Catt Small – The Staff Designer

Catt Small – The Staff Designer

Podcast Power of Ten

In this episode, staff product designer, game maker and developer Catt Small, author of The Staff Designer: Grow, Influence, and Lead as an Individual Contributor, talks with me about what it takes to keep growing as a designer without moving into management. Drawing on sixteen years at companies including Asana, Etsy, SoundCloud, and Dropbox, Catt explains where the staff role came from, how it differs from senior, and why communication became the “final boss” of her career. They discuss defensive calendaring and focus, swapping “no” for “yes, and”, letting go of glue work, managing up, where AI helps and hinders at the staff level, and why taking agency rather than waiting to be told made the biggest difference.



Transcript

Note: This transcript is machine-generated and may contain some errors.

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Power of Ten, a show about design operating at many levels of zoom, from thoughtful detail through to transformation in organizations, society, and the world. My name is Andy Polaine. I’m a design leadership coach, educator, and writer. My guest today is Catt Small, a staff product designer, game maker, and developer, and she’s author of The Staff Designer: Grow, Influence, and Lead as an Individual Contributor, recently published by Rosenfeld Media.

Catt has worked with companies of all sizes, including Asana, Etsy, and SoundCloud. She started programming interactive games around the age of 10 and has been going ever since. She’s co-organizer of the Game Devs of Color Expo, an annual event that amplifies the creative power held by people of color in games.

In her spare time, Catt makes awkward video games, writes and draws artwork of all kinds. Catt, welcome to Power 10.

Catt Small: Hello. Thanks [00:01:00] for having me, Andy.

So, people can’t see you, but you are in a fabulously colored room that matches the cover of your book, which I was very impressed by. It’s like a, a pink and peach and turquoise, a blue vibe going on.

Catt Small: Yeah. I love color.

Congratulations on the book. I’ve recommended it to several of my coaches, ‘cause it’s definitely hits the spot of, when I was reading through it, I recognized many, many of the things that you were talking about. Um, before we get to it, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your journey?

Catt Small: Yeah. I- this is year 16 for me as a professional designer. Originally, I came from more of a fine arts and graphic design background, and I happened to be in, in graphic design school when the iPhone came out and when Web 2.0 was emerging, and I realized that there was an opportunity for a person who had already kind of played around with CSS and HTML through websites like LiveJournal [00:02:00] to make the transition into interaction design and web development.

So by the time I was out of university, I was a junior web designer, and then I ended up transitioning fully into user experience more specifically after that because it felt like it was more of a combination of, like, the scientific study of how people think, which I found really fascinating and, and that really resonated with me.

And so, I dug a lot deeper into user experience and product design after that. And, yeah, since that point, which was a while ago at this point, I’ve, I’ve gotten to work for a variety of companies and just wanted to dig deeper and deeper into the practice of how people think and how they, how they use certain tools.

And then, of course, over time, as I became more senior, that started to extend to the challenge of communication, which I feel like has been the final boss of my career, and that’s why I wrote [00:03:00] the book.

Okay. Uh, the final boss is the boss, right?

Catt Small: Yeah. Literally.

I wrote a little piece about this ages ago, but I, I find it funny the way sort of corporates are kind of gamified, right?

You get levels, and you get bonuses, and you get… Y- you can get badges often and things like that, and you have bosses.

Catt Small: It really is a game.

It really is a game. Um, which is kind of part of the, the thing, actually. I mean, there’s a lot in your book. There’s some very, very practical stuff and tips in your book.

Like I said, many of which I recognize. But there’s also some stuff there around, there’s a lot around communications and things like that. So, you know, you’ve, you’ve been a staff designer for a while. Why the book and why now, I guess, is the, the first thing?

Catt Small: Yeah. At this point, this is y- I think, my sixth year as a staff designer.

I, I officially got the title when I joined Asana in, 2020. And, before that I had been trying to figure out what was missing to get that promotion, and then when I actually [00:04:00] did shift into that role at a new company, I very quickly realized what the gap had been. I’m really grateful to, the person, Sarah Kramer, who took that chance on me for me to kind of, you know, step up to the plate and show her and the team what I could deliver and how I could be the best version of myself at work.

Um, but I had recognized around that, that whole scenario of, you know, the struggle before and then getting into the new role afterward, kind of a lot of gaps in terms of the information that was available for people who were in both of those modes, either trying to get that promo or, you know, in the role for the first time and kind of drowning.

Um, shout-outs to Brian Loven, who did write the forward to my book because, I think it was in 2021, he actually released a series of interviews that was on a website called staff.design. I think if you still go to that domain, it’s still live and active. Uh, but essentially [00:05:00] that was the only resource that was directly about being a designer, individual contributor at that level.

So I kind of just started taking notes and, and keeping track of my own progression and reflecting on some of the major gaps that I noticed, and over time, essentially I said to myself, “Okay, well, if somebody doesn’t Write about this first, then I’ll ju- I’ll just do it at some point because there’s a lot here.

And it, you know, there’s management books, so, you know, a, a really great book, for example, is, like, The Making of a Manager. There’s, there’s other great books about being a design leader, but when it comes to, the world of an individual contributor in particular, that’s where there were some gaps.

Yeah.

