Product Design Leadership Consulting
Design that operates at the decision-making level - not just the output level.
The problem
Your design leads are talented, but they're getting overruled, brought in too late, and struggling to influence the decisions that should be theirs to shape. Good work isn't landing at the right level.
When design is brought in after the direction is already half-decided, the usual mess follows: late feedback, repeated rework, design-to-dev friction, and a team that proves its value through more screens rather than better decisions.
Who it's for
Heads of design, VPs of product, and founders responsible for a design function that needs to operate more effectively at the decision-making level - in enterprise product teams, scale-ups, and regulated industries like banking and fintech.
How we work together
Advisory retainers, fractional design leadership, and focused transformation engagements - remote-first, with in-person intensives where it helps. Every engagement starts with a diagnostic of where design has a voice today and where it doesn't.
How I approach it
- Diagnose the influence landscape - Map where design has a seat at the table and where it doesn't, and identify the structural and cultural barriers specific to your organisation.
- Install decision and alignment rituals - Build the shared-understanding habits - briefings, reviews, and syncs - that prevent late-stage design-vs-dev clashes and reduce rework before it happens.
- Grow the people - Develop first-time managers and senior individual contributors into leaders, drawing on two decades of 1:1s and team-building across global organisations.
- Raise design maturity over 90 days - Leave with a concrete, prioritised plan for raising design influence, tailored to your organisation's current maturity level.
What you can expect
- A shared decision-making framework your team will actually use
- Stakeholder alignment rituals that cut design-to-dev friction
- First-time managers and senior ICs growing into confident leaders
- A 90-day plan for raising design influence across the org
20+ years leading product design across banking, technology and education - with teaching and workshops delivered to organisations including the UN, Adobe and Alibaba.
Related work, workshops & thinking
- Case study: Creating a Global Video Conferencing Platform
- Case study: GemCloud - Product design leadership
- Workshop: Design Leadership Mastery
- Workshop: Growing Designers into Leaders
- Read: Why Design Still Loses in the Boardroom (and How to Change It)
- Read: First-Time Design Manager: What Your First Month Should Focus On
- Read: Growing a Design Team from 1 to 10 Without Losing Quality
- Read: Twenty Years of 1:1s Taught Me What AI Can't Do. And What It Should.