the lay of the land going into senior design manager

[kradeelav]

i'm writing this post as somebody who's been sitting at the "design manager" title for a few years but as of this past year have effectively been doing.... a bit more.... than that in hopes of snagging that next rung up in the next 2 months. writing this partially as a time capsule for myself, as well as maybe shedding some light on what it's like at this crossroad for others.


what's the difference between senior/design manager? i personally would classify a design manager as somebody who has ~1-2 direct reports who are designers, and a senior design manager as somebody who has 2-5, possibly with some that have their own reports. a mini-art director in ways with how you're expected to visually guide a brand and/or big campaigns in the scale of 'talk with a bunch of other departments' rather than just poking one or two people with sticks.

what's the bottlenecks that i'm experiencing right now:

* lack of resources from somebody who came from the pure design chain. muddling my way into learning the ropes of managing one person (+contractors) was easy-ish since i could frame it more as mentoring one person and helping with project management, which... isn't all of management (as it doesn't include hiring/firing), but for one person who honestly didn't need a whole lot of hand-holding, it worked. the only management book i've read is 'moral mazes' which, while amazingly accurate, takes an equally unflattering look at managers. :p personally i would love more books and resources on this mix/transition from design > management at all levels. i suspect i would have more luck actually looking at books for art directors at this level.

* it's exhausting if you try to have your cake (design) and eat it too (promotion). part of my burnout from earlier this year was struggling to balance all of my old design duties and do all the new management stuff (like interviewing four different people in an 12-hour timezone difference) at the same time, and not realizing that as much as i like interviewing, it's a giant chunk of a totally additional job on top of the timezone weirdness. what's recently helped is holding myself to a strict "working only on two design projects at a time" plus these duties compared to the 4-6 design projects at one time before. (and being resigned to getting pinged for opinions basically every fifteen minutes).

 * speaking of, timezone weirdness & keeping processes with a genuinely international team. remote managing within the same timezone (+/- 1) can be tricky but doable (especially with emotionally mature people on both sides who frequently communicate), but i am, yeah, struggling a bit with keeping the communication especially with a little language/culture barrier on top.  (though i think most people would at least struggle slightly with this). probably my biggest challenge moving forward, though i'm testing things like at least 2 weekly meetings (different objectives) for the whole group so different silos won't start splintering.

what's working: 

* being nerdy enough to know my way around computers to do basic admin stuff hyper-fast (without ai), holy shit. do you know how slow and frankly, bad some people are at computers. also being nerdy enough about processes & project management to unironically enjoy creating readmes. (a chunk of this morning was spent making a standard operating procedure/readme for "how to put your PTO in outlook"). (it sounds absolutely ridiculous but it actually does help the other international teams know if half of the team's gonna be out due to a national holiday that most US people aren't aware of and vice versa.)

* surprisingly good at knowing when/how to give marching orders without them Feeling like orders. (for example: i had a gal today who did a kickass design that the international team loved but she Forgor to upload it in the internal database. instead of framing it as something for her to do better, i worded it as wholly a compliment 'hey, the international team (X & Y person) loved what you do (specifically point Z) - i'd love for more people to see your awesome work, did you get a chance to upload it in the database?')  emotionally mature people will note the multi-layered compliment, but also should be able to gracefully take the hint.

* how to prioritize things. i might cheat this because i kinda cut the snake's head off early by asking my boss every 1:1 if i need to change any priorities but otherwise tackle whatever the next big tire fire is (and if it gets too out of control, being ruthless about squeezing down number of things to focus on). the priorities thing is also especially funny-weird to me because it's apparently the thing my boss (VP/art director) struggles the most with his other direct reports; they have issues verbalizing the top three things that need to happen that week.

* i love interviewing people, and have a knack for pulling a high-morale team together with sheer charisma(?) and low ego. this feels ironically, weirdly egotistical to say, but.... i've seen that specific pattern happen too many times (and it's been commented on before) to outright dismiss it. (and it is a skill to cultivate; a miss-matched team of high-ego, low trust personalities who spend too much time back-stabbing each other is no good). a lot of things get hella smooth and easier to deal with if basic trust is there. 

* you also have to keep your own ego way out of the way. kudos goes to your team, not to yourself. (if you do a good job of being supportive you'll hear it for yourself regardless).

* it's also just right amount of charisma that i don't need(tm) to play the corporate game (can feign a sort of endless can-do optimism while being practical behind closed doors) but i understand its living shape and know when to position myself to avoid a collapse/layoff. sometimes smelling a rotten-to-the-core project from afar and delicately avoiding it/shielding your team from it until it takes out equally rotten people is frankly easier than trying to shovel & polish the shit yourself.

* deep understanding of design background + fixing visual problems from a bizarre amount of disciplines. forum signature banners from the old days count. :p

what's the roadmap after that? the next level up is director which i'm supremely uninterested in; that's the point travel & being in-office starts to be mandatory, as well as talking to suits and the politics game. so honestly, i may plateau here for a long while. 'principal designer' is the other route if i decide i'm kinda done with the management angle. shrugs.

in fact one of the most accurate charts for the design promotion track i've ever seen was this one, even when it was ostensibly for a game artist (though i would add two more layers after 'lead artist/(senior designer)' of design manager and senior design manager).



anyway! that's lot of my life right now.

Comments

[ellerean]

I really appreciate you writing all this out, even if it's mostly for your own reference. I feel like we're in the same place professionally, in a lot of ways, and so much of this sounds comfortingly familiar—especially trying to do what you actually enjoy (designing/production) while also managing people. It's really important to me to work on some titles, so I can better understand what it's like being in the weeds (and I like it, too). But jugging that and daily pings from three direct reports is exhausting.

We're blessed to have competent people working under us, but those people still need guidance. And lately, I've found myself enjoying that part of the job! One of my people recently said that she really liked brainstorming a project with me, and I was both glad and sad about it – because this is what I should be doing, but I simply don't have the time for it.

Prioritizing is hard. I'm still not great at it, because I have to take my direct reports' priorities into consideration, too. Like, should I have spent two hours talking to one of them when I had four overdue tasks of my own? Arguably... yes? But not everyone sees it that way. "Team building" may be an annoying buzz word, but it's so important. Especially for remote work across time zones!

Man, I've got some things to work on haha