It was midnight. I was staring at the screen of my new work laptop. My first design task at Klarna was to design a price insight feature. It was not fun.
During the past two years at my previous company, H&M, I didn’t have to start from a blank canvas. Product design there was more about tweaking the existing design.
Before H&M, I did design features from scratch because I was working at startups. But it had been 2 years since then. In other words, I was rusty af.
I completed the design with plenty of guidance from my manager. We created a simple design the team liked, and it even featured in Built for Mars.
But looking back at my explorations. I cringe. Which is good and bad. Bad because I can’t believe they hired me with poor visual design skills. Good because it means that I have improved.
It was clear that there was a gap in my skills and what Klarna expected of a senior product designer.
Never assume past success translates to new environments.
But I didn’t have that realiziation then. I was going in the opposite direction for a year.
Taking things for granted
My managers told me to spend more time on UI design. The feedback was valid, but I didn’t listen.
The mistake I made was to see my promotion from Senior to Lead as a given.
I was thinking that when — not if — I become a Lead, in the manager track, I would focus on “manager things”. It would be the ICs (Individual Contributors) in my team who would do the actual designs. I would just review their work.
The lure of strengths
The choice is between multiplication of results using strengths or incremental improvement fixing weaknesses that will, at best, become mediocre. Focus on better use of your best weapons instead of constant repair. - Tim Ferriss in “The 4-Hour Workweek”.
It’s an alluring statement. Who doesn’t want to do what they’re good at and avoid what they’re not good at? I don’t think the quote is wrong, but you can’t apply it to every situation indiscriminately.
I believed that the quickest way for me to get promoted was to focus on improving my strengths — UX research, strategy and communication. And ignore fixing my weaknesses — visual design, interaction design, and information architecture.
This aligned with how I viewed the responsibilities of a Lead. My strengths were things a Lead needed. My weaknesses were skills a Lead didn’t need.
The limitations of strengths
To double down on my strengths I created pitches for strategies. One time it was very well received and it looked like it would lead to a presentation with the CPO.
I also tried to show that I could manage a team — very stressful by the way.
But the problem was that these opportunities were few and far between. If your strengths aren’t in your job duties, chances to use them are rare, making it hard to stand out for promotion.
And in the end, we scrapped the presentation for the CPO. The company was already too far ahead working on a new strategy for my ideas to influence it. A lot of work for no results.
Required skills differ between companies
The reality is that my job as a senior product designer at Klarna is all the things didn’t want to improve.
The mistake I made was to look ahead at the manager role instead of looking at how I was performing now. Despite getting a bad performance review. I wrote that off as a performance review specific to my product manager (which my manager hinted at).
I thought I'd excel as a senior designer at Klarna as I did at H&M, but the expectations at each company differed.
A change of heart
Six months ago, I changed my mind. At that point, I’d had a career coach for almost a year that I met biweekly. We often talked about what I should do to get promoted. The topic we returned to time and time again was how I could produce more and better design.
I guess it took that long to break down my previous belief of focusing on my strengths, and build up the new belief of needing to work on my weaknesses.
Since then, I decided to spend more time on visual design and I practiced during my spare time. And things have improved. I’ve grown in my skill and I am contributing more at work.
This also makes me feel more “well-rounded” as a product designer. A trend I’ve seen is that companies’ expectations for UI design are higher. And now, I have updated my skill set to match that. I won’t struggle anymore. I’m by no means amazing at UI design, but I don’t stick out as a sore thumb.
(My UX research skills have actually decreased. I am doing way less research at Klarna compared to what I did at H&M.)
Set yourself up for success at a new job
In the future, I won’t make the same mistake. If you start a new job:
Analyze the most respected designers at your level at the company. Who do people think are star players, and why do they think that?
Identify skills and traits they have in common, and compare these against your current skills.
If needed, create a development plan and work on those skills.
Once you've reached the skill level and traits you need, start the process again for the next level.
Understand what the company values in its designers. This way, you can quickly meet and then surpass expectations.
In summary
My move from H&M to Klarna taught me to not just focus on doubling down on strengths. I first needed to shore up skills that were critical for my role.
Whether aiming for a promotion or excelling in your role, align your skills with company expectations, and don't assume success.
Reflect on your own path: Are your current skills aligned with your career ambitions? It might be time for a strategic skill audit.
That rings a bell with my current workplace too! Thank you so much for sharing.
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I often reflect if I want to focus on becoming what my current company is valuing (or maybe it’s not my cake and I should move on).
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The thing is: It’s an amazing growth opportunity to use what the company offers and we definitely grow in how the company shapes us.
It’s a question to what extent and how far are we excited to grow in it? In my case it also revolves around Ui design skills. I’ve been on that journey for 2y, so I wonder if I want to give up on my natural strengths (they were stagnant for some time now).
Really insightful read. I liked what you said about "A trend I’ve seen is that companies’ expectations for UI design are higher. And now, I have updated my skill sets to match that so that I won’t feel like I can’t do that work. I’m by no means amazing at UI design, but I don’t stick out as a sore thumb anymore."
I definitely understand this. I feel like being in a super subjective field as design, everyone has high standards, because they've been looking at design ALL THEIR LIVES, through media, advertising, ANYTHING digital tbh. A good set of society has a general sense of good/bad UI, so it's definitely something I need to get back to practicing. Coming from a visual design background to UX, I put a lot of these practices in the backseat, but it's definitely a muscle that needs to be cultivated.