Design Meets Business

Christian: Steve, it's great to have you on the show. Thank you for joining. You have got what I call an illustrious career, spanning about 25 years, uh, back with stints at Skype, Microsoft SkyScanner, Travelperk, Monday.com. All in sort of, uh, design leader roles. Um, you have basically more design leadership experience than most dream of.

So today will be about that, how to become a better design leader. And before we start diving deep into that topic though, since I'm not sure I've done, uh, you justice just yet, give us a brief overview of your career arc. Yeah. As brief as it can be for such a, a long career.

Buzz: Oh, thank you very much for having me, Christian. Well, uh, illustrious career, infamous career, career of many mistakes and learnings, and still learning. Yeah, it is very flattering for you to, to gimme an introduction like that. Yeah, I'm not one to really like talking about myself and achievements 'cause I often think you're only as good as the thing you recently did.

That's my probably a bit of my philosophy there. I try and be a little bit better every time. But I've had the privilege of working with amazing people and learning from amazing people. And, um, you do that through quiet observation. You do that through conversations. You do that through being challenged yourself, confronted.

And I suppose that all shapes you as a human being and, and as a leader, and I don't think it's necessarily that you have to be in a leadership position to lead. I think a lot of people can lead and they don't necessarily realize that they can. And so I like to try and highlight to people that anyone can lead . And someone once said to me, if you can't lead yourself to a better place, how can you lead others? And I think that's a kind of your training of your inner coach to take yourself in hand, especially when you are in a position of leadership.

But to also surround yourself with people that will be honest with you. And you give them permission to be honest with you. So a quick spotted introduction to how I think about my career. And it's never something that I've actively pursued in all honesty. I've never thought, oh, right now I need to get to this level and do that and do this level it.

I've never thought like that, whether I'm foolish not to, but I've never sought promotion. I've never gone out my way to think like that. I'd just rather be around people that I like being around and, learning from them and doing best work together and things come that way. There have been a few deliberate choices along the way, but we can get into that, but hope that gives you a little bit of an insight into how I think that you wouldn't get from stalking me on LinkedIn.

Christian: Yeah. Which, uh, I have done. So just to make it very clear, uh, you said something interesting there, which is I've never sought promotion and all that. Uh, it, it's sparked a thought in my head because oftentimes, and even on this podcast, I've talked to guests before about, as a designer, not necessarily, or it can be a design leader, but just as anyone in principle how do you put your best foot forward to get a promotion, right? And there always is an answer around, well here are the steps. Here's what you need to do. You need to be more visible, you need to do this, you need to do that, you need to talk to your manager, work with your manager, this, that, and you're saying the exact opposite, but you have also followed the path of continuous growth and promotions.

Maybe not sought after, but received. So I'm wondering, maybe we can start there. 'cause it's a bit of a different approach than what most people would say to do. You said, I haven't sought those promotions, but they have happened. So what have you done right, that they've still happened?

Buzz: And maybe that's a great mystery. I. When I was, in my early twenties and during your twenties I basically said yes to everything, anything that was thrown at me. I had the energy, the stamina. I, I had a massive dollop of naivety and ignorance. You know, I'd be pulling an all-nighter once every week, pretty much.

And just because I loved it and I didn't want to let anyone else down. And I think really that's, that I suppose is like if I say I'm gonna do something, I will do my best to follow through and do it. So personal accountability. Now, folks who are, who know me, are listening to me will go, yeah, yeah, you've let me down on here.

And yeah, you do, but I'm here to confess that as well. You can't do everything. And I will be always open about that. Um, and I like it when people hold me to account. You know, I was in, uh, a wonderful company called Poke with the founders there. Um, I think I was employee number one or two, something like that.

There was certainly like two or three of us joined at the same time. And that was just the joy of it, of making stuff and experimenting, working hard, loving the work, being a little bit competitive, but not with ourselves, but with other agencies. It was a small team. We got to about 60 odd people and the founders there one day just came and said, we, we'd like to meet you, design director, um, what do you think? And I said, okay, I've never been that before. Um, what do I need to do? So, and they go, well, you're already kind of doing it, so just keep doing what you're doing.

And I think that's kind of the point. You don't get promoted into a place of incompetence. You have to prove competence before you get promotion. And I was chatting to a good friend of mine, Chris Lynette, who you should have actually, if you haven't already spoken to. And we were discussing this and we're saying, you know, throughout our school years, it's completely the opposite to way it works in professional life.

In other words, you go through your school. And you go up a year and you are incompetent, right? In that year, and you expect the rate of progression to be almost similar. Each year I get a promotion and yeah, I've never done it before, but give me the opportunity like school, like university and so on. And then it's it's flipped.

And people struggle with that because they're used to, a constant clip of, getting promotion and progression and so on. And it does, but it doesn't always come in the form of promotion. This is the thing, and I, I've always looked at it as go, how can I be better? What am I learning? Am I being challenged in the right places and just try and do better each day.

I'm not very good at the promotion side of things in terms of promoting me. I'd rather just try and let the work speak for itself. But as a leader, you do have to champion and talk about the work and evangelize it, and you have to repeat yourself an awful lot, because it doesn't always go in.

But yeah, never really looked at it as, I want to progress and so on, but rather through various things happening when I left Poke, I always wanted to go in-house and be close to the work. And this opportunity at Skype came along. The, the interesting thing was that it was in the same week, it Poke had won Skype as a client and then I was then on the client side. But that was great because we knew each other and we did a whole lot of really fun work. But when I landed at Skype boy was that a really big shock. Everyone could see I'd never done management. And here I am being plunked in as creative director of an amazing brand and taken over from a predecessor.

And I was clueless, I'm ashamed to say it. I was really clueless. And six months in, I remember my team going, right, okay, it's performance review time. Um, how do you wanna do this then, Buzz? And I was like, I remember going, what's a performance review? Literally, I was, okay, Google performance review. Okay, what am I gonna do here?

And I, you know. I just had to say to the team, I'm sorry, I've never done this before. And they were shocked. They're like, how in the world did this guy get the job? But I'm like, just said, you know, I'm just here to listen to what you wanna go do and what does the business need and do they join up?

