Progression Podcast

Cap Watkins is CXO at Primary, where he's responsible for Design, Product, People and engineering (oh my!). In the recent past, he was a professional leadership coach and organizational consultant at Practical Works, helping senior contributors, first-time managers and managers-of-managers grow and evolve in their roles. Previously, he was VP of Design at BuzzFeed, where he managed Product Design.  While at Buzzfeed Cap also created one of the most popular design frameworks on progression.fyi – https://www.progression.fyi/f/buzzfeed, which he then blogged about warning people not to use it directly. We talked about that along with several of his blog posts, including: https://capwatkins.com/blog/skip-the-shortcuts https://capwatkins.com/blog/two-questions I'd been following and nagging Cap for an interview for months, so it's funny that it then took me six months to get the resulting interview out. It's a great and very much evergreen interview though, so lots to dig into. Find cap on: https://capwatkins.com/ https://twitter.com/cap Who else should we be speaking to? Be on the pod! Tell us about someone great! Just email podcast@progressionapp.com and tell us more. Our lovely sponsor: Deliveroo Our wonderful sponsor Deliveroo is looking for loads of designers, researchers, writers as well as leaders and managers. Go check them out at https://deliveroo.design Join the waitlist We’re aiming to launch soon, but if you want to jump the gun or just be in the loop, get involved in our waitlist. progressionapp.com Rate us! It really helps if you rate us on iTunes. You can do that right here. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/progression-podcast/id1435509539

About Irene Irene is a designer and veteran design leader, leading design and user experience at Google, Yahoo, Netscape, and Udacity. She was once even the most prolific hirer of UX talent in silicon valley.  She now works as an operational partner at Khosla Ventures, working with fast growing portfolio companies on design and strategic problems at the highest level, as well as teaching yoga. Our conversation covered scaling design across some of the most well known and iconic companies in the world as well as extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation, using envy to identify what you enjoy and finding the thing that gives you joy. I loved this conversation – Irene absolutely (but politely) schooled me on some of my assumptions about the evolution of design and I learned a ton. I hope you do too! Irene's website: ireneau.com Irene on Twitter: twitter.com/ireneau Design your Life – Irene's medium blog: https://medium.com/design-your-life Who else should we be speaking to? Be on the pod! Tell us about someone great! Just email podcast@progressionapp.com and tell us more. Our lovely sponsor: Deliveroo Our wonderful sponsor Deliveroo is looking for loads of designers, researchers, writers as well as leaders and managers. Go check them out at https://deliveroo.design We're looking for new sponsors! hit us up: podcast@progressionapp.com Join the waitlist We’re aiming to launch soon, but if you want to jump the gun or just be in the loop, get involved in our waitlist. progressionapp.com Rate us! It really helps if you rate us on iTunes. You can do that right here. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/progression-podcast/id1435509539

About Ryan Ryan Carson has been a huge figure in tech and online learning for a long time now through his company Treehouse, but his journey to get there and onwards from this success story is a journey of learning about himself, what he loves and also his privilege.  From Carsonified, his tech conference startup based in the UK through Treehouse to Project unlock the American dream (training 100,000 Americans from diverse backgrounds into software engineering apprenticeships), he talks through his biggest challenge yet. Ryan on twitter: https://twitter.com/ryancarson Treehouse: https://teamtreehouse.com Project unlock the american dream: https://projectunlocktheamericandream.org Ryan's book recommendations The New Jim Crow: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1595586431 Seeing White: https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-White-Introduction-Privilege-Race/dp/1442203080 Who else should we be speaking to? Be on the pod! Tell us about someone great! Just email podcast@progressionapp.com and tell us more. Our lovely sponsor: Deliveroo Our wonderful sponsor Deliveroo is looking for loads of designers, researchers, writers as well as leaders and managers. Go check them out at https://deliveroo.design Join the waitlist We’re aiming to launch soon, but if you want to jump the gun or just be in the loop, get involved in our waitlist. progressionapp.com Rate us! It really helps if you rate us on iTunes. You can do that right here. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/progression-podcast/id1435509539

