A design leader lives in two worlds: product design and the business. It’s your job to mediate when the needs of designers and the needs of the business compete.
These people are probably why you became a manager. You love design, you work with great designers, and you want to use your experiences to help grow their skills and careers. Designing great products can turn into more repeat and new customers: a happy business.
Designers at Pivotal Labs have two jobs:
Yes of course a designer’s work includes user goals, business goals, team collaboration etc, but at the core this is how I see it. And if our team ourselves are struggling, burn out, or don’t deepen their craft doing #1, then #2 can’t happen.
Designing great products (1) and enabling clients to design great products (2) regularly leads to repeat and extended client engagements. Similarly pivot design pairing leads to pivot happiness which improves retention and reduces recruiting, hiring, and HR costs. We need more pivot design pairing.
Pivot Pairing
Design and programmers work are both generative and exploratory work. To that end, design the work benefits from pairing for the same reasons it benefits pair programmers: diversity of ideas, driver and navigator, collective ownership, increased discipline, fewer interruptions/working in flow etc.
It’s important for these individuals to have contexts to deepen their craft, which often comes with pairing. Senior designers are more likely to get paired with clients or junior designer since they are likely the best mentors from a technical perspective. Learning at work falls by the wayside when their pairs are not practitioners, but someone who got put into a practitioner role and work time is constrained to 40 hours. In short: designers also need to geek out at work.
Client pairing
We get some of these benefits when pairing with a client. But pairing with a client is doing extra mental consulting gymnastics to achieve #2, leaving less energy #1. Programmers often see relief when they rotate pairs the next day. Designers rotate pairs after a few months, and often go onto another client designer.
Having one designer on a project, or one pivot and one client designer requires that Pivot individual to be an off the charts unicorn with remarkable humility. Why? Because we have three streams of work: research, interaction, and visual plus collaboration with development. Two people makes it possible to distribute the mental and sometimes tactical effort.
Enabling clients is hard because we are defending our work, teaching our process, and designing complex systems all at the same time.We have to start our client mentorship from a strong place so we can help our client designers. A lot goes on the shoulders of one person for the intensity of the work we do. Design is a team sport, not facilitating lots of non-designers.
Sales, Scoping, Hiring, and Staffing
Having more designers in an office would likely change the staffing needs all the way from a sales and scoping perspective. When we have too many engineers on the beach we start research and software development at the same time. Doing this slows the entire success of a project down anyway, ultimately hurting the success of a project whether it’s measured by client enablement or execution of product. Doing this once and a while is understandable but this solution on repeat burns designers out. The team needs time to think about a problem and approach a solution before it can be built.
Schedule and staffing is an art not a science. If only a few Pivots have experience with the design process, the designers ends up leading a hungry-to-learn team will want to be involved with everything. That gets celebrated as “balanced team”. It’s possible the newcomers to design will want to see all the activities, inflating the process and ultimately unbalancing the project and hurting client success, a good name in the community, and future projects. When pivots are paired more often they can be better consultants when they are paired with client designer. Pairing pivot designers invests in project success by investing in individuals first. I’ve seen this approach regularly lead to repeat client engagements or project extensions.
Hire more designers
The hiring, sales, and staffing plans should start from two pivot designers pairing and deviate for individual circumstances. This will increase the quality of products, projects, pivot happiness, client happiness, transformation success, which ultimately benefits the business goals.
Munich is a lovely place in Bavaria. If you’re looking for pretzels, sausage, mugs of beer and men in lederhosen, it’s all here for you, in full authenticity. A colleague of mine describes it as a Heilewelt: an ideal heavenly world. She says it’s so nice and even a little blind to problems of the real world, but she says that’s exactly what makes it perfect for a short holiday.
Eisbach Wave
You wouldn’t expect to see surfers in a land-locked city, but a small ridge in the Isar River made the perfect spot for these wave runners. The steadiness of the wave gives the offers an especially hypnotic experience that’s hard not to enjoy.
Gardens
Follow the river and you’ll find yourself in the Englischer Garten. It’s as big as Central Park and makes for a wonderful walk on a sunny day. Treat yourself to the beer, sausage, chicken, pretzels, and saurkraut at the Seehaus. You can watch or join people and ducks paddle down the water on a lazy afternoon.
If you love swans as much as I do, these ones will rock your world.
It might sound dark or creepy to hang out in a cemetery but the Alter Nordfriedhof is a calm, quiet, relaxing place people like to go for runs. If you can find the gravestone with the Pyramids of Egypt, I’ll send you a treat.
Cocktails
Now let’s say you’re tired of beer, and you just might be. There are more delicious cocktails bars than you’d expect in Munich. I had some yummy drinks at the Couch Club. I later learned their specialty is Gin so definitely don’t miss their salad in a glass basil gin smash.
Art
There are more art museums in Munich than I’d expect considering the size. There are even a few James Turrell installations which was a high to-do on my list. Sadly the Häusler Contemporary is only open a few days a week and sometimes by appointment only. Someone please go on my behalf!
