A User-Centered Guide to Managing Creative Teams

1. The
Manager
as Tailor
A User-Centered Guide to
Managing Creative teams
Margaret Gould Stewart
User Experience Manager, Google Inc
What makes a great manager?
Bring out best in teams
Produce great work
Admired and trusted
Always thought that treating people equally was key
I’ve learned it’s not that simple
Has to be balanced with a very individualized approach to management
Insert photos of great managers, leaders, quotes of what great managers do
I want to talk to you today about some things I’ve learned over the years about what
makes a great manager. Not surprisingly, it turns out it’s not one thing, but many
possible things a leader can bring to a team to make them more effective, more
productive, happier.
Throughout my career, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about these issues and living
through some interesting case studies of the challenges that go along with team
management and leadership.
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2. Consider the tailor…
• Custom fits suit to needs
& specifications of client
• Assumes one size doesn’t
fit all
• Multiple fittings to get it
right
• Works to accentuate your
best features
• Works tirelessly to make
others look good
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
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3. It’s just a dress, right?
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
When I got married, I wanted to get something different. So I went the
vintage route; a store in NYC that no longer exists called Opal White.
They only sold vintage dresses in their original state. You had to
envision how these dresses could be cleaned and altered to be THE
dress for you.
They had an expert seamstress who would cut it up and remake it for
you, to your specifications and based on what she thought would work
for you, your body type, and your style.
This REALLY stressed my mom out. She couldn’t believe I didn’t want
to just get something off the rack. It was SO much safer and
predictable.
And I even didn’t know exactly what it was going to look like. There was
definitely a leap of faith involved.
In the end, I had a dress that was dense with history through the other
unknown brides who wore it. Even better, it was made expressly for me;
it fit me like a glove, and it is the only dress like it in the world. It can’t
even be reproduced because of the vintage lace and silk.
I think back to that seamstress, and how satisfying it must have been
for her to concoct completely unique dresses for each and every client
out of these amazing materials for what will be for many the most
important day of your life. . What a cool job.
Someday I’m going to get a custom made pair of cowboy boots.
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4. How does this transfer to a team
environment?
“I’m with you. I know
exactly how you’re
working.”
- Sam Mendes
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
I find this really inspiring.
How is he able to do this?
How well must he know each actor in order to do this? How well must
the actors know themselves?
How can we aspire to this level of custom tailored management and
coaching?
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5. What we’ll discuss today
• What’s universal, what’s unique to specific
people/teams/companies?
• How to take a custom approach to management
• Tools for gaining self-awareness for yourself and
your team
• Tools for assessing needs of your team
• How to distribute leadership across the team
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
How many of you currently or have previously had people reporting to
you?
Why talk about management theory at MX?
Creative people can be a challenge
Mutli-disciplinary teams
UX often not well understood by organizations
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6. Most people want….
• To be recognized
• To get feedback regularly
• To get coaching
• To feel ownership over their work
• To feel their manager is available to them
• To feel their manager is advocating for them
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
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7. It’s a new cocktail every time…
+ +
+
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
You plus the people you work with and for, plus the unique culture and
expectations and needs of the company you are a part of, at a specific
time in that company’s evolution
You can’t just come in and impose a model of management without
serious consideration of needs; what worked like gangbusters some
place else may very well bomb in your new role
And you can’t impose you and your communication and workstyle
preferences on others
What people need
What people want
How they work and communicate best
What skills and strengths you bring as their manager
The specific environment/company you are in, at this time in
that company’s evolution
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8. Tripod: Peer to Manager
• Employee # 12
• Rose in the ranks to manage former peers
• No management experience or training
• Grew team from 1 to 95
• Team very young and
inexperienced
• Very early days of the
internet; no best practices
to emulate
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
Team very young and inexperienced
Very early in days of internet; no best practices to emulate
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9. Wachovia: Hired Gun
• Hired from the outside to run Usability Group
• UX not the core business; evangelism was key
• Conservative, traditional management style
• 100,000 employees
• 7 team members; experienced and used to
having a manager
• Needed to scale UX practice to
increasingly critical online
channel
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
Needed to scale UX practice to increasingly critical online channel
Evangelism a big part of the role
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10. Google: It’s about the data, stupid
• Engineering-driven, crazy-smart colleagues
• Highly decentralized
• Healthy skepticism for managers AND for “Design”
• Huge teams
• Data driven
• Bottom up vs
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
On Day 1, I had 27 people reporting to me in three offices; no one
blinked an eye
Came after a period of enormous growth in UX
Hire a bunch of new managers from the outside
I came from the outside, too
Lots of uncertainty Lots of young people: their first job, first
manager; they didn’t know what to expect, what was fair to expect, what
they needed, and how to ask for what they needed
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11. Where it really began…
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
You can’t grow up as the youngest of nine kids and NOT end up with
fairly effective negotiation and interpersonal skills
Look how worried I am
Maybe I was empathizing with my big sister Susan, who is so visibly
miserable about having to be included in this with glasses AND braces
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12. A custom, tailored approach
• What are your strengths?