And I suppose that's really the philosophy I suppose I've continued throughout, is you can only go as fast as a business is going. Do you know what I mean? You can't just expect or to keep going because you go, well, you build a really top heavy organization if you, everyone got promoted to where they want to go.

So, yeah. Um, so that was my baptism of fire at Skype and a lot of learning there. I was there for about eight and a half years. And uh, really good fun. Got a lot of stories from there and a lot of learnings.

Christian: it's uh, a theme that I keep hearing, which is, I, I think the way you put it with the school analogy is probably the best way I've heard it until now. But everyone says something sort of similar, which is you have to already do the work at that level before you can expect to move to that level.

Where I think what we're expecting is, like you said, promote me so then I can prove to you that I can do that work. And I think you've hinted at this a bit earlier when you said you can lead without being in a leadership role, you can influence without being in a role that necessarily has influencing as part of his remit, if you will.

I think the way it sounds like you've done that is through good work, just good quality work. And I think.

Buzz: Try to,

Christian: Do well, it sounds like it worked. it's probably also a very valid way of thinking about it when it comes to individual contributors, right? Because, uh, it looks a little bit in some companies that people on the managerial track, those are gonna be the ones that are gonna be able to influence and move people around and, you know, performance review, all of that.

But in reality, you can influence quite a lot of the work, can't you, on an individual contributor track as well.

Buzz: Absolutely. You know, I thinking about how I carried on, progressing. It wasn't through a conscious thought, but I sort of look back in retrospective and sort of go, well, what was it that you kind of do, as you progress? And I've drawn this graph, I think almost every company where I've been at, just to kind of try and explain it.

Whilst this is audio only, I'll try and explain how I think about it. If you have along the bottom axis, time and level of your role and going up the vertical axis, you have impact on the business, Now you start plotting the first thing and it will be, okay, what am I doing as a designer?

Well, I'm learning the tools, right? And you get competent at the tools. And a lot of designers are like, well, I know these tools and I know them. Like, I know all the shortcuts and I'm doing work and I'm outputting at a incredible rate. That'll give you a level of impact in the business, right? Because you are, you have high throughput, okay?

And outputs, but that's just the tools. You know how to get stuff done. And that, plateaus, right? It will just taper off. And some designers go, why aren't I progressing? And 'cause you've learned the tools, now you need, you, you need to now combine that with, and that's where you start really introducing the kind of taste and craft.

Right now I'm sort of in two minds whether to combine these next two elements, you know, of craft and invention because, 'cause in some ways they're kind of inextricably linked, but I thought I'd separate them out. Craft is where you're sort of developing your, taste and your reasons why something is good.

And we often ask, you know, in interview questions, you know, when was the last time you experienced a amazing product or service? What did you admire about it? Break it down. You want to have people with strong opinions and you're developing that as you are reasoning through why you design something a certain way.

That's often the craft, the interactions, the flows. And that then also plateaus to a degree. It sort of carries on going up, but it sort of taper us off. But it carries on going ' cause you're always learning and refining and so on. And that gets you a level of influence, uh, of impact in the business.

And then where I always challenge is how is your craft now better, with what you are making than the competition? Is it, how is it better and different? And those two dimensions are, are the challenge that I, that I give designers and so on now. How have you not just organized complexity, which is often what designers do when they're in the craft, but how have you actually removed it?

And you go, okay, well that's where you often then come to invention or innovation, I don't really like that word innovation, but I'd like to term invent. And that can be through me remixing something that's already existed that can be putting together something new. It can be from actually removing something systemically manual in the business, whatever it might be.

That's where you really start going deep into the, problem spaces. And that's where tools, craft and invention coupled together get you really quite significant impact in the business. And that's where I would say if you're a master of those things, you're probably at the kind of principal level IC, the super IC, right?

And I look at it and go, if you are happy staying there, you, you'll be great there for the rest of your life. Every business needs that. So if you're happy there, and I think a lot of designers are happy there, they're just not willing to confess that they are happy there.

That's a great place. And you're gonna be paid top dollar as well. And it's okay because that's often why designers get in into the game in the first place, is to actually make things better. And then there's this last bit, which is really sort of exponential, which is influence. And that just goes up like a really steep ramp because when you have mastered those things, often the business takes note and says, ah, this person can actually move significant things in the business on a bottom line perspective and have that impact. Oh, let's put them in management. And that's often where you see the flip . You might have it earlier, um, in quite often that you do these days, but yet, and then you've gotta learn the real art of influence and stakeholder management and all of this, because you are often then in the management space doing the work through other people, not yourself.

And then that becomes the real kind of, oh, that big shift of, from IC to to manager. That's ' cause you're, you are, you're not on the tools as much. Uh, you are doing all the storytelling and all of that good stuff. It happens at various stages in different businesses. But that's often where I find the emergence of the really big switch, uh, where you kind of go from sort of staff designer to to manager, and then you're off the desi, director and then senior director and VP and so on.

Now that basic framework has really helped people sort of understand, hey, it's not linear progression, it's not totally, uh, uniform. It sort of goes a little bit faster to begin with and then actually starts slowing down, because it just gets naturally harder the higher up you go.

And so people set themselves up with a bit of a false expectation that I'm gonna keep getting promoted on a year and a half, two year cycles. Like, no, no, no, that doesn't happen actually. It really doesn't.

Christian: One of the thoughts that I had as I was listening to you, you're talking about this framework. So you, you, you sort out the tools first, then you create your sense of craft and then you go into the rest. It sounds like, and you've said this yourself, it sounds like this is, it's hard.

It takes time. There's a lot there to do. You need to put your reps in. It is not just something you can get straight away. Maybe the tools are relatively easy to learn for some people easier than others, but the rest of the, the pyramid, let's call it, is harder to climb. And I think, I'm not exactly sure how, um, connected you are to people earlier in their career, but one of the things that I see is that there's a lack of patience there, in the sense that the expectations over time get higher and higher, but the evolution of their sort of skills, overall skills is slowing down because like you said, it's getting harder and harder at those higher levels. So I'm wondering, is this, uh, oftentimes just a, a play on pacience? Sometimes if you're not getting promoted, maybe you should also just be a bit more patient.

Buzz: don't mind a bit of impatience, right? Because you need to have a little bit of that sort of tenacity. But I think you've got to think of it that there's a good deal of trust that you have to put in management, right? And there's a power imbalance, right? Because they have the ability to say no.