Today’s guest: Anne-Laure Le Cunff Anne-Laure is a prolific writer, thinker and learner. From a background in tech at companies like Google, she's spend the last year or so focused on entrepreneurial projects, culminating in her own Venture Studio Ness Labs, dedicated to products that help people be happier and healthier. She's hugely active in the online entrepreneurial community, championing learning and personal development with a broad set of 6000+ folks following along through her newsletter. As a fellow maker and founder, Anne-Laure and I talk less about team building and more about the journey of starting something new, compound interest when it comes to writing, being an active learner and a company of one. Anne-Laure's company: https://nesslabs.com/ and newsletter: https://nesslabs.com/newsletter Maker Mag: https://makermag.com/ Anne-Laure on Twitter: https://twitter.com/anthilemoon Our lovely sponsor: Deliveroo Our wonderful sponsor Deliveroo is looking for loads of designers, researchers, writers as well as leaders and managers. Go check them out at https://deliveroo.design Join the waitlist We’re aiming to launch in the first quarter of next year, but if you want to jump the gun or just be in the loop, get involved in our waitlist. https://progressionapp.com Rate us! It really helps if you rate us on iTunes. You can do that right here. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/progression-podcast/id1435509539 Who else should we be speaking to? Be on the pod! Tell us about someone great! Just email podcast@progressionapp.com and tell us more.

I loved chatting to Kara back in August, excited to finally get this episode out to your ears! Kara started her career as an instructional designer, eventually working her way to leading user experience design through experience at (amongst others) top-flight companies in sport (the Super Bowl), Film (Oscars) and politics, both as senior advisor to 18F and as Biden's Director of UX during Obama's cancer moonshot. She was also one of the first Presidential Innovation Fellows. We talked about Instructional design, meeting Obama, pale males, career progression of a person vs a professional and where you can use existing skills in new ways and readjust your career to suit the things you’re good at AND the things you love.  We also covered attempting to cure cancer, doing user-centred design in government, being a good sponsor and our mutual love of the West Wing. Show links Obama announcing the cancer moonshot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W2Fl_X_6I4 Kara's article on how to care and feed a team: https://medium.com/@karadefrias/the-product-managers-guide-to-the-care-and-feeding-of-humans-ee2854bc5944 Find Kara on the web at https://www.karadefrias.com/, and on twitter at https://twitter.com/karadefrias. Who else should we be speaking to? We have a fantastic set of interviews already recorded so we're sorted for getting into your ear-holes for this year, but we're looking for guests for 2020 episodes, so if you or someone you know is doing great work, let us know! Even better if it's someone who might not be regulars on other podcasts or stages. Just email podcast@progressionapp.com and tell us more. Our lovely sponsor: Deliveroo! Our wonderful sponsor Deliveroo is looking for loads of designers, researchers, writers as well as leaders and managers. It really is an exciting and fun place to work (I should know as an alumni). Go check out the team, blog and open roles at deliveroo.design or follow them on twitter: https://twitter.com/deliveroodesign

Dave Malouf is a veteran design leader, strategist, facilitator, researcher, and educator who has worked with some of the largest and fastest growing organizations globally. He's probably best known for his work around Design Ops, that slightly nebulous set of practices that help design organisations to scale. We get right into defining then pulling Design Ops apart, as well as touching on how speaking globally informs his practice and gives him energy. Dave on Twitter: https://twitter.com/daveixd Worth watching: Dave's keynote at IxDA Rio Who else should we be speaking to? We have a fantastic set of interviews already recorded so we're sorted for getting into your ear-holes for this year, but we're looking for guests for 2020 episodes, so if you or someone you know is doing great work, let us know! Even better if it's someone who might not be regulars on other podcasts or stages. Just email podcast@progressionapp.com and tell us more. Our lovely sponsor: Deliveroo! Our wonderful sponsor Deliveroo is looking for loads of designers, researchers, writers as well as leaders and managers. It really is an exciting and fun place to work (I should know as an alumni).  Go check out the team, blog and open roles at deliveroo.design or follow them on twitter: https://twitter.com/deliveroodesign Join the waitlist We’re aiming to launch in the first quarter of next year, but if you want to jump the gun or just be in the loop, get involved in our waitlist. progressionapp.com You can also follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/progressionapp – send us a tweet with your thoughts on the pod!

