028 : Unlocking Your Team’s Creative and Collaborative Potential with Alison Rand
Diversity in the workplace is more than skin deep. A company’s leaders should consider what the end-to-end experience looks like for minorities in their team. It’s not enough to check boxes. Achieving true inclusion and belonging means thinking deeply about the experiences of those who are different. Today’s guest warns that businesses who limit their push for diversity at the surface-level are allowing isolation, loneliness, and exclusion to continue to exist as part of their culture. “It’s an underlying, systemic issue,” she says. “If you’re not addressing it from that perspective, then you’re not solving the problem.”
Today’s guest speaks on Design Operations as an exercise in culture design. Changing communities—and, by extension, human behavior—is really about changing cultures. “At the heart of Design Operations is transformational work. It’s about changing the way we work and the way we approach problems.”
Steve Chaparro and Alison Rand discuss how you can maximize your team’s capacity for creativity and collaboration by creating environments that encourage the best work from a diverse group of people. Stay tuned.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- How Alison’s identity as a Latina informs the way she shows up for work
- The current state of diversity in the workplace
- Design “as a place that seemed to be a fit for all misfits”
- How Design Operations has a “significant social impact” on the way we hire for diversity
- When to incorporate Design Operations thinking into your team
- The relationship between People Operations and Design Operations
- Key challenges that design cultures are experiencing today
- Characteristics of younger generations in the workplace
Resources Mentioned in this episode:
About the Guest:
Alison Rand is the Senior Director of Design Operations at InVision, Co-Founder at DesignOps Assembly, and DesignOps Community Curator at Rosenfeld Media. Her passion is to create cross-disciplinary teams and environments with operational structures that enable them to pursue the best creative work of their lives.
She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Art History, Criticism and Conservation at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Sponsor for this episode:
This podcast is brought to you by Culture Design Studio. This is where I help creative organizations transform their cultures from being controlling to being collaborative. If you want to know more about I provide facilitation and coaching for your creative team, reach out to me at CultureDesignStudio.com.
This episode is also brought to you by DesignThinkers Group, USA, an innovation support. To learn more about DesignThinkers Group, go to DesignThinkersGroup.us.
Full Transcript: Powered by Otter.ai
Announcer
Welcome to the Culture Design Show where we feature conversations with leaders and thinkers who are passionate about culture and design. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Steve Chaparro
This podcast is brought to you by culture design studio. This is where I help creative organizations transform their cultures, from being controlling to being collaborative. Now, here are some of the things that I’ve learned. Your creative talent demands a co creative culture in order to produce their best work. But there’s a problem. So let’s see if we can recognize some of these signs. There’s no framework to move your culture forward. You have high turnover and low morale. There’s increasing toxicity across all levels. There’s team engagement and satisfaction that are on the decline. There’s a misalignment between the employer brand and the employee experience and there’s poor communication about expectations and values. So if you want to learn more about how I provide facilitation and coaching for your creative team, reach out to me at culture design studio.com
My guest today is Alison Rand. She is the design operations leader whose work combines strategic design and personnel management systems with project management expertise to enable design at scale. Currently, she serves as senior director, head of design operations at Invision, but prior to this, she was the head of design operations at Automattic working with John Maeda, Director of program management also at Frog and director of program planning at Hot Studio, which was acquired by Facebook. Her passion is to create cross disciplinary teams and environments with operational structures that enable them to pursue the best creative work of their lives. Alison, welcome to the Culture Design Show.
Alison Rand
Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
Steve Chaparro
Well, I am grateful to Ashleigh Axios, who suggested and brought up your name. She said, after we had our conversation on the podcast, he says you definitely need to talk to Alison. She’s very passionate about the very same things that you are as well. So let’s like, Ashley, thank you. Well, I wanted to start at you know, as I always do with the guests, and I just am hungry, fascinated to learn about people’s professional journey. So I’d love to hear what your journey has been like.
Alison Rand
My journey has been at this point, it’s been pretty long, a little meandering. But, but I’ve come to the realization that it’s actually been made so in a strange way, when I was in the middle of it, I guess, you know, like a decade into it, it didn’t seem to make a lot of sense. But I, you know, studied Fine Art and Art History and needed to get a job when I graduated from college. So I learned how to code worked at IBM for a bit. This was all in North Carolina where I went to college, moved back to New York, learned what became a webmaster. And that was a thing. And I would say, that was coding for a long time. Really getting into all of the internet’s stuff I would say jack of all trades real, you know, just like I had my hands and everything because at the time being a webmaster was basically like, okay, you have to do everything from like 10 take all of this information and make a website. And and then over time, I started to transition more into that overseer role. And as a producer.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah.
