Strategic Leadership and Vision

Vision without action is wishful thinking

Strategic Leadership in Product Design

Being a VP of Product Design isn’t just about making things look good or managing a team of creatives. It’s about seeing the big picture—where you’re headed, why it matters, and how to get everyone there in one piece. That starts with setting a clear design vision, but it doesn’t stop there. You need a team that thinks and acts in sync, guided by shared values and principles. And to make sure the whole thing doesn’t remain just an idea, you have to tie it to the business’s bottom line with metrics that matter. In this chapter, I’ll walk you through how I approach each of these pieces, from the spark of a vision to the nitty-gritty of measuring success. It’s not always clean, and I don’t have all the answers, but here’s what I’ve learned along the way.

Setting a Design Vision

Setting a design vision is the flag on a mountain you haven’t climbed yet. It’s bold and obvious, and it tells everyone, “This is where we’re headed.” But it can’t be a fluffy statement you frame on the wall and forget. It has to live, breathe, and pull the team along with it. For me, that’s where the real work starts—and where I’ve learned the most about what I’m good at, what I suck at, and what keeps me up at night.

Where It All Started

When I think about what shaped how I see design visions, two moments hit me hard. The most recent was at Ridgeline, where we are building a new system for investment managers. We’d already pulled all their tools into one app—a serious win—but it wasn’t enough. Everything still felt disjointed, like users were piecing together a puzzle just to do their job. So we set about picturing something bigger: a completely connected system where they’d have full context, right where they were, no jumping through hoops. The lightbulb flicked on when, along with our strategy team, we named it, almost as a distinct feature. Saying it out loud turned this fuzzy hunch into something real—I could see every possibility it unlocked. That’s when it hit me: a vision isn’t just a nice idea; it’s the spark that can turn a solid product into something game-changing. By naming this vision and setting the flag ahead of us, we were able to collectively move forward towards a bigger, better version of what Ridgeline could be.

A while back, I teamed up with a designer buddy to build a standalone Bible app, called NeuBible. There are tons of them out there, but none felt quite right—not for something that heavy or important. We spent months kicking around ideas, trying to nail what we were after. Then it clicked: the Bible’s a book you read. Sure, it’s has layers and a unique structure, but why treat it like a ‘Bible app’ instead of just a well designed book? So we set our vision: build the best reading experience possible—not the best Bible app, the best reading app. That flipped everything. We ditched the usual Bible app playbook and focused on making NeuBible clean, simple, and beautiful. Then we dropped the Bible into that. Naming the Ridgeline vision showed me clarity’s power; NeuBible taught me a vision can reframe what’s possible when you strip it to the core.

Ambition vs. Reality

Here’s the rub, though: a vision’s only as good as the balance you strike between ambition and practicality. That’s the tightrope you’ll walk. You’re serving two masters—the best experience you can dream up and what the business can actually pull off. Early on, I thought they were at war, but they’re not. Great design thrives in a box. Constraints like time, budget, or tech? They’re not the enemy—they’re the fuel. Define the box right, and you’ve got a shot at something killer.

“Great design thrives in a box.”

Designers mess this up all the time, though. They think ‘ambitious’ means the flashiest, most out-there thing—like they’re flexing for the whole industry.

That’s not it.

Real ambition is zeroing in on your company’s problem and delivering something new, something better than your users even knew to ask for, but still dead-on for them. If I’m designing for a stoic SaaS crowd, I’m not cribbing whimsical tricks from a teen photo app. That’s not bold; that’s dumb. Ambition is nailing a solution so perfect it blows past expectations, not some random benchmark.

I’ve had to dial back bold ideas plenty of times. Doesn’t mean it’s a loss. Every design gets trashed eventually—six months, six years, whatever. You’ll redo it, someone else will, or the product dies. That’s the gig. So don’t cling to ideas like they’re gold; cling to the problem. If a big swing misses, it’s just a puzzle—why didn’t it land? Am I off? Is leadership off? Those are each solvable. The real grind is the team talk afterward. Skip those, and you’re fighting above and below. Bring them along, and even a scaled-back vision feels like a win.