And so building that relationship where you are being really good and candid about the feedback and so on, and hey, what do I need to go do to get to this level is, you know, they're, they're good legitimate questions, and challenges. Sometimes there just isn't the opportunity to prove the thing.

And that's where patience comes in. But I also flip that round and go, there is always opportunity. I know there is, and that's where you, you are testing a little bit of a person's resolve to actually go create those opportunities themselves and go, Hey, I've seen this thing over here. Well, am I, am I willing to actually put in the hard work and do the kind of all-nighter and you know, get that in.

I'm not saying that everyone should do all-nighters. I'm just, you are looking to see whether someone's got a bit of that grit, because I think it's, a good way of teaching yourself that level of resolve, and training yourself to know, actually you can go beyond what you are currently doing.

Patience is a funny game, right? Like you said, you don't get good at something by, you know, doing it once a year, right? You don't get fit by going to the gym once a month. There is a direct correlation between output and outcomes, and people go, oh, you know, don't worry about the outputs, worry about the outcomes.

I'm like, well, you gotta, you gotta have both, right? You gotta sweat it to get to that outcome. And I find that there are people out there that just want to have the easy win and the easy fix and there's no such thing. Everyone's looking for the shortcut rather than actually go, well, let's just do the hard stuff and you find out that actually they're the people that often, they're the ones that succeed by taking the hard stuff on and really driving it forward. So there's a phrase I like, which is strategically patient, tactically impatient. And you've gotta balance that tension within yourself and the business.

Christian: I love that. I'm gonna steal that. The topic of, um, taking opportunities that are there but maybe are not that visible practically, how does that look like? Let's talk a little bit about it. You're in an IC in a company and you're thinking, Hey, maybe there's something around here that I'd be able to grab onto and, and make it my thing or, through that show that I'm ready for the next step or whatever it may be.

In practice, what does that look like? What do you do? Do you look around the business and you find opportunities that are sort of adjacent to your design work, do you partner with your engineers to come up with something? What is exactly you might wanna start doing?

Buzz: Yeah. We did as little exercise a little while ago where I sort of said in one word, what is leadership? Some people say, oh, it's, it's empathy. Some people say it's tenacity. Some will say it's actually leading from the front. That's more than one word, but it's actually to lead.

I look at it and go, in one word, leadership is about vision. And designers have that ability to make something intangible, tangible. And so do engineers, right? Most people do. But I think there's a, it's this, it's a particular thing that designers love and why we got into the game. Now you can create a vision in the smallest part of your domain in a team. You can do that. And I always look at it and go, who's actually pushing for something greater than what they're currently being tasked to do?

And that's what leading is, is actually getting out in front and being proactive and there's opportunities everywhere. What I like doing is sitting down and sort of highlighting the opportunities and actually just talking to designers and just going, oh, you could go here.

You could go there, and you've got all these things and it suddenly opens up. Then what happens is the fear sets in. There's so many opportunities. Now what do I do? How do I break it down? How, which bit should I go do It is like, how about you you look at it and go out of those opportunities, which things do you think are gonna move a particular area of the business along. And you'll notice probably a bit of my style, which is I tend to lead by asking questions. And there's a, there's a great book, which is called Leading by Asking Questions . The reason why I think that's important, and this is just a slight digression, but when you ask questions, it's much easier to make someone more empowered, and have more autonomy and give them that level of accountability, than by saying, you should do this, you should do that. Because what happens is it comes back round to bite you, which is the person is that you told me to go do this and it didn't work, right? So you, you're trying to make sure that a person is accountable first, and you know, you want to see them, how much they're gonna start pushing and get excited about these things.

You can go beyond your scope, and this is often what competency frameworks start to do when you're starting to evaluate whether a person's ready for the next level is, are they willing to go beyond the scope of their domain, beyond the scope of their product, whatever it might be.

You, you've gotta be able to stretch yourself, because at some point, if you're gonna be a leader of the whole function, you're gonna have to look at everything and you've gotta learn how to cross domains and so on, and build those relationships. So what does it look like in practical terms? It's, well, here's the problem, space. How can I use my craft and invention to actually solve the problem and solve it in a way that's really elegant? And I often use a basic leveling framework here. It's gonna sound like I've got frameworks for everything, but it's just to help people think through things. You can have a standard experience and the product does exactly as you expected it, fine.

Uh, getting to that level is a challenge 'cause there's so much rubbish and mediocrity out there. So a lot of the times you're just trying to get to a standard experience. But really where you want to get to is an exceptional experience. And so what are the two main things that make up an exceptional experience?

And this is again, coming to the vision piece, right? You go, well, how can I push it into that area? It's really about anticipating the user's needs and understanding what they're trying to do next and beyond that. And if you do that, you generally exceed their expectations. So those are the two, two kind of constituent bits.

So then you kind of ask the question, go, okay, what's the user trying to do next? How are you anticipating what they're, well, I dunno what they're trying to do next. Okay, let, let's go find out what they're trying to do. And then you come up with, okay, this is what they're really trying to do and this is two or three things that would exceed their expectations.

Right? Let's pick one of them and we hold onto that for all we're worth, in say the next piece of deliverables. Because if you take that piece away, you are kind of losing the soul of what you're really trying to do. And you're gonna slip back into a standard, probably even substandard experience. So I always look at it and go, what's the aha moment?

What's the thing that makes it really sing? Other people call it delighters. I dunno about delighters. I think delighters get often overused. I tend to think what makes it delightful. And you're gonna end up with bits and pieces along the way. But really it's have we actually removed complexity?

Have we actually made it, to a point where someone feels really good using it, and will end up telling others about it. You're sort of, you're giving yourself these different dimensions to look at it and evaluate it. And often you find that through talking through those things as designers, as a PMs as engineers, you light people up because you see opportunities absolutely everywhere. That's why I just encourage people to do. The job of management is noticing. That's where you really do try and make sure that the work is getting surfaced and you, you have high visibility and I always like, uh, the phrase, you know, I'm prepared to get in the kitchen.

That's not to go, Hey, I'm gonna take over. No way. It's to know that the team knows, rather that you are there to support. And if you want me to go chop veg or clean the dishes or go talk to a customer I'm there. Um, but I, I gotta be close to the work. And I think that's often a a failing of, uh, leaders is they get too far removed from the work.

