Without design leadership, growing companies can hit obstacles on the path to scale: but there’s an answer.
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here’s little point in running fast unless you’re running in the right direction. For growing companies, that translates to hiring leaders who can build the structures needed for the business to scale effectively. Design is one of those structures: it’s essential to get it right if you want to stand out in the market. But that only happens when design is strategically aligned with the business, and for that, you need leadership.A design leader ensures design efforts are aligned with business goals, customer needs and cross-functional initiatives in the company. Leaders provide a clear picture of how design drives and supports business success. They also offer clear direction for how design teams work with their product, marketing, and engineering counterparts. Without this strategic oversight and direction, companies risk scattering their design resources on low-impact initiatives: put another way, they risk working on the wrong things at the wrong time.
Design leaders establish a compelling vision that guides day-to-day execution and long-term innovation. When a vision is aligned to the strategy like I’ve described above, it clarifies the design team’s contribution to the business. Where design leadership is absent, we see designers struggling to make directed strategic and tactical impact.
Without a vision for design, companies risk making only incremental improvements to their product and as a result, they struggle to establish a unique identity in the market. Having a vision also makes it easier to staff up a design team, by giving candidates an inspiring reason to join.
Design thrives in an environment where creativity, collaboration and problem solving are nurtured. A design leader advocates for design at the leadership level, and demonstrates value in quantifiable terms to the business. They establish best practices and processes to ensure design succeeds at the company, and they develop and mentor design talent to foster high-performance teams.
The contribution a strong design leader makes is clear. The challenge is in hiring. Finding design leaders who can do what I’ve described here, who have built up the right skills and experience, isn’t easy, or cheap. (I’ll come back to the cost question later.)
As a growing company, it may be tough to recruit design leaders in competition with established companies offering senior executive Head of Design or VP roles. Leaders may be slow to take a risk on an up-and-coming player. But not having design leadership in place could hold back a company from scalable growth in the future.
How can they square this circle? One solution is not to think of design leadership as a full-time role but as a fractional one.
A fractional design leader is an external, independent expert who provides strategic design guidance to companies on an as-needed basis. Fractional design leaders are deployed in different ways: a business might need one to tackle a very specific challenge over a short period of time. Other times – most cases, in fact – they become a resource you engage with over longer periods. The advantage of longer-term engagements is the same advantage gained from hiring: familiarity, reliability, and a shared stake in company success.
It’s an arrangement that may suit both sides; design leaders with many years under their belts may prefer to spread the ‘risk’, so instead of going all in with one startup, they divide their time between different engagements. Growing companies that aren't yet certain about trajectory and direction de-risk the ‘big hire’ of choosing the right design leader, and can test the water, so to speak.
Retaining a fractional design leader brings three benefits fast:
They can quickly identify issues and implement solutions. As well as the strategic vision I talked about earlier, they’re also really useful for quick tactical wins. For instance, problems with culture and ways of working tend to show up in distinct, recognisable ways. Experienced leaders know what to look for; they can spot issues fast, identify the root causes and take immediate action to put things right. For example, where ways of working, or communication, are holding back growth, the leader can introduce frameworks to put this right. Where innovation and creativity is lacking, a leader can develop a culture where risks are rewarded, and the unit of value is learning.
Growth companies may have unclear hiring priorities, and leaders can apply their years of experience to help the business define the right roles to hire. This builds an efficient, scalable team with a development path, not a loose group that’s only put together to solve short-term problems. When they know the business roadmap, design leaders can determine if the team needs UX designers, system thinkers, or people with a background in industrial design. And with a nod to the trend everyone’s talking about, they’ll also have a view on how to integrate AI into the team.
A fractional design leader can mix the tactical and the strategic – spotting things to put right from day one, while also staying aligned with the bigger picture. Their experience in the market means they’ll often know designers in their network who are available to work on a particular challenge. And through coaching and mentoring, they can increase the value of the team that’s already in place.
In many cases, a fractional head of design is an approach that works for both sides.