Alison Rand
Because I was much more interested in the end to end process of the work. And then it was about, you know, I would also Yeah, about a decade into my career when I moved more deeply into consulting and started working a huge when it was not huge. I was like employee number 29 or something. And it was one of the first times that I had heard about UX design. So I spent a good amount of time there and then from from there transitioned over to hot studio when I really started to learn from the CEO and founder Maria Giduice’s about human centered design.
Steve Chaparro
Which by the way, she’s was on the podcast as well about three episodes back. So she will be that will be posted that wonderful lady loved her.
Alison Rand
Yeah, amazing. Amazing. It’s so honor to call her a friend and mentor, cheerleader. And so I worked at Hot studio for a for about four years helping develop the New York studio and really just kind of immersing myself in the world of Human Centered Design. And after, you know, I think it was about the time that hot studio was beginning to move towards the acquisition by Facebook, when I was at a crossroads and trying to decide if I wanted to go back to school for get a master’s in designing for social impact because that was really a lot of my passion was was really there and we did a lot of that work at that studio. Even though I was also at HUD studio just you know, I was director of program planning, but I was helping do all the operations for building the studio from you know, hiring to client management to actual business. separations and even just like facility operations, all of the things. I wanted to get deeper into design.
And so I was considering just leaving it all behind and going back to school to get this master’s program. And at the same time, I was recruited by frog design and I felt like working for a company like frog to help lead a discipline would actually give me the education that I would have. I went paid for it for a master’s program, because there was so much social impact work, but it was just, I really wanted to learn all of the different aspects of design. There was so so much like, you know, mechanical engineering and industrial designers and it was just like, you know, all of the facets Yeah, so, so I was at frog for six years. Leading program planning. They’re the kind of thinking for the New York studio and for the region, the US region. I’m thinking a lot about, you know, engagement strategy and the culture of our organization and building, you know, better processes and practices and foundations for our teams and our designers as well as our relationships with our clients. And then I transitioned into tech and was recruited by John Maeda, it was an opportunity I could not..
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, anytime to work with him, right?
Alison Rand
Yeah, truly. So I went with him to go and dig deeper into this nascent discipline of design operations. And that was an incredible learning experience working in a distributed organization. You know, I’ve been doing remote work for the last two and a half years at this point. Figuring out how to build design teams scale design, all in space, with with a partner and And, and, and mentor and sponsor like john was just incredibly that you know probably one of the most valuable experiences of my life but then I decided I you know, I wanted to transition I wanted to transition back towards a much more design centric organization automatic was very engineering driven. And so I felt like I wanted to be back in my kind of frog hot studio DNA land and transitioned over to envision which is where I am now, with a similar role of heading up design operations and, you know, building out all of the frameworks for you know, better processes and design system platforms and culture design for designers and, you know, across engineering product and design.
Steve Chaparro
The reason I was so geeked out about having this conversation is because you have had this career with I mean, I I can say that my journey has been sort of meandering itself if we want to describe it that way and in don’t know that I necessarily had a master plan of where I wanted to go. And each each, you know, decision was a calculated, you know, decision from a master plan level, I think we can discover a lot. And there’s an ebb and flow. And sometimes there’s this emergent discovery of self. As we go through that what were some lessons that you learned along the way in terms of issues that became really important to you as you navigated your, your journey through these companies?
Alison Rand
Well, I think a lot of the things that I learned that have remained really true to the things I feel passionate about are building community and building these kind of cohesive, connected experiences for the people that we work with, day in and day And the people that I, you know, I’m there to support. I think about all of the work that I’ve done as process design. My customers are all of the internal people that I work with. And so I am really passionate about, you know, just building healthy environments, happy environments, fun environments. Those are the things that make me feel really excited about the work that I’m doing, because I feel that it’s important work. That it’s much there’s much more to it than, you know, the 10,000 foot view has like such impact, such organizational impact. And the 1000 foot view is like, also has that day to day kind of tactical impact of just making people’s lives easier. So I think that that’s been the common thread for me throughout most of my career.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, that’s great. I was searching as I was preparing for our conversation today. One of the things that really stood out to me was some of your writings on medium. And there was one, you mentioned the word process. And there’s this article that you wrote process by design. And it really generated a lot of interest and just questions for me that I’d love to ask you. And I think one of those was, how has your identity as a Latina, informed the way that you show up in your work?
