Chapter 10. Conclusion
While you are preparing to go on a journey, you own the journey, but after you have started the journey owns you.
Chinese Proverb
Leadership
Perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well.
J. K. Rowling
I have had people working for me who became frustrated because I wouldn’t order the people under them to do whatever they say. I did this because I wanted to help them grow into being a leader rather than just being a manager. At its core, being a leader is about being the kind of person that others want to follow. I worked on formal career ladders both at Sapient and Microsoft, and at both companies it was clear that moving up the management ladder and moving up the individual contributor ladder involves showing and growing leadership skills.
The relationship between management and leadership is described in a variety of ways. Some refer to management skills as a subset of leadership skills; others argue that one of the skills managers need is leadership. I found that the best managers are leaders, and the best leaders can also manage. Leadership is about knowing where to go and getting others to join you in the journey. Leaders have followers. Management is about creating and executing the plan to get there. Being a manager is a formal designation, and it is about having subordinates. A good manager wants to turn the subordinates into followers by providing the vision and effectively leading them to success. Great UX managers are able to define the UX vision and have the management skills needed to achieve that vision; they also have the leadership skills to bring the team along in achieving that vision. One part of the job is to do the right thing for users and the business, and the other part is to do it right.
Management is in large part about the set of responsibilities that make up the formal role, but what makes management exciting and important is the juice that comes from leadership. You can create a plan and require people to follow it through formal management. To really make something important happen, to move the dial on the impact of user experience within an organization, you need to be a leader. Even if you are not a manager and do not want to take on those formal responsibilities, your ability to achieve great impact is going to be enhanced if you are an effective leader.
What makes a leader? I have listed some of the characteristics in Fig. 10.1. Many of the attributes I noted earlier in the best managers are really about their leadership. They have a compelling vision that people want to rally around. They are able to lay out the plan for how we would get there, and apply their management skills to align us to the plan. They are trusted, and that requires an appropriate level of transparency. This can be hard at times for a manager, since part of being a manager is that you are not only leading a team, but you are implementing corporate strategy. A good leader knows when to be transparent, how transparent you can be, and how to communicate that you have been as open as you can be without violating your corporate responsibilities. Wanting to follow a leader also involves wanting to believe that at some level he cares about me, my success, and my team; we are all united in the vision and what achieving the vision will mean. Leaders are often trusted because their judgment is sound, but they are also willing to take appropriate risks. They are flexible in how they move forward when the risks occasionally do not pay off.
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| Figure 10.1 The attributes of leadership. |
Part of leadership is modeling the right behaviors, as well as articulating the vision that you are inspiring others to follow. The kind of person that people want to follow is the person who clearly cares about them as people, and values and leverages the diverse skills and experiences they bring to the table. The Adaptive Path workshop in August 2008 (Adaptive Path, 2008) identified best practices that included cultivating emotional intelligence (presumably helping to communicate that valuing); articulating and communicating the vision and thinking big picture; the ability to define a plan, to get people to follow it, and to manage it over time; and finally to define clear roles and responsibilities and identify and manage expectations. For people to feel fully bought in they want to believe in the end result of the big picture and they want to see how their part contributes to that vision.
Hints from Experienced Managers
Hints from Experienced Managers
Leadership is not about merit or title, but earned through respect. So much can be learned in simple places, such as Boy/Girl Scouts, that are applicable to many management and leadership scenarios.
When establishing policy (HR or otherwise), the key is not about the exact policy because this can be surprisingly vague to many. What one needs to do is provide the rationale and allow this information to generalize and cover what the words of a policy may not. People generally make good decisions. Give them information to generalize to novel situations rather than use explicit rules.
Avoid micromanaging!
Gavin S. Lew, Managing Director, User Centric, Inc., Chicago, IL
Lead through example. Be passionate about design and your approach to projects. If you’re excited they’ll be excited.
Susan Boyce, Principal UX Lead, Microsoft, Mountain View, CA
Andreas Hauser (2007) pointed out that to drive the appropriate changes through a development process it often requires a change of mindset, and I would argue often a change of culture. As Hauser pointed out, part of the role of the user experience manager is to be a leader in driving this change as well as a catalyst to create a design process that creates a truly collaborative relationship across all those sharing ownership for creating a great user experience.
Should you be Managing?
A good manager is best when people barely know that he exists. Not so good when people obey and acclaim him. Worse when they despise him.
