We pump over designers in the company: from junior to art director
A free retelling of a lecture by Alexander Kovalsky with our past QIWI Kitchen for designers
The life of classic design studios begins roughly the same: several designers make about the same projects, and therefore their specialization is about the same. Everything is simple - one begins to learn from another, they exchange experience and knowledge, jointly do different projects and are in the same information field.
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Difficulties begin at the moment when new business units appear, the studio model changes to the model of the agency or product team. The number of specialists is growing, and their skills are mixed so much that it becomes almost impossible to keep track of them. We faced this problem when, in addition to traditional web design, we had service design and branding teams, and the formation of a foreign UX team began. The question arose how to digitize their knowledge, lead to a single system and make for each individual plan for pumping skills.
I worked as a designer, creative and art director, but now as the design director of CreativePeople, I am committed to bringing together creative teams within the agency and on the client side, pumping them up and bringing them to a new level of efficiency. In this article I will share our experience and tell you about the successful ways of development of both individual employees and the team as a whole.
Today, only in the Moscow office of CreativePeople 65 people work. 11 more from the Prague team, and about 30 work on design. A significant part of our team is designers, and it is easy to imagine how difficult it is to keep track of each of them, to develop and organize in time.
At the heart of the designer's pumping system is the digitization of his current skills. To get an objective picture, we interviewed our designers on how they actually perceive their positions and how they see further development, and also talked with the heads of the departments of the product teams of our clients. Opinions were divided: designers pointed to hard-skills as basic skills for career growth, and department heads noted that they increasingly needed soft-skills in order for a person to benefit more. The problem is that, in the market paradigm, the most often design lead / art director is usually the coolest designer by skill who is the best at owning software. At the same time, many people forget about soft skills, although businesses need them first and foremost. And drawing skills are far from the most important.
And in our opinion, and in the opinion of those agencies with which we work abroad, junior is the person who just needs to be taught. Middle is the one who has learned, I can leave him the task in the morning, return in the evening, pick it up and send it to the client without checking for it. And Senior is the one who can teach others and implement the project by various specialists.
We have always strived to ensure that designers grow within the company, so we developed our own system of employee competency assessment. We call it DEMP: design, education, money, process - the main blocks of competencies that can be developed from the designer.
In design, we swing logic and visuals. In education, the main thing is the question of how he learns himself and can teach others. Money - about the perception of finance in the project, the team and their own. Processes show whether the designer is well aware of the creation of a creative product and the possibilities for its optimization.
Each block is divided into three levels. First, the base is the personal experience of the designer and personal area of ​​responsibility. At the next level, he is already starting to think in a category of projects. And at the last level comes an understanding of how the department / company works. With regard to design, it looks like this: I draw myself, draw in collaborations, draw with the help of other people (by assembling a team and transmitting my vision of the project to them).
One stage is divided into 3 sub-steps and the fastest term for which the designer went through the sub-step is about 3-4 months.
But, of course, it does not happen that a specialist has every block filled to the maximum. And then the question arises. A person whose design will be on the first level, and everything else is not, is this a good art director or a bad one?
According to this matrix, it turned out that there are a lot of guys who have not so much developed visual skills, but there are many other things that can be very useful in a team. Moreover, if you look at the two lower plots, then two people in a pair form a very cool collaboration from the point of view of skills. A good knowledge of the processes, understanding at the project level of how the work goes with money, learning ability, team development skills, training, coupled with a very strong design person gives a very cool bunch. And thanks to digitization, we were able to select a person who complements the team with his strengths.
And then the employee development plan comes into play. It looks like this.
The consequence of rapid changes in our field is how often a specialist makes a mistake in his own assessment at the interview stage. Not uncommon, when a person comes to us for an interview, evaluating himself at the level of senior or at least middle. But in the course of communication, we understand that he can only be perceived as junior, because he does not have half of the necessary skills. And this is not a reassessment of our own forces, but simply the result of the dynamics of design development. So not only beginners are mistaken, who were convinced in the courses that they now cost from 100,000, but also people with more experience. If five years ago they could apply for the position of art director in a small company, now they will be completely ineffective in the product team.
At this stage, we need to “figure out” the specialist: understand its real level and relate it to whether we can effectively pump it. For this, we create a map of his skills.
See how the skill set in the Figma command is similar. Not only is the score different, but also the number of skills you need to know. Ideally pumped one skill is clearly not enough for career growth. They do not divide into such large blocks as we, but work in the same logic.
We, as a rule, have only three months to immerse a person into work, synchronize with our processes and transfer accumulated knowledge. Sometimes this stage also includes the rapid pumping of hard-skills, when you need to tighten the knowledge of a certain software.