• What does your team really need, as
individuals and as a whole?
• What do you wish you could provide to your
team?
• What are your greatest challenges?
• What unique challenges face your
organization here and now?
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
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13. A User’s Guide to Tailoring
self-awareness needs analysis leadership plan
shared vocabulary
open communication
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
You plus the people you work with and for, plus the unique culture and
expectations and needs of the company you are a part of, at a specific
time in that company’s evolution
You can’t just come in and impose a model of management without
serious consideration of needs; what worked like gangbusters some
place else may very well bomb in your new role
And you can’t impose you and your communication and workstyle
preferences on others
13

14. self-awareness needs analysis leadership plan
Building self-awareness
• For yourself as a manager/leader
• For the individuals on your team
• For your team as a whole
• A real benefit to doing it together
• Strengths Finder
• Also: Workplace Big Five, Myers-Briggs
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
Greatest gift you can give yourself and those you work with
Understanding what your strengths are and a vocabulary to talk about
conflict
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15. self-awareness needs analysis leadership plan
How we used the data
• Voluntarily put data in spreadsheet
• Also plotted results across whole team
• People paired up based on difference or
similarity for mentoring, cross-training
• Some developing “User’s Guide to Me”
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
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16. self-awareness needs analysis leadership plan
Individuals shared their findings
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
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17. self-awareness needs analysis leadership plan
Mapping our strengths
Izabel
David Margaret
Jorge Denise
Kei
Jed Lisa Seonghee
Lucas
Lin
Ching-Hua
Damian Sasha
Arnold
Lars
Susan
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
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18. self-awareness needs analysis leadership plan
“User’s Guide to Me”
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
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19. self-awareness needs analysis leadership plan
Understanding needs of the individual
• Gathered insights through these various work
experiences and assessments
• Articulated some of the top needed and wanted
characteristics of managers
• Not exhaustive; meant as a dialogue tool
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
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20. self-awareness needs analysis leadership plan
Tools: The Cards
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
You can assess if you are doing the things that matter most to each
member of your team
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21. self-awareness needs analysis leadership plan
Tools: The Cards
• Which three are your strengths?
• Which three do you think your team most
wants/needs from you?
• Which three do you wish people would use to
describe you?
• Which are trouble areas for you?
• Which three do you want from your
manager?
• Any traits you’d add to the pack?
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
Are there any that you said your team need from you that you think are
trouble areas for yourself? Remember these, and I’ll come back to it in
just a few minutes
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22. self-awareness needs analysis leadership plan
Tools: The Checklist
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
You can assess if you are doing the things that matter most to each
member of your team
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23. self-awareness needs analysis leadership plan
Infinite customization?
YIKES!
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
You need to offer different things to each member of your team, based
on their unique needs
Plus be a different person to each primary stakeholder, and even to
your own boss
You can’t be all things to all people, and even worse, you can’t always
provide everyone’s top needs
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24. self-awareness needs analysis leadership plan
You can’t meet everyone’s needs…
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
It doesn’t always go well. Even after 15 years, I muck it up on a fairly
regular basis.