Alison Rand
Yeah, it’s an important question. And this is one I’ve been exploring for for a while, not as long as I would have liked but, you know, the full exploration I guess, is in that article, which took me a long time to get out or to get to that place really, you know, like, just like really like going deep and going back ancestry and internally all of that stuff. You know, I have always been I’m very familiar with The concept of being an only working in this industry and having been working in this industry for like 20 years at this point, being an only woman but certainly being an only woman of color. Over the years, as I’ve grown and matured and gained more confidence, I’m able to look back and see like how visible I was in a certain way and how all of these kind of like passive micro aggressions were in my daily experience.
And so when I think about the importance of where I am, how I’ve gotten here and what my role means to an organization, it is about changing the face of what our organizations look like and bringing, you know, using my platform To, to raise other people up and bring in that, like diverse and inclusive perspective. I, you know, I was talking to somebody about this earlier today I said, I remember, you know, there was times when I was in the room and you know, as a consultant, and I would just like, bang my fists on the table and be like, how are we serving our customers in the best way, when we look nuts, this room looks nothing like our customers, like I am the only person who’s different here. So, you know, this, to me, is incredibly important. And I don’t think that we can do any good work if we aren’t being reflective of our communities. Yeah, and I you know, like and not and this meritocracy needs to change and that is only changed with people like us.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, it you know, I could say that in some cases, I have had somewhat of a similar experience. So much. Yeah, as far as being a Latino, like growing up in school in Michigan, there were parts of Michigan that I grew up that I was, I was literally looking at my seventh grade yearbook the other day. And I was one of three people, persons of color in my class. And one of them was my cousin. And, and I remembered coming from an urban school to a country school, and people thinking I was exotic. You know, I, I don’t know what that meant in that particular timeframe. In other cases, someone thought that I was a Chinese exchange student. And like, I, I, you know, just the frustration of people just in some cases, it was just the ignorance, naivete.
In other cases, it was a lot of what you’re describing in terms of just not being not having a voice and I would say in some cases, the way I explained perience that, I could say that I was able to handle it somewhat well, to the point that I didn’t think it was an issue. Like maybe in my mind, I minimized it. But I didn’t realize that not everyone’s experience was like my experience. And so for me, if I didn’t want to, if I didn’t feel like I don’t need to talk about this, because it wasn’t a big issue for me growing up. Well, for others it was, and for people like us to see us having a conversation and talking and platforming, whatever. I think it’s more important sometimes for others than it is for us as individuals. That’s something that I’m kind of trying to figure out.
Yeah, absolutely. I I totally agree. And I feel as though I’ve been incredibly fortunate to and nothing has been handed to me. I have worked super hard to get to this place. But you know, I grew up in New York City. All of my friends were like, my mixed race I never experienced anything different. I thought everything was super normal and like Kumbaya until I went to college in North Carolina and then it was just like, Whoa, this is not okay. But, um, so But regardless, I feel like I have worked really hard to get to this place, I still have a long way to go, hopefully and my career trajectory, I would be wasting my experience if I wasn’t supporting and building others, other people, you know, and creating these different types of environments. Because you know, for the for the few fortunate that have been lead in the door, we really just need to keep widening that.
Steve Chaparro
Even the way you say lead in the door like we were the little the small handful of people. In your article, you cite an HBR article. It’s a quote from the value of belonging at work and I want to read this quote And I want to hear why this meant so much to you, as it says, to feel left out is a deeply human problem, which is why its consequences carry such haft, and why its causes are so hard to root out, even in the healthiest workplaces. What is it about that quote regarding belonging that resonates with you so deeply?
