John Lewis

Product Design Leadership

Design leadership operating model

Design leadership operating model

Org and Team Design

Scaling Design Leadership Across Casino

How I built leadership capacity while the Casino Design, Research, and Content organization grew from 3 to 15.

Leadership Question

How do you scale quality and decision-making when the organization grows faster than one manager's reach?

Org DesignManagementQuality Standards

Case at a glance

Leadership scope and evidence

Scale leadership through the people, standards, and decision forums that let an organization carry quality beyond one manager's direct reach.

Leadership role
Senior Product Design Manager responsible for people leadership, hiring signal, quality practices, and executive communication
Timeframe
Multi-year organization-building work
Team
Casino Design, Research, and Content organization, growing from 3 to 15 with a peak of 21
Scope
Direct management, manager development, hiring, critique standards, and executive-facing decision forums

Core org growth

3 to 15

The multidisciplinary Design, Research, and Content organization grew from 3 to 15, with a peak of 21.

Direct reports

8

Managed up to 8 direct reports across product design and related disciplines.

Career promotions

6

Supported career growth across individual contributor, senior, lead designer, and manager levels.

Executive summary

The core Casino Design, Research, and Content organization grew from 3 to 15, with a peak of 21. The challenge was no longer whether one manager could review more work. It was whether the organization could add people and product scope without making quality, career development, and executive communication depend on one person.

I managed up to 8 direct reports, supported 6 promotions, and developed 2 managers and 2 lead designers. My role shifted from carrying more decisions myself to building the people and practices that could carry them across the organization.

Challenge

The number of decisions was growing faster than one leader's reach.

More product areas, career needs, and executive partners made inconsistent hiring signals, delayed coaching, and unclear recommendations more likely.

Adding people alone would not solve that problem. The organization needed stronger hiring judgment, real development paths for emerging leaders, and a more direct way to bring product choices into senior forums.

I focused on three decisions: whom we hired, how managers and leads learned to carry broader ownership, and how design recommendations reached VP and SVP stakeholders.

My responsibility

Make good judgment less dependent on me

The goal was not to create more management activity. It was to distribute leadership without lowering the quality bar.

  • Managed up to 8 direct reports across product design and related disciplines.
  • Supported 6 promotions and developed 2 managers and 2 lead designers.
  • Served on interview boards and hiring committees for design, research, and leadership roles.
  • Set expectations for ownership and product judgment, then framed customer decisions, risks, and recommendations for VP and SVP stakeholders.

Leadership decisions

Three decisions that made growth more sustainable

Each decision addressed a different constraint: hiring signal, leadership capacity, and executive understanding.

01 Hiring

Hire for judgment, not portfolio polish alone.

The decision

Use product thinking, craft, research judgment, collaboration, leadership potential, and organizational fit as shared interview signals across design, research, and leadership roles.

What changed

Hiring committees had a more consistent basis for evaluating candidates as the multidisciplinary organization grew.

02 Development

Use real ownership as the development plan.

The decision

Connect coaching to live responsibility for critique, people development, product judgment, and communication rather than keeping growth plans separate from the work.

What changed

Two managers and two lead designers grew into broader coaching, critique, and decision responsibilities.

03 Executive influence

Bring the decision, not the design process.

The decision

Frame senior conversations around the customer problem, choice, tradeoff, risk, and recommendation instead of walking executives through every design step.

What changed

Product and design direction became easier to discuss in All Hands, Product Vision, VP, and SVP forums.

Artifacts

Evidence behind the leadership practices

Representative, redacted artifacts showing how product judgment and quality expectations became easier to discuss.

Experience principles framework

Experience principles framework

Prioritization matrix

Prioritization matrix

Outcomes

Leadership capacity grew with the organization

The strongest evidence is the number of people who could take on broader responsibility as the team expanded.

Outcome

Helped grow the core organization from 3 to 15 across Design, Research, and Content, with a peak of 21.

Outcome

Managed up to 8 direct reports across a scope with 6 promotions, and developed 2 managers and 2 lead designers.

Outcome

Used shared hiring criteria and repeatable product, research, critique, and executive forums to make decisions easier to carry across the organization.

Director Signal

Leadership signal

I scaled leadership by developing people who could coach, judge, and communicate well without making every decision depend on me.

What We Learned

The leadership lessons that carried forward

The strongest case studies leave behind more than shipped work. They sharpen the operating principles behind future decisions.

01

Develop the next leadership layer

Organizational scale comes from managers and leads who can coach, decide, and communicate without constant escalation.

02

Make quality discussable

Critique scales when teams share explicit expectations and can explain the reasoning behind a decision.

03

What I would do differently

I would develop managers and leads sooner so coaching, critique, and executive communication could scale before team growth increased the coordination load.

Leadership Conversations

Building product ecosystems, stronger teams, and sharper executive alignment.

Open to Product Design Director opportunities across growth, platform, loyalty, and product ecosystem leadership.

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Based in the U.S. and open to product design leadership opportunities.