Jesús will share some of the most popular myths and misconceptions on how design teams can be managed: * designers are creative people who need to be left alone, * designers are too wild to work in a normal work environment, * designers need to be kept in a short leash. Well, these myths were probably created by mediocre managers. And that probably fuelled the first misconception that managers and designers don't get along very well. While Jesús does not claim to hold the ultimate truth on this topic, he will provide an interesting (and international) viewpoint on how managing a design team can work. Jesús has worked with creative teams in 6 different countries and managed over a hundred designers. This session will explore how a design team can be set up, grown, scaled and motivated.

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3. Managing a
Design Team

6. Knowledge
Delegation
Language
Isolation
Surfaces
Craft
Structure
Managing
Value

7. Di
Apologies

8. !
What is our
value?

9. value =
benefit
cost

10. Knowledge
doesn’t equal
leadership

12. Di
Di Stefano
Maradona
Beckenbauer
Pelé
Cruyff

13. Di
Di Stefano
Maradona
Beckenbauer
Pelé
Cruyff

14. Your best designers are not
necessarily your best leaders

15. Letting go,
a.k.a. delegate

17. Your team will never behave how
you expect them to

18. Language,
that thing

19. house

20. wireframe vs prototype

21. Your team
doesn’t exist in
isolation

27. understand what external factors
are modifying your team’s
behaviour and motivations

28. The curse of
surfaces

36. We are constantly trying to
describe a future state with a
limited set of artefacts to a
semi-known audience that
doesn’t necessarily share our
own set of cultural references

37. Craft is not
design

39. remember, design is not just about
how it looks, but how it works, and
that applies to your team too

40. You are as good
as your
structure is

41. Craft
Lead
Project
Lead
Line
Manager
41
Designer
some sort of management layer

42. Craft
Lead
Project
Lead
Line
Manager
42
Designer
Design
Director

43. Technical
Short Term
Project
Short Term
43
Designer
Anything
Else
Career
Long Term

45. a team is not an inmutable artefact,
but a system that evolves, changes
and adapts, why should your
structure exist in only one moment
in time?

46. Managing is
not evident

50. Managing is mostly about narrative,
and you have to be your own editor

51. !
What is our
value?

52. !
our culture

53. “culture eats strategy for breakfast,
technology for lunch, and products
for dinner, and soon thereafter
everything else too” - Peter Drucker

54. “People don’t leave companies, they
leave bad managers.” - Unknown

55. 5 years
76 designers
12 people fired
15 people left on their own

58. SBS DISCOVERY MEDIA FEBRUARY 2014 PROPOSAL VERSION 1
“Quien no tiene coraje
suficiente para arriesgar
nunca conseguirá nada en
esta vida”
!
— Muhammad Ali
Gracias