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The Ongoing Plight of the UX Director
3 and a half years ago, before I had this newsletter, I wrote a post on LinkedIn that became one of the most popular things I ever published: "UX Directors in a World of Hurt". I'm reprinting it below so that I have it on my own site.
I've been reflecting on that piece, because since then, things have only gotten harder for the UX Director, largely due to a combination of AI and executive folly.
Responsible for the "How"
In the original piece, I defined this triumvirate:
Executives are responsible for the "Why" of work, Directors for the "How," and Managers for the "What."
In that light, it becomes clear how AI is falling hardest on Directors. In Design, AI is largely about tooling and process, which means: how teams do their work. In this time of the "worst technology rollout in history," it's largely fallen on the directors to figure out how to incorporate this technology in the work. They've received little guidance, they're under immense pressure (executive mandates to wield AI), and, oh yeah, they still have to deliver on their standard work expectations.
The "frustration, burnout, and self-doubt," that I observed back then has only become more acute.
Professionally stuck
Something else which has become more pronounced is the degree of stuck that UX directors are experiencing.
In 2021-2022, as design orgs hyperscaled, we quickly minted a host of director-level talent, people responsible for ~15-20 person orgs, and beginning to manage managers.
In 2023, when I wrote that piece, we had just began to see the stalling out of org scaling. Since then, UX/Design orgs have slowed, or even reversed, their growth, while flattening their hierarchies. Which leaves simply less advancement opportunity for this sizable cohort of UX Directors. There's no room in their own org, as the VP isn't going anywhere (if there's even a VP role any more), and similarly, there's little room in any other org.
People can only take so many years of doing the same thing, in increasingly intense contexts, without any promise of professional development.
And now, the reprint of the original piece:
UX Directors in a World of Hurt
originally published April 27, 2023 on LinkedIn
In my work with a range of UX/Design teams (from as small as 7 or 8 to as large as 800; across financial services, medical technology, enterprise SaaS, consumer retail, and more) I’m currently observing a swelling wave of issues in the role of UX Director. My concern is not only with the current condition, but also how many people in this role, folks who should become our next generation of design executives, are leaving the field, due to frustration, burnout, and self-doubt.
A few weeks ago, I shared the above image on LinkedIn, with a promise to write more about it. I've struggled articulating these thoughts in some grand essay, but I feel compelled to publish something, so that those struggling to find their way in this role know that they are seen and understood.
Table of contents:
The Plight of All Middle Management
How Directors Get Ground Up in "Efficiency" Rhetoric
It's Even Worse for UX/Design Directors
- Design executives who don't know how to guide their teams.
- Product Management partners who don't know how to do their jobs.
- UX Directors are under-leveled to their peers.
- UX Directors are often the most senior UX/Design person in their org.
Let's Not Gaslight Ourselves
==
The Plight of All Middle Management
In most orgs, UX Director is a middle management role. And "middle management" gets a bad rap. Operating between the executives who set the corporate agenda, and the front-line teams that execute that agenda, they get neither the glory bestowed on the visionary leaders, nor pride in handicraft of the work. This ambiguous middle-ness results in Director roles being poorly defined, leading to the false impression that "they don't do anything."
So, here's my definition:
The Director’s role is one of connection and coordination. Receiving the strategy from their leadership, they then work across the delivery teams that report to them, ensuring those teams' efforts are aligned with that overarching vision, while also working cross-functional relationships to make space for their team's role in the overall process.
Another way to state it:
Executives are responsible for the "Why" of work, Directors for the "How," and Managers for the "What."
How Directors get ground up in 'efficiency' rhetoric
But, because this work product of middle management is less tangible than the vision of executives and output of managers and their teams, when companies seek "efficiency," this layer is the first to go. However, without it, work becomes chaotic. The efforts of delivery teams lack coordination or cohesion, in turn undercutting the strategic vision. When this role is reinstated, Directors' initial efforts are focused on cleaning up this mess, instead of working towards new improvements.
Or maybe the Directors are not laid off, but the organization, in the interest of 'flattening' the hierarchy, requires them to increase their number of direct reports, including practitioners responsible for delivery. This leaves Directors performing two jobs—conducting cross-functional relationships as well as directly managing delivery teams. Two jobs == burnout.
It's even worse for UX/Design Directors
In addition to the issues that plague all middle management, there are a set of factors specific to the emerging function that is UX/Design which exacerbates this situation for UX Directors.
