Craft Your Leadership Plan with These 5 P's

Originally published 20 Mar 2025. Lightly revised 9 June 2025.

Recently, a head of design shared with me how their UX metrics work was being taken up by their product management partners, to be placed on their dashboards. She shared how this upset her team, and, in digging into it with her, I realized it was because they'd defined themselves by this work, and weren't sure what next to work on. So, we talked about developing a robust quality framework, which this team could own.

Design leaders need an agenda, a specific point of view on the change they'd like to see. But an agenda is insufficient. There needs to be a plan to realize that agenda. Without a plan, the team treads water, overwhelmed by inbound requests, and uncertain what meaningful initiatives they could undertake next.

A few times in my Thought Partnership work with heads of design, I've scribbled on my whiteboard a rough leadership plan to give shape to what we've discussed, like this:

Seeing this pattern repeat spurred me to architect a more formal framework that can be used by design leaders to structure their thinking, and communicate with others the steps needed to realize their agenda.