I get agitated if I'm far away from the work, ' cause then I don't know what's kind of going on. It's not from a control perspective, it's just if I'm the leader of the function, someone asked me, I should know really. And that's, that's a delicate balance. 'cause you, the way you do that can be misinterpreted as micromanagement. And, uh, yeah, I've, I've failed and made mistakes in actually doing micromanagement. And so I've learned the hard way there.

Christian: So what's the border between just being informed, being aware of what's happening, being on top of it, and micromanaging. What are mistakes that someone might wanna avoid doing to not fall into that bucket of being a micromanager. I.

Buzz: Yeah, it's, um, because designers often have a very acute sense of how things should be, when people tend to move into management, they either get so far removed from the work and go, I don't do any IC work. It's all on you. I think it's a gradual shift, right? I think you still gotta be hands on, but you, you've gotta know when to delegate and when you delegate, you've really gotta be hands off, right?

Because you're trusting a person. And often people go, it's your call, but this is what I would do. And I've had people do that to me time and time again. Give me a whole earful and go how I should run the team. And then they go, yeah, but it's your call. I'm going is it really my call?

And so I'm trying to be very deliberate in going, I'm giving this to you. I trust you. What do you need? This is what an escalation should look like if you get it stuck, But other than that this is you. Here's my expectations. I expect us to have, a sync on this every week.

In that sync just talk me through things. This is how I'll play it. And so on. And this is what I will do with an intervention if I see it going off mark, and people love that generally because they go, oh, I know exactly what to expect now. It's when you're a bit of a black box and you, and they don't know how you're gonna behave.

Then people get a bit jittery and go, should I show the work? Should I not, I'm not happy about it. So you just wanna make sure that you're, you're a very accessible for people. '

Christian: Okay, so it sounds like what you're saying is I set the vision, I say where we're going, but you decide the road we're taking there, and I'm there to support you at any point you need it. Is that in one sentence the summary. Is, is that what we're talking about?

Buzz: In many ways, yeah. I tend to look at it and go, as a leader, you kind of gotta go, what are we actually trying to achieve and why? But if you have a really strong team, they're gonna tell you how. Sometimes if you've got a really, junior folks and so on, they'll need help on how to do it.

That's when you kind of switch into the one of the other hats that you wear. So, I, I often say to the, to the team , I'm wearing kind of four hats. And I'll try and be deliberate when I wear each hat, and which hat I prefer wearing. So the four hats are, there's the kind of amateur therapist. You gotta be able to be there for that at some points, right?

But that's the one that you gotta be very wary of because you can end up just being a punching bag for every everyone else. But you gotta be listening. And you gotta be ready for that. ' cause people need to be able to vent and, and do all that stuff. And you'd much rather people vent up than sideways and down.

That's the bad thing. The second hat is the trainer. I'll show you how to do something. The third one is the mentor: in this situation, I would do this. And then the fourth one, the coach: what will you do? And I will play the coach most because it's a questioning way of leading. But you need all four and you're gonna flip between each four.

It's just being really deliberate and going, okay, this one's a mentoring situation because they've never been here before. But you always try and make it and go, well, this is what I would do. But please don't take this as the route forward. If you take this route forward, tell me why you are taking this route forward.

And then you flip in again to the coach because you, you don't want them just doing things because you said so, right? You gotta be able to have people that do challenge you. And then often what comes around and they go, oh, I did this thing and I did it differently to what, you said, and I learned this, and actually maybe you were right.

You gotta gauge the situations where you do that because some situations will be high risk and you go, okay, this is where I need to be prescriptive and go, we need to solve it and we need to do it in this way and this way. I hope you don't mind. Let's just get it done. Do you know what I mean?

Sometimes you actually do need to be like that. I'm not trying to micromanage. Micromanage is kind of like every hour going, have you done it yet? Have you done it yet? Have you done it yet? People just go, oh just, just let me get on with it.

Christian: Think there's an extra one in there. It's not only about being on someone's case all the time, but also when work is being presented to you, always having, uh, work is never good enough. Here's how I would do it. Like, like you said earlier, and I think sometimes designers also just like to be able to decide themselves which direction we're going and, and there's a difference between saying, Hey, I think this is a problem, the fundamental problem with your design here, here's the feedback and saying, I don't like the copy.

Like, that's to me is micromanager. When someone from design leadership goes and really just picks at small things that really maybe in the grand scheme of things don't matter that much and you feel like you're losing a lot of your autonomy and you're just following someone's lead. To me, that's where, when I think of micromanagement, that's where I think.

Buzz: Yeah, you're right. And that's exactly where you, try and coach designers in how to present and where they need feedback. Because the worst one is when you kind of go, Hey, I did this thing. What do you think? Well, you're just gonna open yourself up, for just random stuff and it's gonna confuse you.

You gotta kind of go, okay, this is what I'm presenting today. I've done this, I've got it up to this point on this specific area. This is where I would like us to have a discussion. Now you're leading, right? it's so much more efficient, ' cause then you can be more precise where you need the feedback.

I've experienced and witnessed other people kind of come in and just rip stuff to shreds and, just being critical for critical sake, but they often know kind of actual solution or help me out. Then if you said it's really rubbish, it's like, you gotta be really prepared to get in there and, and help them.

But I don't like that way 'cause it crushes a person's spirit and as a leader, every interaction I always think is how do you build someone, not crush them. If you have a hard thing to say, then you've gotta do it in the right way that gives them the fuel then to go fix it. If you just, go in there and think that you are great and I can do it better than everyone else, i, I'll be honest with you, I think that's the recipe for disaster. Especially if you're saying it out loud, you know, kind of give it to me. I'll show you what great looks like. And I've seen people do that and it's like, wow. The phrase I would use there is pride goes before a falls and you often see them really, struggling with either their team or they, the team don't like them and so on.

And yeah, I've made my own fair share of mistakes there, but that one comes back, which is, , you say you're really good at something and you say you are the best, and you, you know, you even act like it. Well, you're setting yourself up for a fall pretty quick. So I try not to fall into that trap.