Catt Small: We’ve had some filled on the engineering side, but yeah, I think design had an opportunity, so, I, over time, recognized, okay, I feel like maybe I am the person to write about that. So, yeah, essentially it was just trying to be of [00:06:00] service to other people so that they didn’t have to make as many mistakes as I did.

Yeah. If not you, then who, right?

Catt Small: Yeah.

So you talk about this at the beginning of the book. I think my experience has been, at least, or my impression has been, I lived in Australia for a while too, so, I could be wrong, but that it was a, it’s a role that’s not, wasn’t as well known in, in Europe where I am as it was in America.

I think it sort of hit America first, and I remember coming across it in my coaching quite early on, which would’ve been about sort of six years ago, and someone was talking about it, and I, I kind of had known of the role, but I hadn’t really, like, tweaked about what, what it really was. ‘Cause it, it sort of emerged because I, most of the time, the, the structures I’ve known is people going to leads, and then they’re going to a director role, or there’s a kind of principal role if you’re staying in the non-manager role.

Catt Small: Yeah.

Where does it come from, and what is a staff designer? ‘Cause you’re quite clear to say it’s not just a se- it’s not a senior designer.

Catt Small: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So it’s definitely a, a role that’s been only becoming more common over [00:07:00] time, and it was for sure borrowed in terms of the terminology from engineering.

So- On the engineering side, we’ve had a swath of engineers who have said, “I never wanna manage people. I always wanna be in the code. I am a builder by nature.” And you know, of course, over time, companies want to retain people. They want to, you know, give people more responsibility, so they would promote these engineers, but the only progression available was to go into being a manager, and a lot of engineers didn’t wanna do that.

And so that was how the staff engineer role came to be. Then on the design side, we had a similar progression in terms of the, the career ladder where a lot of, positions or, or, or a lot of career ladders around like 2016, 2017 basically said, “Okay, senior is, you know, kind of the top position that you can go to as an IC, and then you can bump over to being a manager if you wanna kind of keep [00:08:00] going up to being a director, et cetera.”

Um, but then over time, people recognized, oh, some people actually prefer to be in the work, and when you force people to go from being in the pixels to managing people, like those are very different skill sets. Some people are not driven by that. And it would be better to give those craft-driven people a space to actually keep progressing as an individual contributor.

So that was a large part of it, and there’s a lot of different terminology that’s existed over time. Um, but more recently, it’s becoming more common to use the phrase staff, and I, I think that’s honestly just the industry starting to, coalesce a little bit more and to figure out, all right, which of these terms works and is, is more clear.

Um, and I think, you know, again, consistency and cohesion with engineering in this case seems to make a lot of sense. So, there… At this point we’re seeing the level above senior most often being called staff, and [00:09:00] then above the staff level, it’s either usually senior staff or it’s principal, and then it might be senior principal or something like that.

Um, then there’s like distinguished architect, like really high level people after that. I love it because, you know, it means more… That we have more room to grow and that our careers, fingers crossed, might be, you know, 30, 40, 50 years, if you like doing this work. Um, that’s… It is nice to have the runway and not to have the pressure to keep growing so quickly.

So that is something else that I reflect on is, you know, the, the jump from junior to mid and then mid to senior can happen in a couple of years, but the, the timeline or the, the amount of time between the growth at the, you know, senior to staff level is just gonna be longer and then staff to principal and so on much longer and that’s okay because we just have the space to keep exploring.

I mentioned a bit about not, it’s not a senior designer because the thing is there’s a lot of senior designers who are at that, at that point, “Now I wanna get to [00:10:00] staff. I want to get to staff.” And you kind of talked about- Almost that you didn’t know what the gap was until you’d got into the role, which is, all credit to you.

‘Cause for a lot of people, they have to be s- already kind of acting that role, and promotions tend to lag, right? They tend to catch up. It’s not, not so often- Yeah … that someone does say, “Oh, I think this person might be quite good at this. Let’s take a bet on them.” It’s mostly the other way around, like, “Let’s not lose this person.

We better promote them.” What was the gap that you recognized then? What was, what was missing once you were there? Like, when we had you, like, oh, moment.

Catt Small: Yeah. When I was a senior designer, I was more focused on Myself and how I was showing that I was an excellent worker. And for me, the transition was from just kind of focusing on me to thinking about myself within the context of the broader team, empathizing with my leaders.

I was very, you know, of the, the people, like, on the ground, [00:11:00] and so I was very much like, you know, like, “Management is all out to get us,” blah, blah, blah. And, you know, sometimes there are managers who are very focused on themselves and, you know, do land grabs and things like that. But as a staff designer, you have to figure out how to operate within that system and to understand the motivations of the people around you, how often people who are in these director and VP level positions, how often you need to be communicating with those folks.

Um, you need to be doing a lot of managing up and just accepting that that’s kind of part of the job. And frankly, as a senior designer, I, I was not really super willing to do those kinds of things, and if my manager had asked me, you know, to make their life a little bit easier by doing some of those things proactively for them, I would kind of be much more like, “Oh, well, like, that’s your job,” like, “Why am I doing that stuff?”

Now I’m much more like, “Oh, okay,” like, “They’re also really busy. Um, I need to be proactive in how I communicate with them. I’m, you know, gonna put in the effort because I [00:12:00] understand that, like, politically, this is gonna result in my team’s work getting green-lit faster,” things of that nature. So that’s one huge difference is just how I show up in the role.

