft, quality and attention to detail, user needs and empathy. We need a conscientious design that understands and prioritizes positive impact.
#ProductDesign #DesignLeadership
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/when-design-is-the-problem/?ref=refind
Your success as a designer depends equally on your relationships as it does on your design talent. The powerful people you need as allies will likely not know anything about design and you will have to charm and teach them. Your amazing ideas and concepts can’t help the world if they are never built and shipped by your organization.
#ProductDesign #DesignLeadership #Leadership
https://whydesignishard.substack.com/p/the-design-purity-trap-and-how-to
Leading a large organization is a hell of a job.
Sometimes it’s fun and exciting, like when you get to invest in a big project to imagine a new future for healthcare that’s built around the real-world needs of people no matter their socioeconomic status, identity, or the intersection of those.
And sometimes it’s infuriating, like when a peer executive writes off your entire organization’s work as “futzing about with pixels”.
#DesignLeadership #ProductDesign
https://elpha.com/posts/utm0ffh4/leading-an-effective-design-organization
Roles and titles are abstractions from the actual day-to-day work, but it's easy to get caught in the trap of climbing a title ladder.
In this (last) week's #DesignLeadership #coaching reflections I make the case for an "experience portfolio” and how it can help you plan your career.
If you liked this, there are several more over on my YouTube channel.
And if you'd like to check out my coaching practice, you'll find it here: https://www.polaine.com/coaching
#Design #Experiences
Hold on, but should design managers design…? · Types of design managers and how to identify yours https://ilo.im/15ybyi
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#DesignLeadership #DesignManagement #DesignTeam #ProductDesign #UxDesign #UiDesign #VisualDesign #WebDesign
Here’s a hard truth user experience design leaders find themselves learning: No one will buy into your UX design ideas if they can’t see how those ideas matter to them.
This is especially true for your organization’s leadership. They need to see how all those great UX design ideas will push forward their top priority, helping the organization. If they can’t see it, they won’t get behind your great ideas.
#ProductDesign #Leadership #DesignLeadership #UXDesign
https://articles.centercentre.com/the-need-to-think-and-talk-like-an-executive/
An integrated design partner:
- understands the business, customers, and operations
- facilitates decision-making, collaboration, and alignment
- drives solutions that are valuable to customers and feasible to build
- helps the team reach new customers, deliver features faster, or tackle ambitious new initiatives.
Enter here: 