Christian: I think to play the devil's advocate a little bit, if you really are good, I think that can also be inspirational for your team, to see what you are able to do, because oftentimes you look up to these people who've been put in management positions, and I think it's so important to respect them and say, okay, if, if he or she would come down and jam with us or work with us, it'll be a whole different level.

So therefore, I respect this person. 'cause I know they've been where I am right now. They've done the work, they've proven themselves. So I think if you really are that good I don't think it's about holding back, but what you're saying is about the way you're doing it, right?

Buzz: Just the way you do it. Yeah. And I love getting in, I'm, I'm working at a company right now and, um, one of the product designers, it is just, it gives me so much joy to actually just jam with the designer and go, Hey, let's, let's try this. And, she'll go off and do something over there on the canvas, and I'll go and send, and then we'll kind of come together.

You know, that gives me so much energy and it's really great 'cause you're both learning together. But because you have been around a bit and you've seen patterns and so on, they see by you doing and learn that way. That's what I mean by getting in the kitchen is hey, I'm not gonna say, Hey, come over here and watch me chop carrots, right?

I'm gonna just get on and chop the carrots and they'll kind of look over there and go, huh, that's how he's doing it. it's the same with design. It's like. I'll just get in there and go, Hey, I did a little thing and I was thinking about this the other night and I quickly mocked this up. It might help you. Have a look!

That's the way I think is a nicer way. Rather than taking something away from a person and going, give it to me, I'll sort it out. That's not empowering. That's, and that's the delicate balance, right. Is it can be really tempting to do that.

Christian: Yeah, for sure. I think in the beginning of the podcast you said that you like to give people permission to be honest with you. I'm wondering how that looks like, because when someone is in a position, a couple of steps higher up, it is difficult to be honest, if you have some, not critical, but some constructive feedback to give. It is sometimes difficult to be honest, because you always fear consequences. So I assume that part of what you're talking about is making clear, this is an open space and you can tell me any feedback that you might be having. But how does that look like?

How do you make it clear for your teams that it is an open book and that they can say whatever they have on their heart , openly to you?

Buzz: I try and be very open about it and say, look, I totally recognize that there is, first of all a power imbalance, right? Because you are worried about speaking truth to power, So let's acknowledge it. The second thing is, you may from past experiences be concerned that if you say something to me that, I might not like, or whatever it might be, that there'll be consequences.

And all of a sudden you're now not, gonna be promoted or you're gonna be held back or whenever. Hand on heart, that won't happen. I will not do that. It's really important that you feel and know that you can tell me anything and it's not with, ' Hey because you told me something about me and my failures, now I'm gonna have some sort of retribution.'

In fact, I'll be eternally grateful. And I'll publicly say with the person's permission, 'Hey, I received this bit of feedback the other day and this person was dead on, and thank you to that brave soul for doing it.' You gotta role model it and you gotta say it out loud. And then people go, oh, that's interesting, he actually welcomed the feedback. And this is what he's learning from it. I can do the same. I think a lot of it is from, poor management. Um, and people are worried from the past or they have a natural cynicism, because of that, power imbalance. But, it's a lonely place at the top.

And you, you get very wary when people are saying yes to everything, everything you are doing. You're like, I'm, I know I'm not that good. So very occasionally I might say something really stupid just to see if my direct folks are actually gonna learn. I was like, good. Okay. You're still paying attention.

You're not, you're not just being yes people. The, the, the major thing is talking about it openly, and giving people permission. And saying what my response ideally should be.

Christian: I think what I'm catching from there is a level beyond saying it, but showing, so what you said is, yeah, I'm saying all of these things. Hey, there's not gonna be any retribution. I want you to talk openly to me. But then what you do is you do something where you show that that was appreciated. ' cause it's one thing to say, I appreciate you and there's a whole other thing to give someone a, you know, flowers or a gift, whatever, that one is definitely more impactful than the other one.

So perhaps the theme here is since it is such a sensitive topic, and I have worked with people in the past who've said, no, I'm not, not nothing's gonna happen, there's not gonna be any retribution. But that was just, not today, but there might be another day, right. Versus someone who's showing, and puts their money where their mouth is as, as the saying goes, that this is actually what I care about. I think that's so much more powerful.

Buzz: Definitely. I often think that the, the most powerful thing that you do as a leader is role model. But more than that, you also set up other role models and, uh, you go, Hey, see what Jimmy did, do that. Go talk to Jimmy how he did this or go talk to Elisa and see what she did Because then you are raising everything, and you are also celebrating behind the scenes. You're not having to always do the big, flattery stuff, uh, in front of people, but often it's the connecting people who are doing good things and showing them, and then they raise the bar and, and so on.

So I think it, it is that, that role modeling behavior, , and creating other role models. And if you are thinking about culture, you know, culture is often what is the worst behavior that you are willing to tolerate, uh, if you were to put it under the negative. That's often why people leave companies, right, is because of management. People are often trying to protect their own role. But I, I often say my job is to make myself redundant. Because it's really important as a leader that you have a very good, strong bench and succession plan, because that's what it means to put the business first.

And so I find that people are, get confused a little bit when they first kind of go into management and start feeling into leadership. Is that the order that they think is out of these three? It's kind of, it's me, the team, and the business, and I'm putting it in black and white terms. It's not always like that, but often thinking about themselves first.

And then when you're in a position of leadership and if you were to be the founder and the actual CEO you're not thinking about yourself. You are thinking about yourself last, you're thinking about the business first and the people, the teams and yourself last. That's the mental flip that people have to make.

And when leaders recognize that in someone that they have made that flip and they're not talking about themselves, they're talking about what they can do for the business and how they're making the team better and then themselves, it's like, okay, that's the right order.

Christian: When you become a design leader, what do you have to let go of from those days where you sat in Figma all day, or Sketch or whatever it may have, Photoshop, whatever it may have been, and you're moving away from that. And you did say it might be a bit more gradual. It's not from one day to the next, but as you move into into leadership , what are some of the things that you need to be aware that you're gonna have to let go of?

Buzz: I. I dunno whether it's about letting go. I think it's just being recognizing that your days are gonna be different. Because I think as a design leader, I never really want to let go, of being able to get in on the tools and so on. You still, I think, gotta be a bit sharp. And, and of course with the advent of AI, it's all collapsing.