Alison Rand
Well, because I feel like the conversation is so the conversation about diversity is, in my opinion, has been incredibly surface level. And a lot of it is about checking certain boxes. But when you really think about inclusion, belonging, equity, like what does that mean? What is the experience like for somebody? If you’re thinking about it as a designer, like what is the what does that end to end experience look like? For One who’s different for some, or you know, in any way, not even like not, you know, visibly different. And if you’re just checking that diversity box, but you’re not really thinking deeply about the experience, you know, the isolation, the loneliness, and the exclusion will still exist, because you’re not actually rooting out the problems. It’s an underlying systemic issue. And if you’re not addressing it from that perspective, then you’re not solving the problem. And so that’s why I feel that’s why that quote, resonated with me, because then also, like, there’s so much conversation around belonging and I don’t know, you know, like, I get, like, super cynical about all of that stuff. And really, you know, just because, you know, I think if you a lot of those conversations don’t come from the people who are actually not experiencing that. You know what I’m saying like, yeah, and and i think Not a lot of people are actually walking the talk.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, I feel in some cases that the D, E and I conversation is almost what the Corporate Social Responsibility conversation was 10 years ago, where it it looks good. From an optics perspective. It is checking off the boxes, it’s good for business to have these conversations. But if they’re not really looking deeply to be, you know, to fix those systemic problems, then it’s really not something that they that is genuine. But that it is more, you know, possibly lip service or branding marketing than it is something that they truly believe in.
Alison Rand
Mm hmm. Yeah, agreed. Because even if you dig even just scratched the surface in a lot of those conversations, you won’t find anything different.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah. Well, let’s go to the topic of design. In this article. You talked about how, in a sense, you found design and you describe it as a place that seemed to be a fit for all misfits. What about this place resonated with you to find your home and your community in design?
Alison Rand
Well for me, because I have, you know, I, in that piece that I wrote, I come from, like, what I feel like is, you know, a very diverse background of experiences and just to heritage and ancestry. And I grew up in New York City and like the 70s and the 80s. And my experience was so rich in art and culture and grit, you know, and, you know, when I went to college, it was kind of like finishing school to study art history and fine art, but I have found myself to have such You know, I have these very, like very focused type A operational skills. But I also have a very expansive way of thinking about you know, complex issues and human behavior and I just never really knew where I belonged or even like, what’s my path I had imagined at some point I was going to be like restoring frescoes in Italy, you know, like and I romantic, deeply studied Yeah. 21 years old, that’s it, that’s what I’m gonna do.
But then you got to get a job but, but when I started getting more into design into the design world, I just found I felt like I found my people because especially at Hot studio and at frog, because there was I was surrounded by people who were just curious about everything and just continually pushing themselves to grow and learn and you You know, think about crazy things in the future and be really expansive while also making really amazing things that are meaningful and ask like, oh, like there is a place for someone like me who’s who’s like, very good at this sort of structural process kind of stuff, but also can have, like, you know, those broader, expansive conversations about, you know, strategy or the future up. I remember saying one point when I was working at frog as I wish we would just get, like a proposal request that was about like, just making a website, because every single proposal request was like the future app. Yeah. You know, imagine the future of this. And I was just like, Ah, it was always so much hard work in my brain and for all of us collectively to like, do this work. But it takes a certain kind. Yeah, that’s what I meant by it.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah. No, that’s a great way of saying, I think that there’s so much involved in the discipline of design and then there’s so many things Sub disciplines within design, you know, like design operations and all these other things. And I think it’s just really fascinating to me to see, you know, as, as designers, you know, because not every great designer is a great leader. Right? But there are some things that just because you are a great producer, doesn’t mean that you have emotional intelligence, the social awareness, to be able to lead a group of people. And, and so those are the things that I am fascinated to hear that when we’re looking at, you know, this cross section of design and culture, as is the name of this show. I love to hear about that. Speaking of which, so there’s a paragraph that you wrote that really just excited me because it it just speaks to the the crux of what we’re talking about here. So I’m going to read it. I feel strongly that there is a significant social impact design, and design operations can have in the way we hire and think about the major of our organizations. In many way design its design operations as a discipline is an exercise in culture design. Now that we have arrived, how are we actualizing change, a willingness to question our new and evolved environments will expose the cracks in the foundation, the gaps in our understanding of difference, bringing self awareness to our internal experience that values and prioritizes learning, compassion, and a propensity towards meaningful engagement can drive the change organizations often desperately need. I think you just wrote my Manifesto.
Alison Rand
I’m always writing a friggin Manifesto. Yeah, Take it. Do it
Steve Chaparro
So what are you what what what led you Because obviously, I don’t think you started thinking this. What What was it about your journey that led to you know, let’s call it a manifesto. In many ways, design operations as a discipline is an exercise And culture design. What did you mean by that?
