At the start of my career, I actually wanted to be a designer. I secretly still do. I am creative and appreciate good design, however, my strength lies on the left side of my brain - analytic thought, logic, reasoning, math, and science.
I discovered I’d be more effective in an organizational role where I would manage, motivate and support the creators.
- Creating within the scope - I am sensitive to my designers and the time they need to explore and create. I appreciate that innovation does not happen in a high-pressure, time-restricted environment. I work closely with my designers to map out the project objectives and limitations. Conducting design sprints, with smaller time milestones encourages efficiency.
- Enjoy the dynamic environment - I love the fast pace world of creative industries, especially digital. Regular operation reviews highlight inefficiencies, I am always excited by discovering new effective processes. I edit weekly and I am happy to take on suggestions from my colleagues.
- Reviewing designs based on entire project outcomes - I have the project’s key objectives and goals at the forefront and will happily give feedback to designers to steer them towards achieving goals. Numerous one-on-one and whole team reviews help with this (even if it’s for 5 minutes).
The balance between my creative and analytical sides is what makes me a successful and empathic manager.
Project Case Study
Project - Wesley College is an elite private school with a prestigious reputation, who needed to communicate this in the digital space. Enrolment KPI’s are obviously important, however giving the current students and parents a digital platform to engage with and create a community was also a key objective.
Project Management Challenge - Towards the end of the design phase, the Marketing Manager was replaced and the design brief changed. We needed to realign the completed design work with the new brief.
Understanding the design process - I immediately told the client we would require additional budget, as I knew this would be a lengthy process for the designer — it was not just a matter of changing some colours. I then set up a meeting with the client and the lead designer to establish a shared understanding of their new brief. The reiteration process was not straight forward so I gathered additional feedback from the client that further outlined the problems my designer needed to solve. The result was a happy client and the perfect balance between contemporary and traditional.