Yeah. An old dog like me is learning new things from, and, and it's really revitalizing. So actually I think it's, if you've let go too much of the tools and so on, then You're gonna probably find yourself going, ah, I need to actually relearn these things. So keeping close to the those things is, is, is important, but recognizing that it's probably only gonna be 5% of your time.

And so it's just a different composition of things. But I think it's more the kind of surprises that come along, is that as a leader, you are now the focal point of people's, uh, attention. And that can be a surprise because you go oh, it's just a peer before, happy with making stuff, and now now people are coming to me with their problems and. If you're not prepared for that, that can be a bit of a shock. And so, that comes with great responsibility. And that's where you also gotta have your support network, uh, to help reason things through. 'cause yeah, you can end up being the punching bag, if you're not prepared, and if you don't have other people that can, you can talk to about it, uh, that you can trust.

Um, so yeah, I think it's not really about letting go. It is just about a different, a different way in which your everyday looks like. It's not for everyone.

Christian: One of the things that we probably don't talk often about is, you mentioned earlier as well, it's lonely at the top. And now you've mentioned again, you know, you need to have your support system, someone to, to be there, uh, as a design leader or as a leader in general. Frankly, it doesn't have to be design.

Who's your support system? 'cause you probably lead teams. They're probably not your support system. Is it your peers? At the same level? Do you find your support system outside of the company? Where do you go and look for that?

Buzz: I mean, I, I'll give you most recent example at monday.com and, you know, I have my, my manager, the CPTO, great guy. We spoke very openly to each other But really the first team, he has his first team, which is the C-suite. My first team is my fellow VPs.

And, yeah, so we had Sergei and Iran on engineering. We had Laron, uh, Sevan on, on PM and me in a, on design and. I love the fact that we could be really open with each other and we supported each other and we had a bit more of a, we got, you know, yeah, we had disagreements, but we were able to come with quite a unified voice to our meetings.

And that gave Daniel then confidence that we were aligned and talking. And, and I think that's really, really important is knowing your first team. And that's quite a, you know, to some design leaders, they go, no, my first team is my direct reports. No, it's not actually, you want your direct reports to be self-organizing and coming to you with what's needed, because otherwise you end up being the, the bit that's trying to join everything together. And you often find that people go, well, so and so said this to me. So and so said that to me. I need you to sort it out. Then your first question is, have you spoken to that person yet? Right. And often you find they haven't spoken to that person.

Then it's like, well, I'm not gonna do anything until you go talk to them. Because sometimes you do realize that some people just need to vent and get something off their chest, but they're not actually willing to go talk to the person themselves.

You go, well, if you're not prepared, then it's not that important. And I think that's really about that kind of level of maturity and accountability. And you have to role model it. If you've got something hard to say, you've gotta go tell them to their face. Say it graciously.

And, uh, there's another phrase that I learned from my grandfather and it's a, it's a lovely expression, which is stoop to conquer. Take the lowliest position to try and win a person. Don't try and go in all guns blazing. And I have strong opinions and go in for combat. Yeah, and I suppose that's probably one of my core parts of, of leadership.

Stoop to conquer. I'm fine self-deprecating that I might get unity and a path forward, rather than trying to be the bombastic leader.

Christian: Is that something that's helping you manage conflict between your team members? You might have a couple of designers who are, or. Maybe not even designers, a designer and a product person or an engineer who don't agree, they butt heads and you are being called in to help and give a hand with that managing of the conflict.

Is that one of the strategies you're using or how would you in general, um, without talking about any specific situations manage that?

Buzz: People is always the highest variable in a business. Uh. But there are patterns that are fairly predictable and you can sort of know what will happen as a consequence, and that, comes from making a lot of mistakes. Um, and it also, I suppose, comes from pacience and, some people have it, you know, by way of intuition very early on in their life.

But other people like myself probably have to learn it, over years But the core part is you want people talking to their peers first and thrashing it out first. That's kind of principle number one. If they can't resolve something, then I would tend to go. What are the scenarios then that you want to come to me with?

We could go this way. Here's the consequences. We could go this way. We could go the consequences and you try and make it so that you get clean escalation. And clean escalation means they've, tried everything amongst themselves. They can't resolve.

Now it comes up a classic kind of escalation is they haven't even spoken and they're all complaining and then they all come to you to resolve it. It's like, no, no, no you gotta thrash it out first. And 90% of the time, guess what, they come to an agreement.

And so that's just being adult and being mature. But it's amazing how, how often that, that comes around because sometimes I say a lot of the time, actually, you're going really hard and fast in a business and you don't always have that time to, to talk and reason things through. And often it can be, you know, the loudest person in the room.

And so you've gotta kind of understand, okay, who's, what kind of personalities are at play. And sometimes you have to take a, a person aside and say, Hey, you are the loudest person. How about in the next meeting you don't speak, and just sit there and listen because sometimes you'll, you'll hear things that you didn't hear before.

'cause you're so intent on having your way. That's just a friendly conversation Hey, I noticed this. Do you mind if I give you some feedback? It's always asking permission, are they in the right head space? ' cause the worst thing you can do is when they're in a, in a bad mood or they're under a lot of pressure and you try and give them feedback, it's just gonna backfire.

And I've learned the hard way. and the worst thing you can do is well, is kind of going, Hey. Let's have a chat. Well, what do you want to chat about? You know, it's like the girlfriend going, we need to chat. And you're like, uh, okay. What have I done? You naturally go there, right?

And so you want to be really explicit and say, I put in a meeting. I'd like to catch up with you. I have some feedback about the session yesterday. If you want to have it sooner, let's have it sooner and I'll make time rather than having the person sort of sweat about it. But at the same time, you can be pleasantly surprised as well.

And I remember that happening to me, which was, uh, one of my fellow, uh, VPs at SkyScanner. I said, Hey, can we have a chat tomorrow? Oh, what a sleep this night. That was, I was really worried. Maybe that's a guilty conscience. But anyway, she then calls up and then, uh, says, I just want to give you some feedback about how, you know, I learned this and that, and thank you for doing this.