I was pretty disappointed about the Turrell thing but was equally pleasantly surprised when coming across the backside of the Bayerische Staatsoper opera house. It’s beautiful from all angles and worth strolling through. You won’t regret it.
I felt rumblings of an unexpected subculture art scene in Munich. Skateboarders, street artists, and Berlin style underground techno parties.
There’s much more to see and do in München than what I listed here. But these are my top pics from my last visit. Enjoy.
Enjoy a spring holiday in this beautiful Dutch canal city. It’s home to 90 islands and 1,500 bridges. The canals were dug up in 17th century which means the shape of this city is quite designed. But more than most it truly feels like a living organism. Bikers, drivers, trams, and pedestrians gently ebb and flow through streets like boats on the canal.
Keukenhof Tulip Garden
During my short spring weekend I frolicked through the remarkable Keukenhof tulip gardens. You’ll probably find this remarkable even if you’re not into plants. I never knew there were so many kinds of beautiful tulips (with funny names like Foxy Foxtrot). The gardens are in Lesse, Netherlands. But other people do, so here are the protips to avoid the crowds:
I also got these super comfy plus house clogs from the Miffy bunny store inside the garden. Their hilarious and I recommend you also buy a pair.
Cocktails
This is a beer city. For a delicious cocktail make a reservation at Door 74. The entrance is non-descript but knock on that door and give your name. It’s unpretentious, very yummy, and has a kind staff who will take care of you.
Though, you can also try without a reservation and go to Blomenbar (flower bar) for a cheap beer while you wait. But make sure you look up and see the hand painted flower crown molding on the ceiling:
Indonesian Food
Once a colony to The Netherlands, the Indonesian have a vibrant food scene in Amsterdam. The dinner at The Long Pura was knockout and given to me on a recommendation from my favorite foodies Jason and Faye. They claimed it to be one of their best meals on their Europe food tour. Get one of the samplers, it won’t disappoint. If you go a la carte, the clear soup and chicken satay are unbelievable. Skip the lamb. Reservations should be easy to make and are possible online.
Museums
Most of the museums are near each other, so if possible visit a few in one big circuit. I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to buy tickets online in advance. It’s very easy, even from a mobile device but it will jump nearly every queue for you. Please don’t not do this.
I really enjoyed the prostitutions exhibit at the Van Gogh Museum. The curators were very pro-women and the content and historical education was remarkable. The rest of the museum was pretty crowded so Id really only go here if you’re wild for Van Gogh or the special exhibit is good and a delicious cafe.
The Stedelijk Museum houses modern and contemporary art pieces. Again I recommend seeing which pieces are on right now. I read somewhere James Turrell had a piece in there but I was mistaken. I did experience this 360 audio/video installation from Cally Spooner that was a little mind melting. If you’re going soon, check this out. And if you’re looking for some great art reads they have an excellent book store. Nearby is the Moca Museum which right now has a Banksy/Warhol exhibit. I skipped it and had a sunny nap in the slanty park.
The Anne Frank House had a queue longer than Berghain on klubnacht. I’m not sure if you can get tickets in advance but if this is something you want to do, plan accordingly.
Bicycles & Canals
I was planning to borrow a bike from a friend and cruise around all Sunday. We didn’t get to coordinate properly so it never happened. But they really have things figured out. Everything is about eye contact, it’s kind of beautiful. Everyone says this is a must do followed by renting a boat and cruising down the canal!
All in all it will be hard to not love Amsterdam. It’s a beautiful, kind, creative, feminine city that will welcome you with open arms. Have fun!
For a city with a serious dedication to extended youth, the cohabitation with adults and actual children in Berlin is remarkable. My perspective here is often compared to life in the States and citylife in general. Both together are hard places for children to live.
Simple things like sidewalks, restaurant, cafes, and parks play nicely with parents and singles alike. In San Francisco and Chicago there were family places and regular places. The deeper into the city, the more I felt people making a stink eye to someone who brought their youngin along.
During one of my first weekends here I went for a long brunch with some local friends. Their son 9-year old son was climbing on the sofa and playing with the adults in the group. Sometimes wanted attention but never crying, screaming, or yanking on his father’s coat for entertainment.
I don’t see kids demanding for attention in public places or crying in the supermarket. Maybe parents raise their children differently in Berlin. That must make it easier to bring them along to whatever the parents have going on. And the parents I’m meeting somehow seem to have time for themselves. Do Europeans have an extra few hours in the day? Why are Americans always so tight on time?
However last night I saw some kids also around 9 or 10 years old with their parents in a smoke-free Belgian beer bar. I think they drew the doodles on the wall behind the cash register (above). That was surprising and unexpected. Americans are somewhat conservative about alcohol so having kids in the bar was a strange for me. But maybe there’s some other context I don’t have yet. I’m curious about German parenting.
Ok also, kids have these awesome Fred Flinstone bikes to help them learn the hardest part of riding a bike first: balance. It’s not that related to this post but it’s so fantastic and you need to know about it.
