Personal Development and Coaching

So you want to be a strategist? I'm not sure it means what you think it means!

I meet a lot of designers who say something like, “I’m okay at UI design, but what I really want to be doing is strategy.”

I get it. In large organisations with mature design systems, visual and interaction design can start to feel like assembling someone else’s product from pre-approved parts. It’s easy to crave something higher up the food chain — a seat in those mysterious meetings where “strategy” supposedly happens.

What I’ve Learned Coaching Dozens of Design Leaders: The 5 Most Common Challenges—and How to Navigate Them

Over the past few years, I’ve coached dozens of design leaders—from newly promoted heads of design to seasoned VPs across a mix of fast-growing startups and more established brands. Different industries. Different team dynamics. But time and again, the same patterns emerge.

The Designer’s Dilemma: Reframing “I’m OK, You’re Not OK”

As a design leadership coach, I’ve spent years helping talented designers navigate the messy, ambiguous world of business. One theme I keep seeing — sometimes subtly, sometimes not — is how easy it is to fall into an unhelpful mindset when collaboration gets hard.

When Giving the Benefit of the Doubt Backfires

Over the past year, I’ve heard more and more founders and design leaders tell eerily similar stories:

When Everything is on Fire, Founders Sometimes Struggle to See the Wood for the Trees

In 1949, a crew of elite smoke-jumpers parachuted into Montana’s Mann Gulch to fight what looked like a routine wildfire. But within hours, the fire turned deadly. As the flames roared up the slope, their leader, Wagner Dodge, made a radical move: he lit a fire of his own. By burning the grass ahead of him, he created a patch of scorched earth the wildfire couldn’t cross. He lay in the ashes as the main fire swept over.

“I’m Just Being Helpful” – How Designers Accidentally Come Across as Disagreeable (and What to Do About It)

A lot of designers, especially those with a strong systems-thinking mindset, pride themselves on being rigorous problem-solvers. We stress-test ideas. We poke holes in weak assumptions. We say things like “That won’t work because…” or “The problem with that is…” and we think we’re doing our job — helping move the team forward, protecting users, flagging risks.

But let’s be honest: a lot of the time, we just come across as… difficult.