At this stage it is very important not only to transfer all the artifacts and throw off useful articles, but also to immerse the designer in the processes, to establish comfortable work in a team. And after three months, we can begin to explore the strengths of the employee in a normal working environment.
We conditionally divide all designers into “three circles of trust”. In the first round - everyone who works all the time, in the second - those who work with us on a project basis and gives a predictable result, and in the third round - people with whom we worked at least once and checked the level. Infrastructure CreativePeople is created in such a way that designers flow from one circle to another and it is easiest to get a permanent, just hitting the “third circle”, initially trying with us to do at least one project. It is much faster and more efficient than spontaneously looking for a new person in the market. People from the second and third circle are synchronized in the background - it helps save time when moving to the first circle.
If there were no problems with synchronization, then the stage of natural growth was associated with difficulties. Designers did not always understand how a specialist grows and how a career can develop.
And this is normal, because 5 years ago there were some rules on the market, now others, and in 5 years they, most likely, will also change. The big question: what to do now and how to swing to be as effective as possible over a long distance.
Of course, there is nothing better for pumping designer than a bunch of master and apprentice. In management, this is called Shadowing - a method where someone “follows the shadow” with a more experienced specialist, and learns by repeating it. In addition, there is mentoring, there is coaching, mentoring, and all these things differ from each other in the level of responsibility: for example, a mentor is responsible for the person he teaches, and the mentor simply conveys knowledge. Inside the agency, we use all of these options, depending on how and what skills of designers we want to work out. But there are many other options, how to pump a team, the main thing is to track the performance of each person in time and work with them.
In our skill set, we note the assessment that the designer has set himself, and the assessment of another person (manager or colleague).
As a result, the system allows you to bring pumping to such a level that you practically cease to be dependent on the external labor market. Over the past 6-7 years, all CreativePeople art directors have been grown inside.
The most important thing, when a designer comes to your team, is to agree immediately on the shore that you will have some kind of synchronization. During this time, you will understand how you will work in terms of rules and terms.
Next, you begin to identify strengths with a competency matrix. Life hacking: it is better to pump a person in the direction where he is already good. That is, if he is successful in the “Education” block, then it is better to further strengthen this competence and grow a good speaker out of it. And after he has reached the maximum level here, develop the next block.
But this will be the stage of natural growth, where the employee will, together with the team, absorb new knowledge and become stronger.
A video version of the performance can be viewed here .
The life of classic design studios begins roughly the same: several designers make about the same projects, and therefore their specialization is about the same. Everything is simple - one begins to learn from another, they exchange experience and knowledge, jointly do different projects and are in the same information field.
')
Difficulties begin at the moment when new business units appear, the studio model changes to the model of the agency or product team. The number of specialists is growing, and their skills are mixed so much that it becomes almost impossible to keep track of them. We faced this problem when, in addition to traditional web design, we had service design and branding teams, and the formation of a foreign UX team began. The question arose how to digitize their knowledge, lead to a single system and make for each individual plan for pumping skills.
I worked as a designer, creative and art director, but now as the design director of CreativePeople, I am committed to bringing together creative teams within the agency and on the client side, pumping them up and bringing them to a new level of efficiency. In this article I will share our experience and tell you about the successful ways of development of both individual employees and the team as a whole.
Today, only in the Moscow office of CreativePeople 65 people work. 11 more from the Prague team, and about 30 work on design. A significant part of our team is designers, and it is easy to imagine how difficult it is to keep track of each of them, to develop and organize in time.
At the heart of the designer's pumping system is the digitization of his current skills. To get an objective picture, we interviewed our designers on how they actually perceive their positions and how they see further development, and also talked with the heads of the departments of the product teams of our clients. Opinions were divided: designers pointed to hard-skills as basic skills for career growth, and department heads noted that they increasingly needed soft-skills in order for a person to benefit more. The problem is that, in the market paradigm, the most often design lead / art director is usually the coolest designer by skill who is the best at owning software. At the same time, many people forget about soft skills, although businesses need them first and foremost. And drawing skills are far from the most important.
And in our opinion, and in the opinion of those agencies with which we work abroad, junior is the person who just needs to be taught. Middle is the one who has learned, I can leave him the task in the morning, return in the evening, pick it up and send it to the client without checking for it. And Senior is the one who can teach others and implement the project by various specialists.
We have always strived to ensure that designers grow within the company, so we developed our own system of employee competency assessment. We call it DEMP: design, education, money, process - the main blocks of competencies that can be developed from the designer.
In design, we swing logic and visuals. In education, the main thing is the question of how he learns himself and can teach others. Money - about the perception of finance in the project, the team and their own. Processes show whether the designer is well aware of the creation of a creative product and the possibilities for its optimization.