Hey friends! It's been a while... We're having a mini-break from regular episodes for the summer, but to celebrate Neil officially joining the team (about 4 months ago) as a cofounder, we decided to chat about working together and finding each other, our new feature 'check-ins' and our favourite office snack, the mighty Choco Leibniz. We'll be back with a new season, fantastic guests, a shiny new sponsor and more great interviews in a couple of weeks. Neil can be found at: neilcameron.me twitter.com/ncameron Jonny is, as ever, at jonnyburch.com twitter.com/jonnyburch ----- Remember to join the Progression waitlist for all the latest on our product, including invites to the product before anyone else.

Todd is a Design leader, leadership coach and lifelong learner. He recently released findings from a survey of over 800 design teams globally, with a focus on career growth and team health. We dive into his findings- getting through everything from hiring to attrition and the relative importance of different factors in someone's decision to leave. And the results are interesting: it turns out that 35% of people list lack of career growth as their reason for leaving a company, but under 4% of design teams have a progression framework. We also dig into some of the stats around progression frameworks – when do companies roll them out and when should you start considering one for your team. Enjoy! Todd online: On Twitter: https://twitter.com/zakiwarfel Todd's site: http://zakiwarfel.com The report: http://zakiwarfel.com/dci-report/ His great talk at Leading Design last year: https://vimeo.com/297967955 Progression Get your waitlist spot at progressionapp.com (we're going into Beta now so many more invites coming soon) Me and progression: twitter.com/jonnyburch progressionapp.com

Sana Rao was born in India, educated at the School of Visual Arts in NYC and spent 4 years at Twitter designing a bunch of the mobile experience we use today.  She's now Interim Head of Experience at Deliveroo, working out how to support the designers, researchers and content writers on their journey with the company as it grows. Sana has taken huge risks, experienced twitter abuse, seen companies successfully improve diversity and has a fascinating story of her career to date. She's also a great friend and really interesting person!  Sana's links: Sana on twitter: https://twitter.com/sanarao Redesigning the content research and design org on Medium: https://medium.com/deliveroo-design/redesigning-the-content-research-design-org-50a204425b5c Course materials from SVA: https://postindustrialdesign.school/#resources SVA: http://www.sva.edu Sponsor: Progression (har har) This episode is sponsored by Progression, because why the hell not. Get your waitlist spot at progressionapp.com (we're going into Beta now so many more invites coming soon) (A real sponsor will be back next episode) Me and progression: twitter.com/jonnyburch progressionapp.com

In this twelfth episode of the Progression Podcast I'm chatting to Peter Merholz, co-founder of Adaptive Path, long time speaker and blogger on design scaling and co-author of Org Design for Design Orgs (2016). We get into the weeds on his back story, including learning how to write and speak confidently. We then got onto managing up, down and across, his book and the ethics of design (and a designers' role within it). Finally we got to some listener questions from various Slack channels that I hang out on. Peter's links: Twitter: https://twitter.com/peterme Peter's blog: https://www.peterme.com/ Org Design for Design Orgs (Amazon) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Org-Design-Orgs-Peter-Merholz/dp/1491938404 Coach, Diplomat, Advocate, Architect. Peter's talk at Leading Design: https://vimeo.com/243666544 Sponsor: Onfido 🙌 This episode is sponsored by Onfido! They're ruddy great, and are looking for a VP design (amongst other interesting design and product roles). Check out their open jobs here: onfido.com/jobs Want to sponsor an episode, or suggest a guest? Email podcast@makegrow.co to get straight to me. Me and progression: twitter.com/jonnyburch progressionapp.com

In this episode I'm talking to Braden Kowitz, an SF based designer and founder. Braden's work has been hugely impactful on how we design today through his work on the Sprint book at Google Ventures. But his journey has also been an interesting one, leading from Google to working with startups to founding his own, Range. We talk about finding meaningful work, bucking the trend of an expected design career, the dangers of a rigid ladder in a small team and much more. Braden's Links Range: https://www.range.co/ Braden's personal site: https://kowitz.co/ Braden on twitter: https://twitter.com/kowitz The Sprint Book: https://www.thesprintbook.com/ Sponsor: Onfido 🙌 This episode is sponsored by Onfido! They're ruddy great, and are looking for a VP design (amongst other interesting design and product roles). Check out their open jobs here: onfido.com/jobs Want to sponsor an episode, or suggest a guest? Email podcast@makegrow.co to get straight to me. Me and progression: twitter.com/jonnyburch progressionapp.com

