Have you ever seen the hilarious TV series ‘The IT Crowd’?
If you have, you saw a young ambitious lady manager trying to lead a bunch of IT nerds in the cellar of a big office building.
You then also may have noticed that that didn’t work…
This is a sit-com, but what about real life?
Is it possible to have a ‘bunch of creative designers’ led by a generally trained MBA-kind of manager?
This has been one of the discussions we had during our Raymond session, where 25 design directors and managers from all over Europe gathered.
My conclusion from this discussion is: ‘It depends!’.
I know, that seems like the easy way out, but it is true…
- If you need a guru that leads the designers into a design direction, it is tough to have a manager that is not trained in design.
- But, if you need a manager that needs to break open a bastion of grumpy old designers with a bad reputation throughout the company, then you need someone with communication skills, a large network and a healthy distance to designers.
- Or, if you need to clean up your department and make it more efficient with tighter budgets, better management of resources and stronger time planning, you need a manager with project management capabilities, that knows how to push Excel to the limit..
From our experience we see companies that have been quite clever in employing different types of managers to design departments.
Some companies first employed a tough number-crunching manager that cleaned up and appointed a more content-driven inspirator.
Others go for a dual leadership approach: a kind of art director next to a managerial leader.
Bottomline: consciously employing a generally trained MBA-kind of manager to lead a design team can be a strong tool to boost its performance.
Doing that unconsciously might be devastating…
Tags: creativity, design team, MBA, Raymond