And then the other thing is the scope of work is actually larger and more complex. So when I was a senior designer, even though I was working on fairly large, pieces of work that did affect, in some cases, like millions of people, I was working… I was still being mostly assigned work, and that’s a big difference is that when you’re actually in the staff role, you’re helping to define the roadmap and to figure out the scope of these solutions at a much larger scale, and you’re often doing, visioning and, like, forward-looking exercises to figure out, on a very strategic business level, what do we need to do to deliver value to our customers?

Um, and then, yeah, I, I just noticed that, I was spending a lot more [00:13:00] time, instead of just executing on designs, really actually helping to support planning in a much more involved way than, than previously, than I had been doing as a senior designer. I hope that makes sense.

It does absolutely make sense.

I mean, there’s a thing, that sort of resonates with the, you know, my world of service design, which is, I mean, we just did the second edition of the book, and there’s this chapter on organizational change that Ben mostly wrote, and I added some bits to. One of which was there was a subtitle that said, “Managers are people too And I think one of the realizations was, oh, you know, we’ve designed all of this stuff, but the organization’s actually not in a position to receive it.

Then there was this little kind of bridge, like this kind of patch that was missing between them. And hearing you say that, I kind of… I think it’s a similar thing, that the kind of work that you are describing is, you know, how do we make sure that this, the stuff that we are doing actually gets buy-in, that it aligns with what people’s, needs are or their fears and anxieties and all the [00:14:00] rest of it?

Because without that, it doesn’t go anywhere. And when you were talking about the kind of the management are all out to get, get us thing, y- you’re right. I mean, sometimes they are, and right now is not really a particularly great time, depending on the area you’re in. But there is, there’s a kind of grow– I think this is probably really patronizing, I’m gonna say anyway.

There’s, there’s a kind of growing up or some maturity around that that happens- Mm-hmm … where you cease to be constantly in conflict, like going from being a teenager to an adult, I think, with your parents or something, where it’s, it’s, you know, as a sort of teenage version of design is exactly that, of like, oh, you know, always out to get us, so unfair, and all of this stuff.

Yeah. And then at some point you realize, okay, no, there’s, there’s multiple pressures going on in everyone’s lives, and this is actually just the way things are, and then I have to do some work to sort of align and ease things and smooth things over, otherwise nothing happens.

Catt Small: Yeah. Yeah, I think, like, it, it took me a long time to also realize that Hilariously about a, a [00:15:00] business is a business first.

And I think, you know, for a number of years as a designer, I was very focused, of course, on the, the, the customer experience, and I would- Mm-hmm … champion the user and so on and so forth. Um, but I wasn’t really as willing to consider the perspectives and the pressures that my product management partners were experiencing, for example, and, how I might need to give, you know, as much as I was taking and, like- Mm

kind of like rallying against those people. Um, and again, these were, like, my teammates, and so we were supposed to be on the same side. But yeah, I just… I had m- a much more adversarial relationship with a lot of people, and my focus was much more on, you know, like, I was told that I’m supposed to be championing the user, and I’m gonna show that I can do that the best way possible, and, like, I need to look good.

And, like, you know, P- like, we, we have to, like, battle against PM because, you know, [00:16:00] they will throw users under the bus, and, like, this is the right thing to do, so we have to drop all of the, like, business objectives and just do it. And over time, you know, again, I became more mature and realized, like, okay, context matters.

We need to make sure that we’re figuring out, you know, how much social capital do we have with everybody? Is this the right time to be doing these things, even if it’s the right thing to do? Do… Will we still have a business if we do this right now? Like, there’s a lot more complexity and nuance that I needed to acknowledge, and it just took a ti- it took time for me to get there.

Yeah, yeah. Uh, there’s a thing that my friend, Martia Adeyko says, which is, you know, design leaders are business leaders first.

Catt Small: Yep.

And I think it’s quite a useful thing, and I think it’s, it’s either M- uh, Martia or, Tanara Schneider who said, you know, there’s very few functions in a company that see themselves in opposition to the business.

And, whereas design sort of has this thing all the time, comes in with this. And I think for all the reasons you’ve just talk- talked about. I mean, sometimes it’s useful. I [00:17:00] think it’s, it’s an important role to have someone advocating for that and saying, “Hey, you know, this-” We can’t just… If we do this, our users are gonna…

And it’s still a business thing, right? Yeah. Our users are gonna desert us, they hate us. You know, even if they’re locked in in some way, it makes us very vulnerable to a competitor.

Catt Small: Yeah.

Um, how does the role change with different company sizes? ‘Cause you talk about this a little bit.

Catt Small: Yeah. Yeah, so when you’re a larger company, it’s more likely that you’ll end up working across more people because you as a staff designer are usually going to be responsible for, like, a product area, for example.

Um, you might be responsible for, like, a, a certain vertical, within a company or even a particular product within a company that has a portfolio of different products. And so there’s a lot more coordination work that often has to happen, and there’s probably a lot more visioning work that has to happen.

Whereas when you are at a smaller [00:18:00] company, it’s probably gonna be more focused on zero to one work, and you will just generally probably have Less quote unquote resources to work with, which can be a good thing because you can move very quickly when you don’t have to coordinate across a bunch of people.

