[TMA] New UX/Design Leadership Masterclass Offerings

Forgive me for turning this issue of The Merholz Agenda into a marketing platform, but I have a new offering that I'm excited (and anxious!) to share.

My UX/Design Leadership masterclass for mid-career design leaders, now called UX/Design Leadership Demystified, has until now only been offered in 'realtime' formats—either live over Zoom, or in-person. This excluded many people from the material. I've spent the past month planning, revising, recording, and finessing the class, such that I can now offer it in two new formats.

Format 1: Independent

• ~3 hours of pre-recorded video lessons
• Downloadable deck of all slides
• 6 Downloadable activity templates
• Articles about defining quality, conducting critique, and other key concerns for UX/Design Leadership
• Pointers to additional resources for those who want to dig deeper

I'm offering version this through Thinkific, a platform designed to support self-driven learning. This option is for those who just want the content, and don't want to wait for a conveniently timed cohort (see next format).
It costs $249, and you can learn more and register here.

I'm quite excited how this format allows me to make this material available to anyone, anywhere, at anytime, and at a reasonable price point for professional education.

Format 2: Cohort

I have been curious about cohort-based courses for years now, and so am happy to have finally built one. The cohort offers:

• everything in Independent
  plus
• 2 weeks of learning alongside other leaders
• community features for asking questions, providing feedback, and making connections
• interactive projects to get feedback from others
• two 90-minute realtime sessions with Peter and other classmates to explore the subject matter more deeply
  Next cohort begins May 22, 2025, with live sessions on May 29 and June 05.

I'm offering this through Maven, host of many popular design leadership cohort classes. Mine is distinctly shorter and less intense, which is why it costs $449 (compared to $900-2500 for other leadership courses).
Learn more and register for the cohort course.

The Cohort class is similar to my live class, but with some advantageous distinctions. In the live class, about half the time was me presenting, and the other half a deep discussion. With the Cohort model:

• All the presentations are pre-recorded, so you can watch them when it's most convenient for you
• This frees up our live sessions to do what they do best—discussions to go deeper on key course concepts
• The sessions are comfortably spread out over 2 weeks, so nothing is rushed
• During those 2 weeks, you can conduct project activities, get feedback from me and your cohort-mates, and make connections that could prove valuable outside of class

For those who choose Independent, I do plan on offering some 'realtime' add-ons in the future, such as office hours, or lower-cost 1:1 coaching with me. Oh, and discounts on the cohort class if you realize you'd like to engage with others.

For the Cohort class, the current timing preferences the Americas and UK (8am Pacific Time/11am ET/4pm UK/17.00 CET). If there's enough interest, I would love to also provide timing that works Asia Pacific (5pm Pacific, 8am SGT, 9am KST/JST, 10am AEST).

Who is this class for?

With the latest revision, the "sweet spot" of this class is mid-career: Sr Manager, Director, and Sr. Director, or, on the IC track, Principal, Staff, and Architect.

I'm very much figuring this out

Since writing Org Design for Design Orgs, I've continued to develop org design and leadership material. While I've published a bunch of it, there are still things that I've only ever shared in class or presentation. "UX/Design Leadership Demystified" is my initial foray into new ways of sharing this material, and better understanding how people prefer to engage with me.

If this approach resonates, I have plenty more material I can develop:

• Org Design for Design Orgs 2.0 (no plans on writing a book, but I have material on):
  • Team Charters, and the organization design of teams
  • Employee-enabled career development (including detailed skills rubrics)
  • Organizational structures for design organizations (federated, hybrid, centralized; organized by BU, by product, by journey)
  • Organizational Health Assessment (drawing from The 12 Qualities of Effective Design Organizations)
• Going Deeper on material in the Leadership class
  • Expand on the quality framework
  • Expand on connecting design to business value

If you're willing to share thoughts on how I can best approach offering this material to serve your (and your organization's) needs, don't hesitate to let me know. And please share this with people whom you think may benefit!