How Design Leaders are Staying Focused on the Future

Welcome back to?Inside Ideas, the newsletter that brings monthly insights from our?InsideOut ?design leadership community right to your inbox!?

As you'll see in our Roundtable Roundup, many of this month's topics centered around something that creative leaders do best: Focus on the Future. Read on for tips on how you can do the same for your organization.

Believe it or not, we hosted 50 sessions in the first half of this year, and since our last newsletter, we introduced two more new members-only learning formats:

• Pro Tips: While the rest of our sessions are focused on exploration and interaction, this new format is our first real "talk" (with Q&A) where a subject matter expert shares a packaged presentation. In this talk, Felix Lee from adplist.org shared tips on building informal mentorship programs.
• Book Club: We can read! Later in August, we'll gather with the author (Donna Lichaw ) we'll be discussing her latest book The Leader's Journey in our first ever book club session.

Oh, and don't think we haven't had FUN this summer, too! Proving yet again that virtual social events CAN be fun (we even wrote an article about that), we hosted a Summer Party to celebrate our community. Guided by a talented artist at Paint the Town , we all painted our own versions of "White Poppies".

As you can guess, senior design and creative leaders bring the creativity, generating lovely versions of the sample art – and their very own originals. Here are just a few of those (keep your eye on our LinkedIn page for more):

And now, let's take another peek behind the curtain and see what our InsideOut leaders were learning about in our recent conversations.

From getting work done better today to preparing for and shaping the future, our InsideOut leaders gathered in June to keep pushing limits, as usual. Following are the high level topics we covered, then a deeper view into how these leaders keep their entire organization looking forward.

JUNE TOPICS

• Interview Best Practices
• How Technology is Changing the Role of Ops
• Focusing on the Future
• Benchmarking Common Creative Projects
• Leading Resourcing Discussions
• Balancing Continuous Discovery with Continuous Delivery

Embedded in even the straightforward-looking topics above is an eye on the future. For example, in "Interview Best Practices" leaders shared ways that interviewing is changing–and how they can adapt. One interesting trend from that discussion is using the Portfolio Review (a common practice in design interviews) to uncover future-focused skill sets like resilience, advanced communication skills, and the ability to pivot on the spot. All these reflect the accelerating pace of change in businesses, and the need for design teams to thrive within it.

But in our Chicago session, we literally explored ways that design leaders can help the entire organization stay focused on the future. Following are just a few of the many ideas generated by senior leaders in that roundtable:

• Host sessions that focus on the future (design thinking workshops, North Star and current v. future state exercises, roadmap activities, etc.)
• Leverage the user journey to uncover future value and show how the touch points connect to turn ideas into actions
• Use AI trends to show what’s possible and help stakeholders focus on the problem they are trying to solve (not just the tech they want to try)
• Look for “architects of the future” within the org and activate them
• Partner with strategy teams; show them a problem with revenue possibilities to engage them in looking forward

Our West Coast Design Leaders tackled how to balance continuous discovery with continuous delivery, with "discovery" leading to future solutions and new ways of thinking. As every design leader knows, this balance is a tricky one to strike, as deadlines and budgets continue to tighten and goal posts continue to shift. Following are a few insights from that session:

• Mirror ways of work from other groups that are already accepted, customized for your own team (like Tech Radar, roadmaps, etc.)
• Publish your research to extend its reach and engage others in exploration
• Divide and conquer: Have a portion of the current team focus on discovery, another on delivery
• Explore job rotations: Though there are risks based on who is involved, this could yield new thinking
• At a minimum, conduct rolling research across customer journeys to identify opportunities to pivot - and "Test Everything"

And finally, our NY ops leader group dug into how technology is shifting the role of creative and design operations leaders. As tech evolves rapidly (think AI) these leaders are often expected to not only know what's out there, but also be the ones to secure, train and ensure adoption of these tools–on top of their day jobs. Here are just a few of thoughts shared in that session:

• Top challenges are often 1: Who owns the tools and 2: Who pays for them
• Hire a platform-agnostic consultant to assess needs before considering tools
• Find internal partners with similar needs to help with cost of tools
• "A tool is not a process." Map the process first, then see what tools + integrations are needed
• Look for systemic issues that may be causing the problem (and aim to address those first)

Think about this: Those insights come from just a few of the many roundtable discussions we hosted in June alone. This group is prolific! They're also always interested in what's next, so if you needed convincing that this community is amazing, I'm confident we'll have proof points every single month. Stick around!

Below are links to content and resources shared during our live discussions in response to current leader challenges:

• Chief Martec Blog - Here Scott Brinker shares ongoing insights into trends in the constantly evolving marketing technology space.
• Ben's Bites - This newsletter covers the AI space, giving succinct overviews of what's happening (also here LinkedIn at Ben's Bites ).
• AI vs. Architect - In this clever video, a group of architects attempt to compete with AI.
• Making Friends with Machine Learning - "Google’s legendary AI course designed to?enlighten AI beginners, grow technology leaders, inform better citizens, and amuse AI experts!"
• Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products that Create Customer Value and Business Value - A recent book by Teresa Torres.

Hot off the Press!?As leaders took some well-deserved summer breaks, we spent most of July packaging up insights to help design leaders everywhere learn from our exclusive community. Below are our most recent articles.

• The Automation Revolution: Unlocking Efficiency in the Creative Process
• See you at the Office? Part Two
• Level up your Design Team with Informal Mentorship

In fact, we've compiled high level learnings from many of our roundtables over the past few years. Following are more of the most popular articles from our InsideOut Medium blog:

• 7 Powerful Ways to Connect Your Team to Purpose
• Virtual Social Events Don't Have to Suck
• Learn, Teach, Build to Engage Your Org in Design
• A Design Leaders Guide to Bringing the Outside In
• Culture is All About Connections

And even more exciting? We're bringing all these posts and more over to a refreshed InsideOut program overview page! Stay tuned for more on that.

And that's a wrap for this edition. We are thrilled to continue to hold space for senior leaders to explore new ideas together and are committed to continuing to share through this?Inside Ideas?newsletter.

Our mission is to connect leaders to find solutions. If you’re a senior design, experience, or operations leader of an in-house team and want to connect with others who share your unique challenges, let’s talk. Our?InsideOut community ?hosts virtual and in-person roundtables to support the learning, growth, and sanity of our members, and we're honored to facilitate those discussions.

If you stumbled upon this newsletter and liked it, please share. We aim to help as many leaders as possible. And if you haven't subscribed yet, what are you waiting for? Let’s keep learning together!