But at the same time, you have to be much more efficient about how you manage your time because it will just be you. And, you know, at a startup, for example, you do wanna move quickly and learn very quickly, but ideally you’re not failing in ways that you could, you know, have prevented. Um, they say, I think, like fail fast, learn fast, and things like that.

Um, but if you are spending a lot of time on work that ends up failing, then that’s not great. So there’s a lot more risk analysis and, and tr- and trade-off analysis in terms of what is the most efficient and effective use of my time. So I’ve, I’ve worked with startups in a consulting fashion, and what’s great is, you know, you can still do a lot of that visioning [00:19:00] work because then it builds out a roadmap a lot of the time in terms of, what can the team focus on?

But then you need to shift into actually executing very quickly. So, I’ve, I’ve seen that it’s much more scrappy generally, which can be really fun. Um, so yeah, I, I think the role of a staff designer is very different. I, I’ve seen a lot more of these positions for sure at a larger company because there is that expectation of coordinating across people and managing upward.

But I do think there is certainly value in having somebody who has the years of experience also at a smaller company because they can often help you figure out and predict what not to do, and what is a better use of time. So I’m always telling people, you know, if you do have the budget, you know, it can be useful to have one of your first hires be a really senior designer.

Um, but yeah, you know, I think it, it, it really depends. There’s [00:20:00] also a whole mentorship aspect that I think a lot of designers who have more years of experience want to get to engage in. And, the trade-off is at a smaller company, you’re probably the first or founding designer. Um, so you won’t get to do that for a while unless you, you know, help the company grow.

And then, yeah, at a larger company you have a lot of mentorship opportunities, so that’s also a benefit. And I think there is, at least in my experience, there’s been an ex- expectation that as a staff designer, I am spending some of my time mentoring designers in terms of improving their craft.

Well, let’s talk about time because, uh, there was a, there’s a section, it’s quite early on in the book actually, about- Mm-hmm

managing your calendars and stuff. And I would say it’s probably, I’ve just had this conversation this morning actually. There’s a, a thing that one of the first things I do with coachees is I, you know, say, “Let’s have a look at your calendar then,” and it’s, it’s predictably awful, right? It’s just full of one-to-ones and, recurring meetings and [00:21:00] all of that stuff.

And there’s a thing that happens actually where they have, you know, I look through and I go, “So I’m looking at this, you’ve got about six hours free in your week or maybe eight,” but it’s all really low grade stuff, like 20 minute, you know, breaks between other meetings. Yeah. So in reality, they have maybe two to four hours of focus time, you know, in the worst cases.

And in, you know, in the best cases, maybe they’ve got, six to eight or something. But in, in everyone’s heads, I mean, you know, I do this too, you think, “Oh, I’ve got a week to do that,” but actually you don’t, right? You know, you’ve got six hours to do that, and it’s six kind of cruddy hours too.

Catt Small: Yeah.

And so I think it’s quite hard to Have the space and time to be…

Well, it’s quite hard to be intentional and thoughtful and reflective and, and all the things you’re talking about, without actually making the space and time to do it. And what are your big tips for calendars and, and making time?

Catt Small: Yeah, this is such a good question, and it’s one of the reasons that I put this chapter very early on.

Time management [00:22:00] is a foundation. It’s a cornerstone of being able to operate effectively at the staff level. And if you have not spent time getting comfortable with your calendar, you’re going to struggle to be able to find the space to navigate and crunch through some of the ambiguous problems that you’re going to be handling because when you are at this level, there is that expectation that, again, you’re, like, working across all these different people.

You’re taking on some of the most challenging problems, usually at the business. Um, and so you need the time and space to be able to just sit with sometimes your thoughts or to, you know, figure out the what is the best prompt, et cetera, et cetera. Um, you need the time and space to do that. So the first thing I always tell people to do as well is for sure sit with your calendar, look at an average week, and just look at all the meetings that you have in a, an average week and see if there’s any time you can scrape back from that.

Can [00:23:00] you adjust the cadence of some of the meetings that you have that are maybe one-to-one? Can you change them from weekly to biweekly or from biweekly to monthly or monthly to quarterly? A lot of times you can do that. Um, the other thing is people will often put 30-minute breaks between each meeting, and it’s really challenging to do anything in 30 minutes.

So what if instead you turn on speedy meetings in Google Calendar, for example, you have your five-minute breaks between meetings to get water, et cetera, and then you chunk your meetings next to each other during like, you know, a certain block of time that you feel like is best for you to talk to people.

So for, for me, for example, I don’t usually put meetings before 11:30 AM Eastern because you– I can, I can function, but in terms of problem-solving, like it, it can be kind of challenging for me that early in the morning to really like have like the space to think through a lot of that work, so it’s better for me to [00:24:00] kind of ramp up and to have the time to tinker and then show up to my conversations with a bit more of an opinion.

Um, so I usually have my meetings between the hours of maybe 11:30 AM, probably noon, all the way to 4:00 PM, 5:00 PM latest usually, ‘cause by that time I’m, I’m kinda Done and like a little bit roasted Mm. Mm. So, then what that usually leaves me with is, you know, like hopefully 10:00 AM to noon, so I get that two-hour block in the morning, and then most of my meetings are done by 4:00 PM.

I usually target that as my end time, and then I get two hours after that, to just focus. And so you… A lot of people notice, “Oh, by making these small changes, I can actually claw back a bunch of time,” and then I have two-hour focus blocks, which is my recommended amount of time to work through a problem.