Design Executives who don't know how to guide their teams. Many UX Directors have bosses who, frankly, aren't good at their job. They're new to being an executive, don't understand the implications of that role, and so provide neither cover nor guidance for their Directors.
Part and parcel with being a Design Executive is handling a CEO providing unhelpful feedback or issuing unreasonable demands, driven by arbitrary decision-making and an unfounded belief in their own brilliance. The first order of business should be to let the team know they have nothing to worry about, and the second order of business is to engage the CEO about the situation and make clear how their behavior is demotivating. Yet all too often, I hear from UX Directors that their VP of Design instead aligns with the CEO, providing no protection, even when they know the team has done solid, evidence-driven design. These UX Directors struggle to figure out how to preserve their team's psychological safety when the person who should be their champion instead just lets them twist in the wind.
Or, VPs to hide their incompetence by delegating their responsibilities to their directors, in the guise of being 'too busy' to work on it.
Product Management partners who don't know how to do their jobs. Probably the single biggest whispered issue facing UX/Design today is the general incompetence of Product Management. This claim warrants its own post, and I'll get to writing it some day, but the short of it is, the explosion in "agile" development has lead to establishing countless 'squads' or 'product teams,' each of which is deemed to need a Product Manager (or Product Owner). Lacking sufficient people in this role, these companies end up re-branding Business Analysts, Program Managers, or subject matter experts as Product Managers, even though these folks have no real understanding of the mechanics of managing product. UX Directors, who are primarily responsible for How things get done, then have to fill that gap, leading, guiding, and mentoring teams on techniques like product discovery. Doing someone else's job requires time, which is either added to their workload (burnout) or takes time away from what should be their core focus.
UX Directors are under-leveled relative to their peers. UX/Design teams are typically smaller than their partner teams in Product and Engineering. A 1:8 designer:developer ratio means that a UX Director overseeing a team of 20 is "peered" with a VP of Engineering overseeing a team of 160. And while ratios with Product Management aren't typically as drastic, UX/Design is typically situated within a Product organization. This means UX Directors are typically partnered with VPs of Product Management, even though the 'surface area' of what they're addressing is the same.
In hierarchically-inclined organizations (which is nearly all of them!), this means UX Directors are in positions of less power/influence relative to the people who should be their peers and partners.
This, in turn, means that while UX Directors are responsible for defining How work gets done, this typically requires changing practices, and this change often meets resistance from these over-leveled peers, and the Director lacks authority to make things happen.
UX Directors are often the most senior UX/Design person in the org. While we're increasingly seeing companies establishing design executive roles, for many, the UX Director is the most senior person in their org, reporting to a VP. This means that the UX Director now needs to act as a design executive as well: being held accountable for UX/Design as a value-driving function, engaging with senior executives, demonstrating impact. However, their organizational position lacks the authority necessary to see this through, and they're often not taken seriously as 'executives.'
Let's not gaslight ourselves
All told, we do a terrible job of preparing UX Directors for the reality of this role, and the misalignment of expectations and what the work actually consists of proves quite stressful. Before attaining Director status, UX/Design folks have spent the bulk of their professional life within the UX/Design function, focused on their practice and the delivery of the work, and laboring under the assumption that those in above them know what they're doing, and that the way businesses and other organizations operate makes sense. Upon elevating to Director, and now spending much of their time outside UX/Design, they're surprised to find out that no one knows what they're doing, that decisions are made in arbitrary fashions, and that much of what they thought about business being rational simply isn't true.
In my work with clients and in my Design Leadership Masterclass, I've taken to speaking directly to this misalignment. We have a population of UX Directors who have been organizationally gaslit, told that in order to succeed, they just need to {demonstrate impact; innovate; run experiments; collaborate with peers; advocate for users, etc. etc}. While these things aren't necessarily untrue, they're also insufficient. To succeed, they need to learn to play the game, whatever it happens to be in that organization.
Is this demoralizing? Potentially. It's also reality. UX/Design folks are, by nature, idealists, constantly conscious of how things could be better, striving to realize that benefit for the users they seek to serve. By adopting a pragmatic view, I am hopeful that UX Directors realize clarity in how to approach the work, develop resilience, and identify what they want to get out of the situation.
(This conversation is not done... I'd love to hear stories of how UX Directors have successfully addressed the challenges I share in this piece, so we can develop a knowledge base of strategies and tactics to see one another through.)