Jasmine Friedl is now Director of Design at Intercom in San Francisco, but has had an interesting, varied career, learning her trade at Facebook before some time at Udacity amongst others.  We talked about deliberately choosing a career that's right for you, learning from bad experiences, being lonely at the top, thoughtful leadership, privilege  and much much more. Links from the episode Bad decisions and wrong turns: one girls guide to career success: https://medium.com/@jazzy33ca/bad-decisions-and-wrong-turns-one-girls-guide-to-career-success-3865d874c847 Women at Intercom microsite: https://women.intercom.com/ Find Jasmine at: https://twitter.com/jazzy33ca Sponsor: Onfido are great 🙌 This episode is sponsored by Onfido! They're ruddy great, and are looking for a design ops person (amongst other interesting design and product roles). Check out their open jobs here: onfido.com/jobs Want to sponsor an episode, or suggest a guest? Email podcast@makegrow.co to get straight to me. Me and progression: twitter.com/jonnyburch progressionapp.com

Back in January I chatted to Kevin Goldsmith, a very experienced technical leader with background at companies including Microsoft, Adobe, Spotify and more. He was at Spotify when they evolved their org, witnessing and helping to shape the 'Spotify model' which has now found so much popularity in teams around the world. It's taken me ages to get this episode out, but it's a real corker for anyone thinking about scaling a team in tech. There's loads of lessons learned around parallel tracks, consensus-driven org decisions, managing a rollout of career progression in a company which had grown crazy fast with nothing and much, much more. Enjoy! Links from the episode Kevin on Conway's law (podcast): http://www.se-radio.net/2018/07/se-radio-episode-331-kevin-goldsmith-on-architecture-and-organizational-design/ The Spotify careers documentation: https://labs.spotify.com/2016/02/15/spotify-technology-career-steps/ Kevin's current gig, Astrum U: https://www.astrumu.com/ Find Kevin at: https://www.kevingoldsmith.com/ https://twitter.com/KevinGoldsmith Sponsor: Onfido are great 🙌 This episode is sponsored by Onfido! They're ruddy great, and are looking for a design ops person (amongst other interesting design and product roles). Check out their open jobs here: onfido.com/jobs Want to sponsor an episode, or suggest a guest? Email podcast@makegrow.co to get straight to me. Me and progression: twitter.com/jonnyburch progressionapp.com

Mills is kind of a legend of the London product and agency scene and co-founder and cultural hub of ustwo, the company behind (amongst others) the multi-award-winning game Monument Valley.  Ustwo are now huge, with offices in several countries around the world and hundreds of employees, but 15 years ago Mills and Sinx, (the other one in us'two') didn't know what the hell they were doing. Mills is now on his own journey of self discovery. We talk about what it means to have a good career, to build a business you want to work for, to find happiness and to recognise the need for change in order to get there. Apologies for some wobbly sound, sirens and bumps - I wanted to get this pod out there in true JFDI (Just Fucking Do It, the name of Mills's pod) style. Sponsor the pod! I'm looking for sponsors for this podcast! I have a small but growing audience of designers and design leaders who may be looking for a new gig, or some new tools. So get in front of them for an absolute bargain basement price by emailing me at podcast@makegrow.co. Mills: https://twitter.com/millsustwo https://soundcloud.com/thejfdicast https://www.ustwo.com/ Jonny: https://twitter.com/jonnyburch http://progressionapp.com

First podcast of the year! Took long enough... Jonny and Austin chat about their upcoming workshop – a collaboration with General Assembly – for designers of all stripes to introspect about their design careers and set better goals. Our first workshop is on the 14th of February, in London. Only 25 tickets total, grab yours (or gift to someone in your team) sharpish.  jams.progressionapp.com ------ Us: Jonny: twitter.com/jonnyburch Austin: twitter.com/austinkeeble