Alison Rand
Um, because, you know, it is the only, you know, there’s a reason why there’s design in front of operations, because there is, you know, I talk about this all the time with my partner and collaborator, Jackie fry, Human Centered operations, right? And so if we’re thinking about it from that lens, we’re thinking about what it actually means to create change. And if you’re really thinking deeply about change, and community and human behavior, then you’re really thinking about what it takes to change a culture and, and from the experiences that I’ve had and design operations. You know, I’ve and even as a consultant when I started, we started doing much More like organizational transformation work, change management, the work that the at the heart of the work for design operations, it is transformational work is about changing the way the way we work and the way we approach problems and asking question and the questions that we ask.
And so, that is in and of itself, really about changing the culture of an organization and you start in the design community, you start in the design org, which is generally more you know, accepting of change, and you know, definitely right for experimental like cultural stuff. But if you’ve worked in communities of designers, and from my experience at frog or hot studio, like those cultures are so specific, and they’re so there’s a What I was talking about before, you know, they’re so they’re full of curiosity and exploration and experimentation and, and, you know, a fearlessness to just like run into just try as well as support one another. And I think what it takes to get to the next place and supportive, you know, his design operations can support that is to support create, like safe environments for people to be able to do that kind of work, you know, I believe firmly in psychological safety for as a foundation for cultural, cultural design and culture change, while also helping kind of proved the, the, like viability of those types of cultures and what it could mean for a business.
And so, so I guess, yeah, it’s like a long, rambling way, saying, you know, we’ve talked, I’ve talked and thought a lot about the future of design operations and I can like, go on along tension, it’s about all the different ways in which it could take shape. But so much of it is rooted again in social fabric, community. cognitive and behavioral neuroscience and like really just thinking differently about how we build our organization.
Steve Chaparro
This podcast is brought to you by DesignThinkers Group and innovation support firm. I am joined today by Marc Bolick, who is the managing partner. Welcome, Marc.
Marc Bolick
Thanks, Steve. It’s great to be part of the Culture Design Show
Steve Chaparro
Marc, a lot of people are curious about what makes design thinking useful for culture change. Can you give us your perspective on that?
Marc Bolick
Yeah, that’s a great question. And Steve is, you know, design thinking is a problem solving methodology that’s based on building empathy for people. And it’s, I think through that building empathy for the people that you’re serving that gives people a purpose. to their work, and I think there could be no better foundation for building a people centered culture than that.
Steve Chaparro
Mark. I think I agree with that. That’s the reason why we do work together folks, if you want to learn more about design thinkers group go to designthinkersgroup.us.
Steve Chaparro
For those that are maybe new to the term and discipline of design operations, how would you describe that for folks?
Alison Rand
Oh, my gosh, I try to do this all the time for my father. So design operations, again, is this you know, there there’s there’s a couple of different lenses to it. And there’s a couple of different levers that organizations that organizations pull when they bring in design operations, but for the most part design operation exists because does Teams are growing inside tech companies inside fortune 500 companies, fortune 100 companies. And for better or worse, you need to figure out ways that you can actually scale that process, as well as how to nurture and grow and develop design designers. And I think that’s fairly specific, although, over time, it can apply much more broadly.
So so I think design operations is really about creating a best in class design team. So that means like, what kind of what kind of, you know, systems are you putting in place to support and develop your designers? What kind of processes are you putting in place to make to facilitate the best work from the like end to end process of just doing the daily work? And what are the platforms that you could build to help scale out. And so you know, you want this work because design is not just about designers and pixel polishing capital D design is about, you know, end to end process, that platform piece is really important. So design ops kind of pulls all of those different levers. And that’s sort of the framework in which I think about it now, it’s like, it’s definitely of our world, you know, yeah, working on that elevator pitch.
Steve Chaparro
So that but I think, is, I think the question for me it comes next is, is it at a certain point in the lifecycle of a design team, building that design team that the function of design operations comes in, you have to be at a certain level or can small design teams, small agencies, develop that focus in their work
Alison Rand
Um, I, you know, I it’s, it’s you Usually a I’m a big fan of the, you know, design maturity index. And, and in that index, they talk a lot about, you know, at which level of maturity design operations comes in. But, um, and so all you know, a lot of times and it is in some ways there’s a lot of a lot of friction around the conversation to design operations just because there is some belief that it takes the joy out of design, you know, by adding all this like processing structure, but then those the the flip side, then this belief that it brings the joy back. So I think it’s smaller design, teams, designers are doing everything and you know, and we’d be probably don’t need design operations at that scale, but it’s, but it’s when you really want to like just like add that superpower to your engine, and you’re looking to really scale. That’s when you start to add sign ups, but you Have to actually really have belief and support from the top. Because Because of what it actually what it means to actually realize that so, you know, you can bring in a design ops person and I think oftentimes this happens is people get hired as a design ops leader, but really, they’re just a program manager. They’re just helping figure out how to like do projects and getting it it’s like a glorified project management from a design lens. And that’s fine.