And then you can start to assign the focus blocks actual work that you want to get done, and that’ll help you start to figure out how much time [00:25:00] you need for projects, which is the next big thing. Um, the other thing I would really make sure to note is that you should definitely be blocking out your focus time.

So if you are mostly just operating with your calendar as a way to keep track of your meetings, you’re missing a large opportunity because people are looking at your calendar to grab time. Mm. And if they see that you have focus time blocks on the calendar, they will be much more considerate of your time, so then you won’t even have to do as much management yourself.

You will actually be proactively getting people to respect your time for you.

Yeah, I’m a big fan of management by calendars. Well, I call it defensive calendaring- Yes … for that reason. I actually used to keep a, a sort of shadow calendar ‘cause as you can, you know, in, in, in most of the calendars, they have sort of multiple calendars.

Catt Small: Mm-hmm.

But they, they show up to other people as one thing rather than several, and I used to sort of have a… If I had a meeting for 30 minutes, I would put another meeting in my shadow calendar, and you can automate some of this now, that extended to the before and after by 5 or 10 minutes. I, I prefer 10 minutes between [00:26:00] meetings.

Yeah. But, but yeah, I agree, half an hour is kind of a, an annoying amount of time ‘cause like a little too short to do anything useful. It’s also a little bit too long. But something like kind of 10 minutes, 5, 10 minutes is good.

Catt Small: Yeah.

It brings me to something though, which is, you know, some people say, “Well, I do that,” but, you know, nobody respects it.

So there is this aspect of… There’s a tension I think that goes on. You, you talk about it quite a lot in terms of, you know, how do you create visibility for yourself, and it’s an important thing. There’s a bit of feedback that comes up quite often. How do you, create and maintain good relationships with your kind of peer leadership and also your senior leadership?

And at the same time, how do you say no and set your boundaries? Have, have you sort of found a, a magic mix of that, resolving that tension?

Catt Small: Yeah. It’s, it’s such a challenge to Figure out how to kind of push back [00:27:00] against people without losing a bunch of social capital or trust. Um, and I think reframing it away from it being, like, an attack was number one for sure, but, I think it’s also important to have those conversations be more of an opportunity to prioritize together.

So initially I would just be like, “No. I don’t have time for this.” But then, honestly, when I was at Etsy, we had a, a really cool improv workshop that, I think it was, like, the… one of the ERGs had put it together, and it was really cool because it helped me understand the power of, the difference between just saying no and kind of closing off the conversation versus the, you know, the common adage is, “Yes, and,” so kind of like taking in the information, acknowledging it, and then iterating on the idea.

So very often if people come to me, then [00:28:00] I’ll be like, “Yeah, I, I, I wanna do that, and also, you know, this is kind of what’s on my plate this week, so, like, let’s talk about it and figure out where we need to kind of adjust so that I’m able to accomplish this.” Um, so much more, instead of just treating these requests as, like, attacks or, you know, things that I have to accept and I have no control, the way that I operate now is much more conversational, and I try to facilitate a discussion about how we can, you know, reach the outcome that they’re coming to ask me for, but also, you know, to recognize that I’ve got other priorities potentially or, you know, this is the amount of time I have available in the day or the week.

Um, so, you know, what can we do within that amount of time, and what is most important? And a lot of times when you, when you have the conversation that way, you know, people are very willing to, to flex and, and to work with you to find a solution that works for everybody.

Do you suffer from being like a, [00:29:00] you know, the super IC that everyone wants to work with or wants on their project?

Catt Small: I mean, yes. Yeah, it is it is, it is a challenge. I’m just too good. Um, no, but- That’s what you said. Great … but yeah, I do, I do find that because of my approach and my communication and, like, the work that I’ve put in, there, there are… I do get requests, from people, like, “Hey, can, can Kat work on this?” Like, “I specifically want Kat to work on this thing.”

And I have to be like, “Well, you know, like, I’m open to it.” Like, literally I, I, I, I’ve been having conversations with people who M- w- I might, you know, like teammates that I might want to collaborate with on certain projects. Um, but like the work that I do right now is I’m, I’m part of this floating team where, at my current employer, like we kind of shift around as is necessary and, and work on strategic challenges that different teams are facing.

And so people will come to me and be like, “Kat, can you come over here?” And I’m like, “Maybe.” Like, “Let’s talk about it. Um, what’s your timeline? Like, you know, here’s what’s on my plate right [00:30:00] now. I’m really interested. I would love to collaborate at some point. Maybe it’ll be this time. Like at the very least I can connect you with my manager and we can have a conversation, and figure out if there’s, you know, opportunity and alignment there, if it makes sense at this moment.

Um, but yeah, not really sure, honestly.” Um, and, and that’s usually honestly like enough- Yeah … to at least keep the conversation going. Like I just don’t, I don’t like to cut ideas off because, I think it’s just more productive to figure out, you know, within the context of all the other information what is actually feasible for us, and is, is it the right time?

Like I think it’s usually- Yeah … about is it the right time more than like is the idea bad or wrong?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It’s, you have your people speak to their people-

Catt Small: Yeah …

is that-

Catt Small: Yeah. Um, even with like, you know, occasionally… Now gladly we have, a lot of tools that help with handling the mundanity and like the administrative tasking side of things.