And I was like, oh man. So I gotta learn to not read into things. I'm quite sensitive like that. And I try and tell people that's the way I think sometimes so better to just, tell me straight off rather than leave me hanging. I think most people are like that. I,

Christian: I think it's the same for everyone. You don't want to see an invite in your calendar that says chat or something. And even if it's news, you wanna say ahead of time what it is, just to put everyone's minds at ease. And I think if it's hard news, you better deliver those fast. Don't put something in a calendar for next Tuesday with everyone knowing it's gonna be something bad.

So, yeah. There, there's one more thing I want to talk to you about around building teams. Um, I've read somewhere that Uh, back to another framework. You are, uh, you have this framework of the three a's accountability, autonomy, and alignment. What are those? Let's unpack them a little bit.

Buzz: Okay. Well, I've, I've probably since expanded it to four As. So this was something that through many, conversations with, the CEO of, SkyScanner Bryan Dove, he was my manager and we would go through long walks. Our one-to-ones are always walking and talking.

Uh, and I love doing that because we both have kind of quite loud minds. So we need to have this kind of, our body's doing something. We can't just sit there and talk. We have to have other things going away. Anyway, I remember just sitting, sitting down after we just grabbed a coffee. We were chatting about accountability, um, and how important it is.

'cause he was sort of challenging me on a potential hire I was gonna make, uh, which was great, right? I was like, you know, I really wanna hire this person or something. He's like, okay, let's talk through it. He had his doubts and I think it was through the, through various conversations that we sort of came together on this sort of framework.

And he can probably do it much better than me. But I've since sort of taken on and evolved it. So the four As, what are they, like you said, they are, autonomy, alignment, accountability and alacrity. Most people go, Ooh, what's alacrity? Yeah what is that? And it's a wonderful word. And it means a brisk and joyful readiness.

Isn't that a lovely word? And it also happens to be an A. So, most people go, oh, I'll use that word, alacrity. Now the challenge is put them in a priority order, right? When you are thinking about who you're bringing into the business, what are the kind of qualities that you want and what do, what do they want as well?

And I often ask in an interview if I'm, you know, looking for a director of, uh, a particular function that or someone else, is, help me think through how you think through what those are. And some people will go, oh, now autonomy is most important. Okay. That's interesting. And then alignment, and then they go and accountability, and then they say about what's alacrity?

And then you kinda, okay, alacrity. And they go, oh, no, alacrity first. And you see them kind of reasoning it out. And more often than not though, after they've kind of wrestled with it, it's like, actually the most important thing is that a person is accountable, number one. And it sounds really obvious when you say it, but actually you've gotta really think through it.

So, we'll come back to this in a minute, but probably the biggest, most influential thought process I ever went on was about accountability. And, Mark Logan, who was the chief operating officer of Skyscanner, taught me this. So I'll come back to that in a minute. So accountability, then it's a little bit of a trick question, right?

Because it's like, well, which one is next? Because it oscillates and it's like a balancing act between alignment and autonomy. But you have a default, right? And my default is I, I want to give someone as much autonomy as possible, but does anyone ever have really 100% autonomy? No, because you're constantly having to align to the business needs to the functional needs to whatever it is, so you kind of oscillate, right?

And I think it's about having clarity when sometimes you have to give feedback in order to align, and it'll feel like I'm taking autonomy away. But actually what you're trying to do is go, I need to align this piece of work to this so that I can give you the autonomy back to go do it. And then the alacrity thing is more just around people's general disposition, I suppose.

Do they kind of say yes? Are they excited and are they positive? Because the last thing you want people to fall into is just being the contrarian, no naysayer all the time, Because if you are that person over time, you just simply get ignored. And so there's the little exercise when people will sort of talk about influence and so on, and are being accountable.

It's like, okay, there are three types of people in the business. There's the people that are yes, all the time and just with you no matter what you say. Then there are people that actually just need convincing through clear, rational, logical reasoning, and then there are people that just say no, no matter what. So if you had to pick one group, which do you concentrate on?

Christian: Uh, I would pick the middle, the ones who need convincing

Buzz: Why?

Christian: Because I think if you just pick the ones that say yes all the time, because their predisposition is to say yes all the time, that could mean that some of the things we're talking about, they haven't thought through, they haven't challenged them enough.

Right? So maybe they're missing doing that exercise. Now, if you go for someone who says no all the time, obviously, I think who wants to work with people whose answer is always no. So I think the balance one is to say, to be a bit, um, not negative, but a bit, uh, take a step back.

The answer is always until we can all agree that it's good to do this thing rather than all these yes or all these nos. I dunno that's the one I would choose.

Buzz: Yeah. It's exactly right and it's fairly obvious, but I see so many people trying and spending all their emotional energy on the ones that just say no. And then you look at it and go, what's the general composition? Approximately, you get about 10% of the business are always say yes. You get 10%, always say no.

80% of the people that just are smart, capable, rational, and just need convincing. So you get everyone. And what's the point in going after the people that say yes? 'cause you've got them all already. So it again, it just sort of people, oh yeah, you're right. So just look for the different types of people and especially as, as you get a bigger and bigger team and have more and more influence, you need to know, how to, convince those people.

So that's, that's the four A's. and they're the types of people you wanna bring into a team. Now, accountability, the accountability ladder, and it's probably my most favorite. And now every time I say this and talk about it, I am preaching to myself. It has that much of an effect on me.

Now, it was probably, when did it come about? It came about about three or six months into my time at Skyscanner. It we're sort of building the design function. And Mark did this little course for leaders and there were about four of us. Very smart guy. And, um, he took me aside and is it, there's something I wanna show you. And it was this recording of oh, what's his name? Gordon. I'm trying to remember his name. Anyway, I'll dig it out for you and you can put it on, on the links. And it's the first time that the accountability letter was recorded in, in public. It's a pretty dodgy recording.

So what is the accountability ladder? There are eight rungs on the accountability ladder. The bottom four are when you play the victim, and the top four are when you are accountable. Now, if you want to have influence and you want to have impact, you've gotta be accountable, The trouble is, it's all too often we fall into the victim mentality.

So it goes in a little story. Okay. And the story's this. There's a, there's a father and son and the father's picking up his son from school. Hey, son. How you doing? Didn't you have a report that had to be in today? How'd it go? Yeah. Uh, I didn't know that it had to be in today.