This week I'm on the pod with Jason Mesut, designer and mapper of design skills. We get into both his work over the last decade in mapping the shapes of designer across multiple companies, balancing family and being a designer, and being vulnerable online (and making mistakes in public). As we know each other a bit, we glossed over some of the details of what we were talking about, so there's a list of useful links below to help you out. The original design shapes article from a couple of years ago: https://medium.com/amplify-design/shapes-of-ux-designer-ad047bddac7f *That* linkedin post: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6473433530352304128 Jason on Medium: https://medium.com/@jasonmesut Shaping design (Jason's recent December series): https://medium.com/shapingdesign Resonant Design (Jason's company): resdesin.com Jason on the socials: twitter.com/jasonmesut linkedin.com/in/jasonmesut **Please do leave this podcast a review on iTunes - it helps other people find me!** Find me at: twitter.com/jonnyburch makegrow.co progressionapp.com

This week I chatted to Lauren Currie OBE, a service designer, blogger, passionate advocate of social issues, and managing director of NOBL here in the UK, as well as Bud Caddell, the founder of the California based organisational design consultancy. We tackle a couple of meaty topics around diversity - how can we as an industry better empathise with and improve diversity in the workplace? Plus we get to hear about the inner machinations of NOBL and the other projects that Lauren is working on. **Please do leave this podcast a review on iTunes - it helps other people find me!** Find Lauren and Bud at: twitter.com/redjotter redjotter.com twitter.com/bud_caddell budcaddell.com And NOBL at: twitter.com/workNOBL nobl.io Lauren's other projects that we discussed: weareupfront.com pregnantthenscrewed.com Find me at: twitter.com/jonnyburch makegrow.co progressionpack.com

Alongside talking to leaders in design and careers, I'll be spending some episodes coming back to fine people like Austin Keeble to talk through ongoing progress of our projects and challenges that we see in the broader design industry with regards to skills and personal growth. This episode we talk about the Progression Pack pilot, the importance of using data to power team growth, and the need for a more structured hiring process for diversity and the good of teams. Also, the audio is gradually improving! By the tenth episode we'll be in This American Life territory. I'm on a break now for a few weeks in India. Please do let me know what you thought of this episode and the pod in general, more in November. --- Useful links: Austin: austinkeeble.com twitter.com/austinkeeble Jonny: progressionpack.com jonnyburch.com twitter.com/jonnyburch Join the conversation: progressionpack.com/chat twitter.com/mkgrw

This episode, I'm chatting to Jen Dary, a leadership coach, workshop organiser, writer and card-maker from California. Jen runs Plucky, a company focused on helping companies and their people create happier workplaces. We like that! We talk about the strange need for managers and leaders to spend time creating physical things, the challenges of moving into management and how much it can help to chat things over with someone who can't fire you. Jen is wicked fun, and a great guest. I hope you enjoy the chat as much as I did! Any thoughts, feedback or questions - just email me: hello@makegrow.co. You can also record a message in anchor if you want to be featured on a future episode. (I'm still working on sound quality - next episode won't sound like I'm in a bathroom or a record player, promise) --- Plucky: beplucky.com Jen on twitter: twitter.com/jenniferdary So Now You're A Manager: beplucky.com/manager --- Progression Pack: progressionpack.com Join the community: progressionpack.com/chat Me on twitter: twitter.com/jonnyburch

I take this episode to chat to Andy Budd, founder of design agency Clearleft, outspoken social media presence and organiser of several design conferences here in the UK. We talk about issues with designer titles, building an ownership mindset for your own career, agencies vs in-house, and bringing a new generation of designers into more senior design positions. Got thoughts or feedback? Hit me up on twitter @jonnyburch or join the community at progressionpack.com/chat Handy links: - Andy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/andybudd - Ladder of Accountability: https://bit.ly/2Nb580N - Leading Design Conference: https://2018.leadingdesignconf.com/ - Submarine Leadership: https://bit.ly/2xRbTQw - The Peter principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle --- - Progression Pack: https://progressionpack.com - Me on twitter: https://twitter.com/jonnyburch