Like I [00:31:00] used to get a lot of requests to make slides look really good- Mm-hmm … and you know, I’d be like, “I could spend my time doing that, but right now I’m actually focusing on, you know, this project work. Like I, I, I, you know, have my plate full with this at this very moment. Um, what is the priority of these slides?

Like can I maybe critique them and like give you a couple of pointers that you could dig into further?” Like I would still offer support, it was just more that I couldn’t maybe like spend frankly what would end up being probably like an hour or two because I’m really particular. Um, I didn’t wanna spend that time on the slides maybe, but I could help in some other way.

Um, or I could spend the hour if it was really that important.

Mm-hmm.

Catt Small: Um, but we needed to confirm like is it more important than this other work.

Yeah. It’s probably not the best use of your time- Yeah. … at

Catt Small: that point.

Um, there, there’s a thing there though actually which comes up which is, you know, you, you’d mentioned it before about being kind of proactive.

I think I, you know, I certainly recognize that I’ve had several [00:32:00] coaches who are, you know, at the senior level, they want to get up to that higher level or they’re l- you know, depending on their structure, they’re a leader, they want to get into staff And there’s often a thing of like, yeah, I’m not gonna do that ‘cause I, I don’t have the authority.

I’ve not been given the mandate to do that thing yet. But when they make me that, then I’ll do it. Um, and you mentioned this thing before about sort of being proactive. There’s a whole section in the book about kind of influence and control and authority and those things. My view of it is, and I’d be interested in your take on it, is I think people are often a little bit scared to just kind of step up and, and do the work that they see should, I mean, needs to be done even though no one’s asked them to do it.

On the… Scared on the one hand, or maybe the thing that you said of like, “Well, yeah, that’s not my job. Uh, I’m not getting paid that.” Um, what’s your view on that? ‘Cause I think it’s a, a really important aspect to that transition,

Catt Small: right? Yeah, it was really hard for me to sit with the fact that, I mean, you know, I, I, I think [00:33:00] initially I was really frankly, like, salty with the idea that I had to do a bunch of things that maybe weren’t, like, super clearly laid out in the career ladder, but, like, ultimately are kind of part of the role of, like, managing stakeholder expectations, for example, or helping to scope out work that might eventually become the roadmap, or like, yeah, be part of exploratory tiger, tiger teams and, like, those kinds of things.

Um, it felt like just, like, extra homework, that was not clearly laid out and agreed upon in advance and did not have any place within the structure of the work. So, yeah, honestly, for a long time I avoided a lot of that stuff. But at the same time, hilariously, or like, I, I don’t know, like, in retrospect, I was also doing a lot of, quote-unquote, “glue work.”

Um, so I think Ti- Tanya Riley coined this term where- Yeah, it’s

a great,

Catt Small: it’s a great… Oh, that’s a good one … you’re like… [00:34:00] Yeah. It’s, it’s- I,

I refer to it all the time.

Catt Small: It’s so good. I’ll put it

in the show notes. Yeah, yeah.

Catt Small: Yeah, it’s so good and, like, I was doing so much of that, so I was in all these other places filling all these other gaps.

Like, if I was working with, like, a product manager who wasn’t the greatest at writing stories, I would go in and I would write those stories. Like, you know, we would have, like, New York team events, and I would be wanting to organize those kinds of things. I would wanna be part of an ERG and, like, be one of the co-leads of the employee resource group and, like, I was doing all this other stuff, and I think because I was doing a lot of that stuff, I didn’t really have the space to be, you know, proactively, like, exploring, like, what is the future of our product potentially, or like, you know, meeting with all the stakeholders and, like, building coalitions and things of that nature and, like, proactively communicating my status of work to my manager.

Like, it just, it felt like something had to give, and the answer is yes, something does have to give, and I think it’s about being really Honest about what you want your role to be, like, with [00:35:00] yourself. And so I realized, like, okay, if I want to continue to be a staff designer and to be more influential and impactful, then I do need to be focused more on the future of the product and the customer experience and treat my job as that.

And, you know, of course, I want my individual team to succeed, but if the PM is supposed to be the person writing stories or if the eng lead is supposed to be doing those things and they’re not doing a great job at that, like, I just kinda have to let that happen, you know, until engineers are like, “Hey, this is very confusing.

There’s no acceptance criteria.” Like, we keep… Like, hopefully those kinds of issues, again, like, thanks to the power of, like, not having to do such mundane tasks anymore, like, hopefully that’ll become easier. But, yeah, I was filling in a lot of gaps in areas that I honestly, in retrospect, didn’t really need to be.

And so when I started freeing up that time and energy, then I could actually put the effort where it would [00:36:00] benefit my career, but also would benefit my team more, and it would be a less expensive use of my time. So I definitely encourage people to audit where they’re putting their energy, and they might find out…

You know, if you’re having a good time organizing the team dinners and, like, kind of being the, like, pseudo manager for the team, that’s cool. But, like Just either accept that that’s something that gives you joy and you want to be doing it, but it might not be rewarded, or if you want the reward, then you may have to shift your energy to the things that help to make your manager’s life easier ‘cause then it makes your life easier.

