Doing + Fixing = Exhausting

Leading a corporate design function means owning responsibility for delivering the roadmap: the work has to launch on time, and it has to be great.

But if you've been in this role, you know the part nobody puts in the job description. Hint: you're also trying to fix all the things around the work. The broken briefing process. Design reviews that go in circles. Reporting and decision lines that make no sense. The standards that live in your head because they've never been written down. And on and on.

So you do both. You lead the work, and you try and fix the place, at the same time, with the same hours. You stay late doing the work you're measured on, then do your best to find the extra hours to build the stuff that would've made the work easier in the first place.

The masochist in me strangely loved it, but it is absolutely exhausting. The work part is hard enough. But the doing of the work while also trying to fix the place is a huge reason a lot of design leaders unnecessarily burn out.