These was a usability engineer that I once managed not so long ago;
he was really bright but very quiet. I guess you could say he was
introverted. Now, one of the things I try to do regularly for my team is to
provide them with recognition and rewards when they’ve done a great
job on something. This usability engineer has just completed a really
tough study, slogged through data with impressive speed, and came
out with some really impressive and high impact findings that the
project team heard and responded to. Awesome. So I thought, I’ll do
something special for him. At the next staff meeting, I decided that I
would acknowledge his great work by calling him up in front of the
team, which was nearly 80 people, and providing him with thanks and a
little gift certificate. I mean, heck, that’s what I’d want MY boss to do for
me. I love public praise. Everyone does, right? So I did. He didn’t look
super excited, but I thought, well, he’s shy, but deep inside, I know he
appreciates that I am giving him the recognition he wants.
Later in the day, he pulled me aside, and he thanked me for
acknowledging him. He said, ‘I know you meant well, and I do like being
recognized. But when you called me up in front of that crowd, I thought I
was going to throw up. I mean I literally though I was going to be
physically ill. Please don’t even do that again to me.”
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25. self-awareness needs analysis leadership plan
You can’t meet everyone’s needs…
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
There are some silver linings in this story, though. First of all, he told
me about the impact that I had on him. I am SO grateful to him for that.
While I felt, and still feel awful about what happened, it was an
incredible learning experience for him. I thanked him at the time, and try
to do so any time someone gives me feedback like this. It takes a lot of
guts to tell you boss that he or she is not doing something the way they
should. And as the boss, it’s hard not to get defensive. I’d like to think
that he came to be about it because I had consistently sent the
following messages:
•I’m not good at everything; no one is
•I want to understand what works best for you and then whenever
possible I want to do those things
•I want to hear from you when things work and when they don’t
Something I’ve been dealing with more recently at Google has to do
with what what the Strength Finder assessment calls my “Positivity”.
<insert descritption>
Now, I’ve always been a fairly peppy person. My dad kept all of my
report cards from when I was a kid, and almost without exception, they
all say something like this: 25

26. self-awareness needs analysis leadership plan
The “Super Friends” model of leadership
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
We’re all good at different things, and no one of us is good at
everything
We try to rely on each other to help in areas where we aren’t as strong
I brought Bob in to a discussion with Bill about how much coding
designers should have to do
I brought Walter into a meeting where we were discussing various
approaches to prioritization
What you “lack” can be found in other people - on your team or your
peers - leadership opportunities that add value to the team; filling a
need you can’t
When you admit you can’t do it all, you allow others to as well
A huge sense of relief to people to stop the charade that they are good
at everything
Doesn’t mean you don’t have to work to address areas for
development, especially if they are critical to the job
If you need to find out the truth, you’re gonna go to Wonder woman, not
Aqua man, am I right?
I once had a women take a leadership role on my team. She’s was so
talented, but she had a hard time dealing with confrontation. It caused
challenges in building her credibility with stakeholders she deals with
and her ability to advocate for the team. Sometimes, you need to get
scrappy to get things done. We talked about different ways in which she 26

27. Why doesn’t everyone do it?
• It’s hard work; easier to take a one size fits all
approach
• Teams often lack shared vocabulary to talk about
these things
• It’s time consuming to know people well enough
to do this well
• Takes continual focus not to project your own
needs and ways of working on other people
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
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28. Benefits of tailoring
• Doesn’t just tolerate difference; explicitly
values it
• Allows individuals to express their unique
needs/wants from their manager
• Allows everyone to be transparent about their
strengths and things they can’t easily provide
• Draws on strengths of whole team, not just
manager
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
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29. Resources and tools…
• Self awareness tools:
– Strengthsfinder
– Big Five Workplace
– Myers Briggs
• Needs analysis tools for managers/leaders:
– The cards
– The worksheet
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
We had a professional facilitator come and help the team work through
individual and team analysis, but the book also provides really good
ideas and specific guides for managing people with the various strength
areas
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30. Thank you!
Margaret Gould Stewart
mstewart@google.com
Margaret Gould Stewart - The Manager as Tailor - Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience - April 21, 2008
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