I’ve recently turned two years working at Xero so I thought of sharing some thoughts that came as notes from my ongoing reflections.
We grew, and we grew fast
When I started at Xero we were 6 in my design team, now we are 36.
Michael Hebden and myself invested six months reviewing applications, interviewing and hiring the team we are today. It pays back.
Diversity is important, inclusion even more
It’s almost pointless to hire for diversity if we don’t create inclusive environments for all to grow and thrive. Same as above, it will pay back 10x.
Start with trust
On my first 1:1 with my manger Emily Henlein she told me she trusted 100% in me and my decisions. That paved a journey for autonomy and alignment and a great lesson I practice with my teams.
Maturing as a design leader
At Xero is when I managed to become a more mature design leader by both being part of a Design leadership team made of 8 other peers and an executive manager, by having the opportunity to reshape Design, but also to have the chance to build my own and really talented leadership team made of 6 Directors and 2 Principals.
I inherited and built a stellar team
It’s difficult to put in writing the amount of talent our team has and how much they’ve achieved and grown as designers in short time.
A Design leader can only be as impactful as their team’s work.
Invest in your team
Treat hiring, onboarding and developing your team with the same level of importance to when you offboard them into their new career journeys.
The only certainty is that everyone will leave their job at some point.
Embrace chaos
Working in software in Product design is complex.
Operating in a Design organization that grew from 60 designers to 190 makes things even more complex.In such environment, I made the decision to let chaos in as a way to stay open to all opinions, constrains and systems, and focus on enabling alignment rather than control.
I Invested in growing my EQ
At the beginning of 2021, I intentionally invested in increasing my EQ as I consider it core to the soft skills. Today I’m better prepared to manage emotions in myself and others, and to navigate changing and challenging environments.
Learn to work with others’ ethics
Two years ago I’d struggle to work with someone with different work ethics. Today I learned to work with people that’s not entirely aligned with my ethics as I value their perspectives and achieving common outcomes together and avoid competing with each other.
Grateful with the work flexibility
It’s been a couple of difficult years. First the bushfires, then in and out of lockdowns and we had our second baby.
Because of Xero’s parental and flexible working policies, I’ve built better harmony between life and work. I do work 4-day weeks which gives me more time with my family.
It’s been two fantastic years in this journey so far, more to come after the holidays break!