But, but the work that I believe is in you know, inherent to like design operations at scale requires a certain, probably a certain team size and definitely a certain level of organizational maturity or the desire to get to the next level of organizational maturity and having that design ops and or an design leader working in partnership together to get there, you know, and like and again, lots of places, you know, like, not everybody needs design operations. It’s definitely not a thing that like it. Every organization needs and every organization with the design team needs. But it’s really the question of like, Where do you want to go with your design? org?
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, you moderated a conversation last week with design ops leaders. And the question came up during that tech conversation was, it seems like the way some of the things that were being described as sort of the focus of design Ops, one person asked, Well, isn’t that what HR should be in charge of or like the people ops and it seems to me like it is somewhat of a, of an overlap. You know, what some people might call people operations or people operations within design, or when we talk about enablement, there’s, in sales organizations, their sales enablement, teams that actually help the sales team do their best work, but providing that environment processes, assets, resources, all these different things. What What is that relationship between people culture and design that is it at that Venn diagram that design ops kind of sits in?
Alison Rand
With people operations?
Steve Chaparro
Just saying people culture and design, it’s almost like a Venn diagram of sorts.
Alison Rand
Yeah, I mean, I would say it’s more it’s probably the Venn diagram is more about like people process is that people process platform? Yeah. And the design ops is kind of like the center that could end and and, and, and if you would even, like scale out a little bit further, you know, there’s this like, the Uber wheel of transformation.
It’s funny because when I the same time I was interviewing for the job at automatic as head of design operations, I was also interviewing for a job as head of people at another company and and I was, I was really excited about both of them, obviously, but like, not obviously I was trying to get the the head of people roll, they were super interested in me because of the way that I was approaching that people work.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah.
Alison Rand
And it wasn’t quite right. Because the HR work is really so much of that should be focused on, you know, all of like legal and benefits and all of those things that HR kind of handles that, like, I’m not interested in doing any of that stuff. But if you have, you know, write me and I’m an envision now and we have an incredibly strong people, operations team, and they are our designers experienced designers on that team. And so they are thinking about, like the lifecycle of an employee experience, which is incredibly important. And yeah, a super relevant conversation right now is how is that your customer experience? You know, how does your employee experience mirror your customer experience? And so I it’s so good to have relationships with those people and I work really well with our people operations team, but our work like there. It’s definitely Separate.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, it’s I had a conversation I don’t know if you know Mark Levy he was the head of employee experience at Airbnb and he was talking about how closely he worked with the the CMO for the customer experience side of things. He was bringing in the employee experience side of things and then there was all these other things even facilities in terms of the physical environment of their employees, that there was so much as you as you kind of mentioned in your your bio, you the cross disciplinary approach to just creating great people experiences regardless of whether they’re internal or external. It’s really multis you know two sides of the same coin in some respects.
Alison Rand
Totally. Yeah. 100% which is why you know, when I whenever I kind of wax poetic with any of my other design ops like friends it’s about the future of And you know, where are we going? Meaning like me or anybody else who’s in the more senior position in design operations, and I think a lot of it is going to be just integrated into kind of overarching operation operational roles or, you know, employee experience.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah. Well, if, as you, you know, you’ve been at these firms and you’ve been exposed to people from many other firms around the world. What are some key challenges that design cultures are experiencing today? That one hand design operations I would imagine could be part of that solution, but just in general, when you think of design culture, and then the culture of design, what are some key things that we need to address moving forward
Alison Rand
Well, um, I do think that design has become an echo chamber, hashtag design, Twitter. So, that is that trend is problematic to me, because there is a lot of the us versus them conversation. And in my opinion like it is that is the absolute wrong path to be going down because it’s really should be much more about the collective we and that in order to do the best work, it has to be about the collective. So So I design operations, I feel like is incredibly important in bridging that divide. If it’s like I always, you know, call myself a design diplomat. Because, you know, every every time any, you know, with be with clients or my work in in tech, I try my very best to build relationships across every part of the organization, not just in design, like real strong relationships. So I think I think that’s one of them.