Each block is divided into three levels. First, the base is the personal experience of the designer and personal area of ​​responsibility. At the next level, he is already starting to think in a category of projects. And at the last level comes an understanding of how the department / company works. With regard to design, it looks like this: I draw myself, draw in collaborations, draw with the help of other people (by assembling a team and transmitting my vision of the project to them).
One stage is divided into 3 sub-steps and the fastest term for which the designer went through the sub-step is about 3-4 months.
But, of course, it does not happen that a specialist has every block filled to the maximum. And then the question arises. A person whose design will be on the first level, and everything else is not, is this a good art director or a bad one?
According to this matrix, it turned out that there are a lot of guys who have not so much developed visual skills, but there are many other things that can be very useful in a team. Moreover, if you look at the two lower plots, then two people in a pair form a very cool collaboration from the point of view of skills. A good knowledge of the processes, understanding at the project level of how the work goes with money, learning ability, team development skills, training, coupled with a very strong design person gives a very cool bunch. And thanks to digitization, we were able to select a person who complements the team with his strengths.
And then the employee development plan comes into play. It looks like this.
Stage 1. New employee
The consequence of rapid changes in our field is how often a specialist makes a mistake in his own assessment at the interview stage. Not uncommon, when a person comes to us for an interview, evaluating himself at the level of senior or at least middle. But in the course of communication, we understand that he can only be perceived as junior, because he does not have half of the necessary skills. And this is not a reassessment of our own forces, but simply the result of the dynamics of design development. So not only beginners are mistaken, who were convinced in the courses that they now cost from 100,000, but also people with more experience. If five years ago they could apply for the position of art director in a small company, now they will be completely ineffective in the product team.
At this stage, we need to “figure out” the specialist: understand its real level and relate it to whether we can effectively pump it. For this, we create a map of his skills.
See how the skill set in the Figma command is similar. Not only is the score different, but also the number of skills you need to know. Ideally pumped one skill is clearly not enough for career growth. They do not divide into such large blocks as we, but work in the same logic.
Stage 2. Synchronization with the team
We, as a rule, have only three months to immerse a person into work, synchronize with our processes and transfer accumulated knowledge. Sometimes this stage also includes the rapid pumping of hard-skills, when you need to tighten the knowledge of a certain software.
At this stage it is very important not only to transfer all the artifacts and throw off useful articles, but also to immerse the designer in the processes, to establish comfortable work in a team. And after three months, we can begin to explore the strengths of the employee in a normal working environment.
Stage 3. Determination of strengths
We conditionally divide all designers into “three circles of trust”. In the first round - everyone who works all the time, in the second - those who work with us on a project basis and gives a predictable result, and in the third round - people with whom we worked at least once and checked the level. Infrastructure CreativePeople is created in such a way that designers flow from one circle to another and it is easiest to get a permanent, just hitting the “third circle”, initially trying with us to do at least one project. It is much faster and more efficient than spontaneously looking for a new person in the market. People from the second and third circle are synchronized in the background - it helps save time when moving to the first circle.
Stage 4. Natural pumping
If there were no problems with synchronization, then the stage of natural growth was associated with difficulties. Designers did not always understand how a specialist grows and how a career can develop.
And this is normal, because 5 years ago there were some rules on the market, now others, and in 5 years they, most likely, will also change. The big question: what to do now and how to swing to be as effective as possible over a long distance.
Stage 5. Development Program
Of course, there is nothing better for pumping designer than a bunch of master and apprentice. In management, this is called Shadowing - a method where someone “follows the shadow” with a more experienced specialist, and learns by repeating it. In addition, there is mentoring, there is coaching, mentoring, and all these things differ from each other in the level of responsibility: for example, a mentor is responsible for the person he teaches, and the mentor simply conveys knowledge. Inside the agency, we use all of these options, depending on how and what skills of designers we want to work out. But there are many other options, how to pump a team, the main thing is to track the performance of each person in time and work with them.
In our skill set, we note the assessment that the designer has set himself, and the assessment of another person (manager or colleague).
As a result, the system allows you to bring pumping to such a level that you practically cease to be dependent on the external labor market. Over the past 6-7 years, all CreativePeople art directors have been grown inside.
Summarize
The most important thing, when a designer comes to your team, is to agree immediately on the shore that you will have some kind of synchronization. During this time, you will understand how you will work in terms of rules and terms.
Next, you begin to identify strengths with a competency matrix. Life hacking: it is better to pump a person in the direction where he is already good. That is, if he is successful in the “Education” block, then it is better to further strengthen this competence and grow a good speaker out of it. And after he has reached the maximum level here, develop the next block.
But this will be the stage of natural growth, where the employee will, together with the team, absorb new knowledge and become stronger.
A video version of the performance can be viewed here .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/453776/
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