Yeah. That’s what I meant by that maturity thing, I think. Yeah. Right? Which is if you’re constantly in battle, then you’re never gonna get over your… There’s an expression in German about jumping over your own shadow, which is this thing of like, okay, sort of getting over yourself and going, “Okay, well, I see that if I want to progress, then…”

You don’t have to suck up to your manager, but you certainly have to understand, you know, if I can make someone else’s life easier, then they’re more likely to want to be [00:37:00] working with me. And, I mean, it’s a bit of a no-brainer, really, but somehow it gets, it gets lost.

Catt Small: Yeah.

You know, and people have awful…

also have awful managers, so, I can, I can see. I see- Totally … lots of coachees who are kind of doing their manager’s job for them, actually. And, but I, I kind of feel like a way to think about this is the managing upwards bit is a bit like managing downwards, which is you ask people, “So what’s your intent by this?

What you’re trying to achieve?” Yeah. Like, the kind of thing you would ask of a junior designer to get them to explain their work, you kind of weirdly have to ask to, senior leadership as well, which is like, “Why is this part of our vision? What is the intent behind this?” And then get them to unpack it.

Catt Small: Yeah.

Uh, it’s funny. There’s a mirror there.

Catt Small: Yeah. I feel like now that I have had a couple stints as being a manager, and, like, before that, I was like, “Oh, they always know what they’re doing,” and, like, you know, “Why are they just, like, deciding to, like, make everything a mess?” They’re mostly, as far as I can tell and in my personal experience, just, [00:38:00] like, flying by the seat of their pants- Mm-hmm

like, hoping that the decisions they just made work out for the long term. Sometimes they’re just like, “I hope the next three months are good,” you know, or, “The next month, let’s see what happens, and then we’ll change it if we need to change it.” Usually, they need to change it. I’ve seen studies that say, like, you know, reorgs are pretty much an annual thing, if not every six months, and it’s because, like, everybody’s just doing their best.

Like, most managers are just trying to get a handle on the chaos, and they’re context switching all the time. And so you have to kind of get them out of lizard brain mode, which is very hard, and that- … is why it is so important to be asking them- Yeah … you know, like- What is, what, what do you need to feel like you have the clarity to make the best decisions?

Like, what are your concerns right now? Like, it’s actually really important, I think, to, you know, essentially kind of treat them like a junior designer in certain ways. Not that you’re, like, better than them or something like that, [00:39:00] but it’s just, like, you are probably– you have more focus time than they do.

Like, your, your, your– the way you operate is very different from the way that they operate.

Yeah, it’s kind of a lack of at-attention thing, isn’t it? I think, uh- Yeah … you know, the, the, the junior designer us-often kind of works too fast and makes mistakes or doesn’t kind of, you know, goes for the easy solutions ‘cause they’re sort of rushing it through.

And, and see- you know, managers do this too, right? They just go in and they’ve, they make a quick decision ‘cause they’re, you know, pinging from one thing to the next.

Catt Small: Yeah.

There’s a thing you hinted at just now about sort of things that are taking away kind of menial tasks. I can’t let you go without asking the question is: How is AI playing a role in, in the staff designer world?

Catt Small: Yeah, I think right now We’re all figuring that out. I think it’s a bit hard at the staff level, to be honest. I think it’s really easy for AI to be assistive in terms of getting the perfect timing in your interaction design explorations. [00:40:00] However, I’ve found that it, it really is frustrating if you are still trying to navigate figuring out exactly like the solution to a complex problem.

Mm. Incorporating AI can often end up in you rabbit holing into interaction design land a bit too soon. So I still personally prefer the ability to kind of like in real life how you might dump out a bunch of pictures or like a bunch of magazine clippings and kind of like try to see like what are the patterns, what are the connections, like which of these, you know, is better than the other one, like those kinds of things.

Like, I still need to be able to personally like compare, you know, does this color look better than that color? Does this interact… Like, does this version of the interface, like does this layout look better than this other version of the layout? Like, which one of these solves the problem more? What are the pros and cons of each of these approaches?

Like, I still need to do all of that, and it’s very manual, but for me, that’s [00:41:00] the job, that’s the work. So I think that I found that AI can be great for, again, like a lot of the annoying things like, oh, like I need to have a fake user who fits into our customer profile that we’re targeting, and I need them to have like a bunch of data.

And now I can either like very quickly generate some information instead of having to sit there and use like a lot of brain energy to like write something that’s consistent and coherent and so on for- Mm-hmm … a fake person. Or like, I can be like, okay, well, like I actually wanna use real data, but I have the idea already.

So I think AI is really helpful when you know what you wanna do already and you just need to refine or like you have a picture, but like you’re trying to figure out how exactly to, you know, build that picture and to make it functional so you can like test it or so that you can ship it. Um, but when it comes to navigating [00:42:00] the, the problem and figuring out the ideal solution in terms of, how do we want users to move through this flow, I feel like it’s really frustrating for that personally.

Like it’s just not… I, I think I work on problems that are too complex for AI to help me solve those problems essentially.

Mm.

Catt Small: Um, and so that’s just possibly because I’m working on like problems that are You know, like millions of people are, like, using the system. There’s so many different use cases that I need to be handling at any given time.

It just doesn’t really scale. Um, but yeah, it’s great for like, “Hey,” like, “I wanna write this slide outline,” or like, you know, like, “Make this user detail. Make sure that the numbers progress on, in this table.” You know, like things of that nature. Um, it’s really useful for that. Or like, “Oh, can you look through like the vision doc and look at my deck and see where I might be able to, like, integrate [00:43:00] more of like what the product vision doc is saying into my deck?