And I also think that, you know, there’s a there and that is just maybe similarly, this friction and siloed pneus that tends to happen in organizations as they grow. Yeah, is definitely something that we need to solve for. And so we need more role like experiential roles, horizontal roles, that kind of that can speak across and I believe that we need to embrace hybrid types of people as well as well instead of you know, because so much of this is now being taught in like ivory tower type of, you know, institutions and people come out and they’re like, super super buttoned up like design school people but but there is a there is a real important to diversity of thought, diversity of experience, you know, real grit and resilience that it takes that it takes to actually be okay with failure and change and what it means to do the good work. That that I’ve seen a lot of designers being afraid of, especially the younger ones, then, you know, so those are some of the things that I that I think about and see and try to work with. And so, you know, we don’t start to just become like any other type of discipline. Yeah, where we’re not, you know, we just are like, not looking out but just looking to in.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, yeah. Last question here. before we sign off it is, you know, I’m smack dab right in the middle of the Gen X generation. And, you know, I’ve been I’ve been in it for a while. And I know, sort of the frustration and anger that I have felt throughout my career and how that’s molded and shaped how I do things and want to, you know, show up in industry. But there is, as you mentioned, the younger folks that have come up behind us, you know, maybe just getting into the industry, maybe they’re five years in, maybe they’re 10 years in. What, what is different about the younger generation of designers come in coming in, what are they willing to tolerate? And what are they not willing to tolerate?
Alison Rand
Oh, gosh, part one. Because I don’t want to speak for it.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s fair. That’s fair. But what have been your observations, whether or not you’re speaking on behalf of them, you know, you’re leading teams and so you can you know, what have they expressed to you about one of what some of those things are
Alison Rand
I think that there’s a certain level of impatience that I’ve seen in what it takes to actually grow and develop. And so I also, I think about a lot about resourcing talent, and where people should go what they should be working on as well as building out skills matrices. And and I have this thing that I built called the personal professional mission, which is really kind of a hybrid way of approaching how someone can build a roadmap for their path. And so I think what I’ve seen is a lot of that tension around what it takes to grow in this like, lack of professional maturity when it comes to having those conversations and self awareness around what, what we don’t want you we don’t know, you know. So, I do think that there is also you know, on the flip side, just this, this Incredible desire to, in some ways, run into the fire and, and and just like do the work but and I think that’s really important too because design can become incredibly measured and slow.
So you kind of need those balance that balance but i but i think that yeah there is a real impatience that’s the thing I see the most up is the impatience of like, of what it takes to just I just want to get to the next level I just want to get to this level so give me the box of things I need to check off so I can get to the next level and you know, what I want to see with people growing into the levels is that like just a much more holistic way of thinking self awareness. You know, this desire to learn and grow from others designer to be desired to be a collaborator, continue contributor, all of the things you know, and like and, and I don’t think this is that unusual. You know, it’s like, I remember when I was young, and I was like, I just want to be a manager. Yeah. You know, like, I just think that that’s gonna make me really important. And like, you know what I mean, and so, but but I also remember as a Gen X or like, I didn’t expect things to happen quickly in the way I see the expectation is now.
Steve Chaparro
Yeah, I mean, I had no shortage of ambition for myself coming up. And I was actually surprised when actually I was able to accomplish those some of those things earlier than usual. But I think to your point, there was a certain patience that may be, you know, if you had that maybe I had that as well. But there, we definitely had ambition, that ambition was definitely there. But I think I mean, that’s a very common with your response about the lack of patience in some cases, or maybe pigs we have the ability to get to a certain place. You know, we can just create a new agency if we want, if I’m not happy with how things are in my own way. firm. Yeah, this has been great. I really appreciate you spending some time with me. These are like I feel like we could have long hours of conversation about these things in the future. And I look forward to touching base again, folks.
Steve Chaparro
My guest today has been Alison Rand, she is design operations leader. She is the senior director, head of design operations at Invision. Alison, if people want to reach out to you or at least learn more about you and your work, where can they find you?
Alison Rand
They can find me on Twitter. So elsewhere and one L. and AlisonRand.com.
Steve Chaparro
All right. Thank you very much, Alison. It’s been a blast.
Alison Rand
Thank you, Steve. This has been super fun.
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