Book Review: Liftoff! Practical Design Leadership to Elevate Your Team, Your Organization, and You (Part 1)
When I heard that Rosenfeld would publish a new book about Design Leadership, I knew I had to get it ASAP. I was so stoked after ordering it, that I couldn’t even wait for the shipment. I started reading the e-book and, for the first time ever, decided to take notes for each and every chapter along the way.
You can buy the book via Rosenfeld Media’s website.
Articles in this series:
- TL;DR review (scroll down ;-))
- Chapters 1–3: Design leadership definitions, diversity & inclusion, and designing the hiring process
- Chapters 4–7: Hiring designers from job descriptions, to screening, interviewing, and onboarding
- Chapters 8–10: Team Charters, One-on-Ones, and Design Critiques
- Chapters 11–13: Presenting work, saying no, and growing your designers
- Chapters 14–16: Scaling design, influencing your organization, and escaping velocity
- BONUS: Collection of books, articles, and other resources for leading design teams.
My goal was primarily self-reflection. How far have I come as a design leader? Does the guidance resonate with me? What would I suggest doing differently with my (limited) experience and knowledge? While writing these notes I also felt that sharing a detailed review with other aspiring design leaders might be helpful, so here I am.
What qualifies me to write a review like this?
I transitioned from an individual contributor (IC) role to a managerial position in late 2017. Since then I’ve been lucky enough to get promoted again and tasked with leading the Product Design and User Research department at Greentube. In total there are 8 people in “my organization” filling various roles, such as product designers, user researchers, and even frontend developers or team leaders.
I’ve been reading various books over the last years. My Goodreads profile will tell you that I mostly enjoy reading about UX, product management, and people management or leadership. I’ve been reading staples such as Radical Candor, The Effective Manager, and Creativity Inc. I hope that gives you a good idea of who I am and what to make of my review, especially if you disagree with me. ;-)
Full disclosure: As I’ll have a lot of notes to share, I wanted to just get a TL;DR review out of my head while everything is still fresh. I’ll break my notes down into multiple articles that will cover a few chapters with my opinion and additional resources that I’ve found useful in my career.
TL;DR review: It’s good, but not great! 3.5/5
Some of the chapters cover a lot of ground and it’s clear that this is a very new book. There is a full chapter on creating your own design charter. This is something I have very recently heard on Peter Merholz’s and Jesse James Garrett’s podcast as well. Take-home exercises for hiring designers have been a hot topic for a while and it’s also covered in this book.
I’ve been continuously impressed by the sections from other industry experts and leaders. Unfortunately, in some chapters, those “guest articles” easily overshadow the guidance from the actual authors. It’s a pity when a small section provides more actionable and useful guidance than the rest of a longer chapter.
This brings me to my biggest criticism for the book: depth. Most chapters that I haven’t found quite useful were filled with anecdotes and lacked actionable guidance. After reading books such as “The Effective Manager” I’ve become a slight bit allergic to leadership and management guidance that doesn’t tell you how to actually implement it.
Some chapters are well-structured and give great insights along with actionable guidance on how to implement a better way of “doing things”. Chapter 8 comes to mind with a clear step-by-step plan on how to actually create a team charter collaboratively.
Then there are chapters and shorter sections which are so shallow, they might have been skipped completely and nobody would have missed them. The one-pager on continuous feedback comes to mind. There is a lot to be said about giving feedback as a leader, which can’t just be ignored because there is a full chapter for doing design critiques. I believe the more traditional management skills were grossly ignored. Yes, there is a chapter about One On Ones, but it’s quite frankly lacking compared to “The Effective Manager” or even “Radical Candor”. Coaching and delegating work, two key managerial skills are quickly covered and forgotten.
With the book coming in at over 300 pages I expected to find a solid foundation that I can recommend to fellow aspiring design leaders, in order to help them get started with the messy life of a manager. Unfortunately, I’d probably only point them to a few chapters of this book and hint towards older, but better books on managing and leading people.
Criticism aside, this is definitely not a bad book. It is a decent (but not sufficient) “starter package” for design leaders who want to develop themselves further. The guidance is, when it’s actionable, top-notch. Sometimes you will find yourself asking “okay but how do I do that?”, which is the prime reason for my rating.
Where’s the “full review”?
I will give more context and examples for each chapter in future articles. I hope that these will not just serve as a comprehensive book review, but as useful tidbits about leadership and management too. :)
All articles in this series:
- TL;DR review
- Chapters 1–3: Design leadership definitions, diversity & inclusion, and designing the hiring process
- Chapters 4–7: Hiring designers from job descriptions, to screening, interviewing, and onboarding
- Chapters 8–10: Team Charters, One-on-Ones, and Design Critiques
- Chapters 11–13: Presenting work, saying no, and growing your designers
- Chapters 14–16: Scaling design, influencing your organization, and escaping velocity
- BONUS: Collection of books, articles, and other resources for leading design teams.