Lao-Tzu
One question worth thinking about is “Do you really want to manage? Or do you want to focus on leading as an individual contributor?” Many of the concepts discussed thus far can apply in either situation. While most of my career I have been in management, I have moved back and forth between management and being an individual contributor as my interests and goals have changed. Even as a manager, I defined a role for myself that has typically included an ongoing set of research and design activities and hands-on work.
Hints from Experienced Managers
Hints from Experienced Managers
Be sure you want to be a manager for the right reasons, not because you think you have to do it to (a) get ahead or (b) because no one else on your team wants to do it or (c) you can’t stand the thought of someone else being your manager.
Kent Sullivan, Principal UX Researcher, Microsoft, Redmond, WA
As a manager you are in a unique position to make a difference, and to do your part to change the world. In Wiklund (1994), the author states that to seriously move the usability bar for products companies need to “hire a fairly senior individual with exceptional experience at related design challenges to assume the role of usability ‘guru’ or ‘evangelist.’” He argues that the senior people should be brought in at a level high enough to garner respect among senior executives, and to bring them in at least at the level of team leaders for product areas. The idea is to bring senior people in at a level that shows the commitment to user experience in the organization, and that usually is in the role of manager.
You, however, may find yourself almost anywhere in the organization such as hired in at a senior level; the first user experience person in a company, and are now being told to hire in people under you; an individual contributor whose leadership is being recognized; or working in another role such as project management or as a development lead or manager, and either proposed or been told to start building a user experience team. If you are not already a senior user experience person high in the organization, part of your goal for your career as well as for your UX team may be to get there. Looking across the case studies in his book, Wiklund concluded that the long-term success of a UX program depends on the quality of the leadership of the organization. Leaders are challenged to do the work of a design specialist and be both an educator and a promoter. They need to constantly sell and resell, and to tell the story of the value that user experience delivers. They need to work collaboratively with people across the functions that share ownership for the experience, and they need to build and manage an effective team.
It is worth spending time to explore the different types of leadership, and think about the situation in which you find yourself. Do you see yourself in one or more types of leadership, and do they fit the situation in which you find yourself? How comfortable are you in moving from one style to another? I have run across many different types of managers. There are those who are laser focused on moving up the management chain to higher levels, with each level bringing more recognition and prestige. Often they relish the political side of management, and dwell on who they can influence and how to take another step or to get their way; unfortunately sometimes they do not worry about who they step on to make a move. I was in a management training program a few months ago where one senior manager said that virtually every one-on-one he had with his boss was spent brainstorming how to move higher in the influence ladder. I have definitely had one or two colleagues where I always checked the chair they offered before I sat on it.
Hints from Experienced Managers
Hints from Experienced Managers
1. There is no cookie cutter management style — every employee is different and you must be flexible to find a style that works for each of your directs.
2. Be honest, be open, don’t wait to communicate.
3. Take time to know each person.
Marcella Rader, User Experience Manager, Microsoft China
There are those who are at the other extreme, and are focused on the task at hand. In this situation they are still virtually an individual contributor, and the people under them are truly extra hands to get things done. They lean toward micromanagement to implement their specific vision. Most of us hate working in groups like that, and it does not seem like this style gets you very far as you hit your own limits. Certainly managers who make detailed decisions when their team members have the greater expertise are not doing all they could to help users or the business. There are those who are more laissez-faire managers, who mostly focus on the administrative tasks and just assume everyone under them is figuring out what needs to be done and is doing it. My very first manager was a little like this. He was a great guy who introduced me to chicken liver sandwiches, but as I learned later he did not add much to my success. There are those who are more visionary, set a general direction, and then support those under them as they work toward the vision. You will have your own additions to the list.
An interesting exercise is to search for leadership styles on the Internet. You find terms like the inward, the outward, the exemplar, the eccentric, the facilitator, the authoritarian, the participative, the delegative, the servant, and others. Lewin, Lippit, and White (1939), in their seminal work on leadership styles, summarized them in three categories whose properties follow well from their names: authoritarian, democratic, and laissez-faire. At a recent management training class I attended, they laid out the situational influence model (www.smsinc.com). In the model there are four styles of influence used by the different categories of leaders: asserting, attracting, bridging, and persuading. In situational leadership, managers can move between the styles as needed depending on the circumstance. I have to admit that the managers I have had the most challenge working for have spent most or all of their time working in the authoritarian mode. If I cannot work for a UX professional, then the person I usually like to work for is closer to the laissez-faire type who trusts me to do my job, who will also lend a hand when I request it and praise successes, and who acts as an evangelist working on my team’s behalf. Education here is critical, however, because they cannot be good evangelists unless they truly understand what you are trying to do and what your team is delivering.
