Design Leadership

The ask

The organisation was at an inflection point in how it approached user experience. UX thinking existed, but it wasn’t yet operating as a clear, consistent function across teams.

A senior creative manager was stepping into a UX leadership role. They brought strong user-led instincts and experience, but needed support translating that into a more structured, data-informed, and repeatable way of working — especially within the realities of product delivery.

I was brought in to support that transition. Not just through one-to-one mentoring, but by helping shape the conditions around the role — how UX showed up in conversations, how decisions were made, and how teams collaborated across product, delivery, and development.

The goal wasn’t to replace intuition, but to strengthen it — pairing creative judgement with evidence, shared standards, and clearer expectations so UX could operate with more confidence, consistency, and influence.

Signals of misalignment

While the immediate focus was mentorship, it quickly became clear that wider misalignment across teams was undermining both confidence and outcomes.

Work flowed through a linear, fragmented handover:

E-commerce defined requirements and passed work to Creative
Creative handed designs to Delivery / Development
Final outputs were shared back with E-commerce once live

This created several points of breakdown:

Fragmented understanding across teams

Teams lacked a shared view of intent, resulting in work being interpreted differently as it moved between e-commerce, creative, and delivery.

Ad-hoc components and flows

Components and journeys were introduced reactively to meet short-term or commercial needs, without shared patterns or consideration for reuse.

Local decision-making without shared principles

Design and delivery decisions were made in isolation, guided by immediate needs rather than agreed standards or frameworks.

Limited opportunity for iteration

Once work went live, there was little space to refine or improve it, reinforcing a mindset of “ship and move on” rather than evolve.

Unclear ownership and growing friction

As work passed through teams sequentially, ownership became blurred, creating tension and reducing confidence across disciplines.

Ways of working under strain

Design practice was fragmented across tools, processes, and expectations, with no established product-led way of working to support consistent decision-making or collaboration.

A senior creative was stepping into a UX leadership role at a time when product thinking was still emerging within the organisation. Alongside continuing to deliver day-to-day work, they were expected to help introduce new ways of working — from user-led thinking and data-informed decisions, to clearer collaboration with product and engineering.

This transition exposed underlying strain in how teams operated together.

Commercial priorities often drove ad-hoc changes late in the process. Components and flows were introduced reactively to meet short-term goals, with limited opportunity for iteration once work was live. Ownership felt unclear, and relationships between e-commerce, creative, and delivery teams were already under pressure due to previous handover-heavy processes and misaligned expectations.

Tooling and process fragmentation compounded this. Multiple design tools were used in parallel, documentation was inconsistent, and there were no shared standards to act as reference points. This made it difficult to build confidence — both in decision-making and in conversations with product, engineering, and stakeholders.

The challenge was not individual capability. It was the strain created by introducing a product way of working into an environment shaped by legacy processes, commercial urgency, and limited shared structure.

My role was to support the new UX Lead through that transition — helping them navigate the relational and organisational friction, while gradually introducing clearer foundations, more sustainable ways of working, and space for confidence to grow.

The Challenge

The challenge was not simply supporting an individual stepping into a new role. It was helping introduce a product-led way of working into an environment shaped by legacy processes, commercial pressure, and strained relationships — while ensuring progress felt achievable, supported, and sustainable.

This required balancing delivery with change, supporting confidence while introducing structure, and navigating organisational nuance without losing momentum.

Framing the opportunity

Rather than treating this as a tooling or capability problem, the opportunity was framed around improving how teams worked together.

The focus was on creating clarity where there was friction — aligning intent between teams, introducing shared reference points, and giving the new UX Lead the support and space needed to lead change without being isolated by it.

This meant positioning UX not as an added layer, but as a connective tissue between e-commerce, creative, product, and delivery — helping decisions feel grounded, visible, and shared.

Approach

My approach centred on working alongside the new UX Lead — supporting them in real situations while gradually introducing more structured ways of working.

This included:

Helping establish clearer product rituals, from discovery conversations to handover and review
Supporting the introduction of shared tooling and documentation to reduce fragmentation
Coaching through stakeholder conversations where expectations or ownership were unclear
Translating UX and product thinking into practical steps teams could adopt without slowing delivery

Rather than imposing a fixed model, changes were introduced incrementally — shaped by the realities of the organisation, existing relationships, and ongoing commercial demands.

Trade-offs and constraints

Change could not happen all at once.Commercial pressures meant some ad-hoc requests still needed to be accommodated, and legacy processes could not be removed overnight.

Time was split between delivery and improvement, often requiring conscious decisions about where to push for change and where to adapt.

The priority was to protect confidence — ensuring progress felt supportive rather than disruptive — while steadily introducing clearer structure beneath the surface.

Outcomes

Over time, clearer foundations began to form.

Ways of working became more visible and shared. Tooling was simplified. Expectations between teams improved, and conversations shifted from reactive delivery toward more intentional decision-making.

Most importantly, the new UX Lead grew into the role with greater confidence — supported by clearer standards, stronger collaboration, and a more sustainable platform to continue evolving practice beyond my involvement.

Reflection

This work reinforced that design leadership is rarely about introducing the “right” tools or processes in isolation. More often, it’s about understanding the pressures teams are operating under and helping change happen in a way that feels safe, practical, and human.

Supporting someone stepping into a UX leadership role highlighted how easily responsibility can outpace structure. Without shared foundations, even experienced designers can feel exposed — not because of capability, but because the environment doesn’t yet support the way they’re being asked to work.

What made the biggest difference here was focusing on relationships and confidence alongside process. Creating space for better conversations, clearer ownership, and gradual alignment helped reduce friction in ways that no single framework or artefact could have achieved alone.

This experience continues to shape how I approach leadership today. I’m most effective when I’m embedded close enough to understand the nuance, while still holding a wider view of how systems, culture, and people need to evolve together. Design, for me, is as much about enabling teams to work better as it is about improving the products they build.

Daniel.

Design leadership through mentoring & capability building