I have like a target audience of the VP. Like, does this feel VP ready or not?” Yeah. That’s cool and fun, and I, I really like that. Um, but I’m still probably gonna also go talk to a person , you know?

Yeah. I

Catt Small: hope so. I hope so. Yeah. Right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like, I’m still gonna go talk to the director of product design and be like, “Do you think that our VP is gonna like this deck the way that it is?”

So, yeah, I think it can be, like, helpful for refinement. I don’t, I don’t think … I ne- I do not want it telling me what to do when I don’t know what to do yet

Excellent. There are lots of great tips in your book, as I mentioned before. If there was one that you think, “Oh, I wish I had known that earlier in my career,” what one would it be?

Catt Small: Gosh. Yeah, I think it would probably be having more agency and proactiveness, like, not just thinking that things are, you know, happening to me and that I had no choice. Um, I think that [00:44:00] reframe for me and that shift in mindset has powered so much. Um, you know, from just being able to recognize, like, okay, sometimes leadership is not gonna know what the answer is.

I’m closer to the work. I can give them a recommendation. I can do a lot of that thought work for them and make it really easy for them to opt in.

Mm.

Catt Small: You know? Like, before I’d be really salty about that and feel like, “Why aren’t they telling me what to do?” Um, and you know, of course, sometimes there’s still, like, a junior designer inside of my brain that’s like, “I just wanna be told what to do sometimes.”

But, recognizing, like, no, my, my role is to, you know, take that agency back and to make sure that I’m always looking for what I can do amongst the chaos, and not treating it as something that’s just, like, happening to me and that I’m, like, a passive participant. I think that is something that I wish I had recognized earlier.

And if I can add on one other one, it, it really is that idea of, [00:45:00] you know, it’s not you versus the other people you work with. Like, honestly, like, even now that I’m on the other side of that mindset shift, I notice when a coworker is kind of being… Like, it, it’s a bit toxic, honestly, to be like, “Look how good I am at everything.

Uh, look how bad this other person is at their job.” Like, that kind of stuff is just… You kind of just look like a narc. Um- Yeah. Yeah … and it’s not, does not make people want to trust you. So I’m really happy that I recognized that, there are a lot of downsides to being, like, to trying to be, like, the teacher’s pet, kind of.

Um, it’s not really productive, and, I think it’s much more helpful to focus on, you know, how can I be the most helpful to my teammates, to the business? I want everybody to succeed. Like, what is my, you know, role in everybody’s growth? Like, that’s much more how I try to operate now.

That is incredibly good advice.

We’re coming up to time. Uh, there is… This doesn’t [00:46:00] have to be around staff designer thing. It could be anything else. Uh, the show is named after this film by Ray and Charles Eames called Powers of Ten, about the relative size of things in the universe. Um, so I always ask each guest what one small thing is either overlooked or could be redesigned that would have an outsized effect on the world?

Catt Small: Gosh. I mean, I always feel like we… I guess, I don’t know. It’s like, is it, is it that small? I’m low-key really obsessed with the design of streets and-

Excellent

Catt Small: I feel like especially in the United States, we really need to take another pass at how we have set up that particular system. Um, so I guess, yeah, I, I don’t know how small that is.

Um, but yeah, I feel like, you know, it is something that we interface with pretty much every day.

Mm-hmm.

Catt Small: And we just kind of accept it the way it is. Um, but I think there’s a lot of opportunity for us to think about how we move through space-

Yeah …

Catt Small: and how we could be doing that [00:47:00] differently.

That’s a very good answer.

I mean, you really see it, right? I mean, I, I live in Europe, so I’m used to going places, you know, it’s very pedestrianized, and you kind of go to, you know, go to Piazza in, in Italy and going, “This is amazing. This is lovely. Why, why aren’t all cities like this?” Um, but it’s interesting, places like Amsterdam weren’t always Amsterdam.

They used to have lots of cars.

Catt Small: Yeah.

And then they took a decision to, to not. Uh, I think it’s a very good thing. Yeah. Um, Cat, where can find, people find you online?

Catt Small: Yes, you can find me at cattsmall.com, C-A-T-T-S-M-A-L-L.com. I’m on LinkedIn as well, pretty much the same handle. Uh, I also use Blue Sky. I think my handle is cat.design.

Um, and yeah, please buy my book on either the Rosenfeld Media website, or you can do that on Amazon as well if you want to. At the very least, please leave a review if you do get it. Regardless of where you get it from, please leave an Amazon review. It really helps.

Absolutely. We all have to feed the [00:48:00] algorithms.

Awful, isn’t it?

Catt Small: You know how it is.

Cat, it’s been an absolute joy. Thank you for being my guest on Power of Ten.

Catt Small: Thanks, Andy.

You have been listening to Power of Ten. You can find more about the show on polaine.com, where you can also check out my leadership coaching practice, online courses, as well as sign up for my very irregular newsletter, Doctor’s Note.

If you have any thoughts, put them in the comments or get in touch. You’ll find me as AndyPolaine on Blue Sky. I think I’m that on Threads, too, don’t really use it. At LinkedIn, YouTube, or my website. All the links are in the show notes. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next time.