The kind of manager I strive to be is often known as having a transformational leadership style. The teams I have enjoyed being in and leading are those where we were all inspired by a shared vision of the future. It has been the most fun when I feel like I am in close communication with the members of my team and can see how they are running with and adding their special sauce to the general, strategic direction I have provided and supported. In that close relationship, if a specific tweak is needed, it feels more collaborative in how it is implemented. It is less about leading from the front, since responsibility in general is delegated. In the best situations, I have had at least one member of the team who was detail oriented in a way that complemented my own strengths and growth areas.
For example, I currently have a senior person on my team (Karen) who does not have a formal user experience background, but has tremendous project management and general management skills and business knowledge. She came to the team to grow her UX skills and get closer to customers as part of her career journey. Many of her preferred skills are not mine and vice versa, but we collaborate particularly well. Together we have been able to have a great impact in very challenging situations. We have been successful partly because we each have worked at mastering situational leadership and adapted what we do to what is needed as well as to what the other is doing.
It is generally recognized that the skills needed to start something new are different than those needed to run the factory once the pipe has been laid. Transformational leadership is especially important in growing a new team and moving into a new area. Transactional leadership, which is more about implementing and optimizing, is more appropriate to keep the factory going.
At several of the companies I have worked, there has been a leadership training or a fast track program designed to identify people with leadership characteristics and to nourish them to quickly move up the management track to reach those lofty heights quicker than they otherwise might. At AT&T, for example, Douglas Bray ran a study called the Management Progress Study, which began in 1956. Bray provided organizational guidance to a variety of major American companies after being at AT&T. In his study he found 422 managers and followed their careers over 20 years, testing them in a variety of ways. One important finding that has been replicated in different contexts is “The most significant general conclusion of the study so far is that a person’s total satisfaction and happiness with life appears to be almost totally unrelated to whether he or she is successful at work.” As noted in Chapter 1, this has been true through my experience as a manager. Success has been a valuable metric to tell me how I am doing, but what has driven me from job to job has been finding the work that brings me joy and fulfillment. My hope is that success will follow when the result is recognized, but the reason I have taken management jobs has been to make a difference in areas that I felt were important at the time. It has been about exercising the management philosophy that feels right. It has been about working in an environment and for people who enable my team to be our very best.
In many of the technology companies I have worked, the Peter Principle holds. People rise to their level of incompetence. People move up often because they are excellent as individual contributors, and they move almost independent of whether they are likely to be good managers. When I was at Bell Laboratories, a colleague who had started in human factors and moved into systems engineering created a survey to do a more local version of the corporate survey to predict success within the organization. It turned out that across the systems engineering organization one of the best predictors of success was that you had started out as a human factors professional. Fearing a little organizational backlash, this study was discretely suppressed. On a post hoc basis, however, it made sense. There is a premium in UX on being able to solve problems, to think in a systems manner, and to communicate effectively. All of these characteristics are useful for systems engineers and UX managers and leaders.
I have had the privilege of knowing many excellent UX managers. Of course excellence is partly in my own eyes, and partly from what I heard from people who have worked with them. What has struck me is that in addition to the styles that have been discussed, these excellent UX managers have several common characteristics:
• Point of view. In general, they each have something to say, something they are passionate about. They typically are trying to drive an agenda that they believe will make a big difference for the user and the impact of the design.
• Business judgment. In general, their point of view tends to be a good one. As it is implemented by their team it does make a difference for their team, for users, and for the business. They don’t sweat the small stuff; and they keep the main thing the main thing.
• Communications skills. They are able to articulate their ideas effectively and persuasively, in public situations (including formal presentations), as they write, and as they express themselves through sketches.
• Empathy. They genuinely and deeply care about their team. They have strong emotional intelligence.
• Customer focus. They visibly are passionate about the users.
• Design focus. They evangelize great design, the importance of design, and design thinking across the organization.
• Passionate curiosity. They love to ask questions and to understand before pontificating about their point of view.
• Creativity. They are able to produce lots of ideas for solutions to tough problems, whether in real time or after a little thought.
• Risk taking. They are willing to take risks partly for the challenge, and partly because of the big results they can bring. The risks, however, are in the zone of optimal development, and while clearly risks (and therefore sometimes bring failure), the risks are worth taking.