That's the first rung. I didn't know. Okay. How come you didn't know a teacher didn't make it clear? Blame others. That's the second one. Okay. So, what's gonna be the, what's gonna happen? Maybe, um, well, I dunno. There's nothing I can really do. So that's the third one. I can't. Well, what's gonna be the consequence?

Um, maybe there'll be something else I can make up for further down the line in, in term time. Wait and hope. Okay. Those are the four rungs of victim mentality and I've played all of them. And guess what? Nothing good came of it. And so I constantly, try and ask myself, am I playing the victim here? Am I blaming others?

If I say, I don't know, I better go and say, I'll reframe it. I'll find out. So what does accountability look like? Let's replay that story, father and son. He goes to pick up his son from school. Hey son, didn't you have a report that had to be in today? How'd it go? Yeah, dad. I kind of wasn't paying attention in class.

Kind of snuck up on me. I messed up. I missed the deadline today. That's the first rung. Acknowledge reality. Be honest. Okay, so what's, um, what's gonna be the consequence? Well, you know what, there's, there's 12 hours between now and, and tomorrow. I'm gonna see what I can do, ah, seek solutions. Okay?

But you know what, dad, you're, you're a, you're a pretty smart guy. If I can't get going and find a solution can you help me ask for help? But you know what? Even if you don't help me, dad, 'cause I know you're a busy guy and the thing, and we've got other things to do, I'm still gonna make it happen.

Now you're playing accountability, right? And whenever I've walked people through this, I see a lot of people go, yeah, yeah, I've done that. Yeah, I've done that. Yeah. And you kinda go, oh yeah, that's a really helpful way of me framing it and taking accountability because there, there is nothing more beautiful to see as a leader is people taking personal accountability. And I wanna shout from the rooftops because in, in a lot of ways it's quite rare because we do get. They say people playing the victim and expecting it all to come to them. And I would go, no, let me tell you a story. and I wasn't playing the accountable leader that I should have been.

And Mark took me aside and said, I've noticed, when we do this, you kind of said you didn't know, and over here you kind of blamed this person over here for the fact. And, you know, I don't really see you kind of leaning in and taking it account. You're sort of waiting and hoping that something will happen.

And I was just like, you are so right. And it really affected me and I was so grateful for him for giving me that and not kind of casting me aside and so on. But he then gave me this tool. I go: ah, now I've got something that will train me. And I've used it ever since. And it really, really helped.

And I said to the team, Hey, a few months later, ' cause obviously things started to change, I think. And uh, I said, well, it was this is what, um, Mark gave me and this is what happened and helped me. And then they took it. It kind of comes around full circle to what we were saying at the beginning, you know, role modeling, having that, uh, ability to take yourself down, and stoop to conquer.

And I suppose you, yeah, I mean, you asked, uh, you know, offline, you know, what's my leadership style? I think I generally kind of say, you know, this is gonna sound maybe a bit strange, but I think of it as like a shepherd. Now don't get me wrong, I've not got some sort of Messiah complex or anything like that.

It's not about that. It's. What does a shepherd do? A shepherd, leads people to greener pastures. That's about having the vision. And once they are there, happily working on the vision, you protect it for all your worth. And you nurture it and you guide. So you've got this strange place of you lead from the front and you lead from the back, all in the same space.

And, uh, you take real care of your team and your and the people in the business. And I think, if you do that consistently, people will see, and learn to trust you over time. And, uh, I think I'll probably uh, say that that's, that's the root of everything is trust. And, um, that's, uh, how to build trust is through consistency.

Christian: That's awesome. I love that story. The best part, the, if the story is also a framework, but the best part about the framework told in a story it's much easier to remember because it is a story. You remember all the steps. 'cause it, it was the son and the, and the father.

So I'll take that further. So Steve, we got to the end There is a bit tradition at the end of the podcast where in a surefire quick, round way, I ask every guest two questions. And, uh, the two questions are, were actually the first one I'm not gonna ask both at the same time.

The first one is, where do you look for inspiration in your day to day?

Buzz: I had say there's two things. One is I look around outside. I try to keep my head up and out rather than introverted, looking inwards. I see inspiration all around. But I suppose I see most in inspiration from the people that I love and respect, And, well, being a, being a Christian, I find most inspiration from the Bible and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

He is my inspiration. And I try and be more like him as much as I can. I fail a lot but, uh, that, that is the foundation of my inspiration.

Christian: Awesome. Thank you. And I have a second question, which makes me realize we haven't talked about AI at all, which is probably the first episode this season where I don't talk about it. But the second question is, unfortunately or fortunately about AI. So, uh, I guess we are touching upon it. What is something that you believe that AI will not be good at and therefore that designers could or should double down on?

Buzz: I think AI is an incredibly powerful tool, but it is raw intelligence, and intelligence is accumulated knowledge. I don't think it is intrinsically wise. People might say, oh, it's gonna become self-aware and everything. I do not believe that. It is a belief until I'm proven otherwise, but I believe that humans are the only ones with actual soul and consciousness and the only ones who are wise.

Now, there's a little story here, which is if intelligence knows that tomato is a fruit, wisdom knows not to put it in the fruit salad. Now, that's a simple little illustration that's not great, but I do think that true wisdom only comes from the Bible, and so I will stick to that. Now, there is a lot of wisdom out there but human made wisdom, is not to be compared, uh, with that of the God of the Bible.

So that's where I hold my anchor,

Christian: Great, thank you. We got to the end. Where can people find out more about you? Follow what you're doing, uh, get in touch, all of that good stuff.

Buzz: Well, I don't really do much online. I suppose LinkedIn is the, is the best place. Um, I am, uh, doing a series of workshops next year, as part of Hatch conference. But yeah, I suppose, I don't publish anything online. I don't have time. So yeah, I suppose it's more listening to podcasts when I get invited and, um, I am always available if people just message me on LinkedIn.

I, I will do my best to respond. I do love chatting to people. Um, and if I can be of help to anyone, I'd much prefer it in one-to-one settings and being more personal. I think that's a important thing.

Christian: Awesome. Yeah, we'll put all of that, the LinkedIn, the link to, to hatch conference in the show notes as well. Steve, this has been such a great, awesome, wholesome episode. Thank you very much for being on Design meets Business.

Buzz: Thank you very much for having me and, uh, I wish you all the very best

Christian: Thank you.​ ​