Introducing: Design Leadership Circles

I’m launching something new.

Design leadership circles are small, curated peer groups meeting every Wednesday for four weeks, throughout September.

This first one is completely free.

Design leadership is a tough job right now. I felt the start of this wave on the horizon as I left my last full-time role at Monzo, but since generative AI has gone mainstream, the pressure to do more, faster and better with fewer people only continues to increase.

Your CEO is asking you to ship twice as fast or with half the people. No managers though, only super ICs. Obviously. And your best designer wants to know if there’s even still a path to principal, and whether they should be worried.

You’ve got a brave face and an answer for each. Some you even believe. But who’s got your back? Who do you say the rest of it to?

Leadership peers seem to naturally thin out as layoffs and re-orgs increase. And since AI is a single-player tool by default, most of us are working it out alone, calibrating against a feed full of people claiming 10x gains or announcing that design is dead.

Small peer groups are where I’ve found most sanity when facing big uncertainty. BuzzFeed Manager Circles were my introduction, ten years ago, back in New York. Hearing someone else say the difficult thing out loud made me feel less alone, and less stuck.

So I’m dusting off that toolkit.

I’m looking for 5–7 design leaders who could use a few more peers to make sense of what this job even is right now. We’ll meet for 90 minutes on four Wednesdays throughout September, fully remote and timed for European afternoons and East Coast mornings. Curated and facilitated by me.

If you’ve read this far and feel at least a little bit seen, I’d love for you to apply: https://forms.gle/KT36FWFkTzoNbC3h8