• Self-awareness and learning. At one of my management trainings, a phrase was used to capture this. “Feedback is a gift. Embrace it.” The best see it that way, go after it, and act on it.
A Final Comment
Throughout this book the focus has been on you as a leader and often on you as a manager. The goal has been to provide a window into what it means to be a leader or manager if you are thinking about moving in that direction, and to provide guidance about some of the things you should think about as you start to step into the role. Much of the advice should be useful if you are an individual contributor trying to make a difference. It should enable you to have a point of view beyond your level. In other words, it should help you as you advance your career. For those leading virtual teams as well as those with direct reports, this book contains ideas that can be applied to enable teams to work more effectively together to achieve your mission and vision. For those starting teams, inheriting teams, or even in early management this book contains a framework to become more effective. Experienced managers may even find fresh points of view that challenge assumptions and can be built upon to drive more UX management innovation.
All of this discussion has been in the service of my fundamental belief that what you do when you manage and lead teams is important. You have the ability to take the best of who you are and leverage the creative power of others to amplify it. You are not only representing yourself; you are representing the field. You really can move the world to a better place, starting with your world. My very best to you on your journey!
Barry L. Lively
Manager of the User Interface Design Group (retired), Lucent Technologies Consumer Products
The way I approached managing what at the time was a human factors group came out of my experience as a member of technical staff (MTS) at Bell Laboratories. I started at the Labs in Holmdel, NJ, in 1976 with “dual citizenship” in two departments: a human factors department headed by John Karlin, the original human factors expert hired at Bell Labs, and a systems engineering department in the switching systems area of the company. It was the job of the switching systems people to write requirements for new systems. They recognized that the user interface (whether for the telephone operator or the customer) was crucial to good design and they wanted people dedicated to their work. 1 At the same time, they recognized that one human factors engineer sitting exclusively with systems people might become isolated and it would be useful to have that subject matter expert sitting with human factors people as well. The way it worked out was that I had my desk in the human factors department and reported to two managers, one in each department. This gave me easy access to other human factors people and the lab facilities in the human factors department. On the whole this worked well. For lack of a better term, a spirit of generosity existed on both sides of the arrangement, which reduced friction to a negligible level, if it existed at all, and given that I was the first one through with this kind of arrangement, there was willingness all around to give the arrangement some space to see how it would develop. It worked and I was offered a promotion as a result.
1This wasn’t just lip service. In the end, the requirements for the forerunner to the directory assistance system you experience today were prepared by a systems engineer and me.
The promotion in 1980 was to manage a human factors group in Indianapolis where consumer products such as telephones were developed. The range of products grew over time to include answering systems, security systems, pay telephones, and other products.
The group had been started a few months before I arrived. A department head had already hired two people, both of whom I would have hired had I been there. 2 The prototypical human factors engineer of the day had a PhD in experimental psychology. That was my training and the training of just about all of the human factors MTSs back in Holmdel. Whether they had earlier studied human visual perception, memory, the behavior of rats in mazes, or the design of instrument panels, these people shared a core set of skills in the design of experiments and studies, an understanding of statistical methods, and an appreciation for the value of empirical data to resolve issues. Of course there is a far wider range of people with appropriate skills and at some level we knew that. But as university teaching positions were not getting more numerous and in many cases were shrinking, there were lots of very good experimental psychologists looking for work and we could get highly qualified people with all the basic skills quite easily. Thinking back on it, if I offered someone a job they almost always took it. If they didn’t, it was to go to a group much like ours.
2There was another human factors group in Holmdel that had been working with the Indianapolis developers. They advised on these hires.
I suppose there are other lessons I could share but I’m going to bring this section to a close with just one lesson, which to me is the greatest one of all. It’s a painful lesson that only became apparent the hard way. Our part of AT&T, and then Lucent Technologies, was going to be closed and sold. Consumer products were no longer making money for the company the way they had been. Those at my level, and other levels of course, did the best we could to save money, work smarter, and do all those things that in the larger picture are good but aren’t going to make the difference between success (profit) and failure (lack of profit) for the entire division of the business. It was coming to a close and I felt that all the work we had done to save the division was as if we were writing in the sand just above the low tide line. The tide came in and all that work was washed away. But that threw into relief the truly large lesson: the difference you will make in the long run is how well and fairly you treat your people. You are a coach. This means helping them grow in the job by expecting more and rewarding them when they do grow, not perhaps monetarily but certainly in how you treat them. You can count on their going on elsewhere after they leave your group and the question will be “What did they learn from you?”
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