Context

When my boss and Head of Design announced her departure, she asked me to serve as interim leader—a role both daunting and unexpected. Our team had grown from a handful of designers in 2020 to 52 by 2022, and I would now lead them. I’d also report to the Chief Product Officer and sit alongside his leadership team from the bank’s digital AND financial product organization. 

Despite my uncertainty, I accepted. My deep knowledge of the team and operational background gave me confidence, but what truly motivated me was the team's need for stability during this transition

Approach

During this time, I prioritized three things: our people, our culture, and communication. The team appreciated my approach, finding comfort in my transparent and occasionally humorous updates during a challenging period.

In partnership with our Chief Product Officer, I set the following goals: 

1. Fill the Head of Design role as quickly as possible

2. Minimize the impact on our people that this uncertain period could have,

3. Maintain and strengthen team cohesion, culture, communication and trust

I also put this deck together early in my transition in the sprit of transparency and human connection to share more about myself with the team, communicate my priorities and discuss my next steps so everyone was aware.

I accomplished these goals by: 

• Establishing and communicating my values and leading with them. I committed to show up mindfully for the team, lead with kindness, clarity, vulnerability and transparency while keeping the bigger picture and the best interests of the design and product team, as well as SVB in mind. 

• Leading the full end-to-end hiring process with our recruiter and Chief Product Officer including selecting the Executive Search agency that led to the successful hire within 6 months

• Establishing weekly transparent communications, continuing team rituals and investing in our culture

• Meeting individually with every team member and taking action to address concerns (contract extensions, net new hiring, salary adjustments, retention packages, etc.) 

• Developing comprehensive transition plans for our outgoing and incoming leaders

• Representing our team in Product leadership meetings and advocating and educating them on Design and our impact.

What I could have done better: 

• Invested more time building relationships with the members of the Product Leadership team. Given the need to guide the Design team through a difficult time, I focused my efforts internally, rather than externally. Had I put greater effort on my temporary peers, I may have been able to grow our team’s remit across additional product teams and further facilitated the new Head of Design’s transition into the team.

• As you can imagine, leading a 50+ person team during a difficult time is like being a firefighter whose bell doesn’t stop ringing. This required me to bias towards action and reaction versus more strategic, future forward work. At the same time, as someone in the interim role, I recognized early on that “the now” was my priority, and the future HoD could focus on strategy. 

• Delegation. More of it. Running the team and playing two roles was not easy, and somewhat of a fool’s errand. While I did my best to delegate, there was a lot I couldn’t, but I could have been more proactive in asking for help, strategic in my delegation, and ruthless in saying no to low-priority requests. 

Outcome

The ship didn’t sink! Our team emerged not just intact and afloat, but stronger and more resilient. I was also proud that we had zero attrition during my time as interim. Personally, I was exhausted, but transformed. I’d become a more confident leader deeply committed to our collective success, grounded in my values, and ready to hand over the reins to our new leader and ensure her success. Spoiler alert: the transition to our new head of design was a success! 

Bonus outcome: my success in the interim role had positioned me well to take over one of our latest programs of work (with 12 designers) while the Product Director went on maternity leave for 5 months as soon as our Head of Design was onboarded :)