Telling the Story

A vision is worthless if you can’t explain it or sell it—and that’s where storytelling comes in. It’s the backbone of getting anything done as a design leader. You’re not just pitching an idea; you’re fighting to make people listen, to get it. It’s all about who’s hearing it. My team needs to feel the why and know their role. Leadership? They need to see the payoff without me sounding condescending. Managing up is a beast—you’ve got to keep it real and approachable, or you’re toast.

My first brush with storytelling was a train wreck, though. I started as a fine arts major, chasing a dream I’d had since I was a child. Art was my life—photography, painting, sculpture. College felt like the big leagues; I was stoked to be with other dreamers. Then came the critiques. I’d watch these ‘artists’ (I’m air-quoting on purpose) spin wild tales about their work. They’d ramble about the ‘purpose’ of some random painting, and our professor would eat it up like it was gospel. The problem was, it was all bullshit. I’d seen them in the outside of class, slapping paint around with no plan—just vibing. But in critique? Suddenly it’s buzzwords and fake depth, and it worked because it fit the script.

Meanwhile, I’m over here fuming. I didn’t have some existential reason for picking blue over crimson—I just liked how it looked, how it flowed. But that wasn’t ‘valid.’ I felt handcuffed, like truth didn’t matter if it didn’t sound good. That mess stuck with me. It showed me storytelling’s power, but it made me swear I would remain real—no fluff, just the straight-up why behind what I’m pushing. Whether it’s my team or the C-suite, I want them to feel the vision, not just feel the pitch.

The Team’s Role

So who builds this vision? Look, I’m no Steve Jobs—I’m not one of those golden few who can dream up a world-changing idea on my own. And I’m fine with that. I’m not pretending I’ve got some untouchable genius card. But don’t get it twisted—I’m ravenous about getting better.

Through that, I have learned the best ideas don’t just come from me. They’re everywhere—in my team, in the quiet guy who doesn’t speak up unless you nudge him, in the wild tangent someone drops in a brainstorm. Sure, my experience gives me an edge—I’ve been around long enough to spot an opportunity quick. But can I architect the whole thing alone? Hell no. I’d be kidding myself. I’m not usually the smartest guy in the room, and it’s astronomically stupid to act like I don’t need anyone else.

So I pull in as many people as I can. I want to steal every good idea out there, mash them together, and make something bigger than any one of us could’ve cooked up—for the vision, not my ego. When the team’s in from the start, they’re bought in. You can’t fake that momentum. Then I lean on what I do bring—years of grinding, a knack for sharpening rough edges—and I polish it, push it, make it sing. I’m not the lone genius; I’m the guy who gets the band jamming and keeps it tight.

The Hard Part

Even with all that, setting a vision’s no cakewalk. The toughest part for me? It’s walking that razor’s edge between a crisp idea and enough slack for the team to move, flow, and figure shit out. You want it sharp—nobody’s got time for fuzzy bullshit—but loose enough that they can adapt, add their spin, and not just follow a script. Too tight, and you choke the life out of it; too vague, and it’s chaos.

I don’t have some big, messy story locked in for this yet—I’m still chewing on it. I’ve had times where I overcooked the clarity, handed the team something so rigid they just nodded and marched, but the spark was gone. Other times, I’ve kept it too open, and they’re looking at me like, ‘Okay, but what are we actually doing?’ Both suck, and both teach you something. I’m still hunting that sweet spot. That’s your gig though: chasing something clear enough to lead, loose enough to live.

Values & Principles: The Backbone of Your Vision

But a vision alone isn’t enough. To make it real, you need a team that thinks and acts in sync, without having to micromanage every detail. That’s where values and principles come in. They’re not just feel-good words—they’re the DNA of how we work, the guardrails that keep us on track when things get messy.

Designing ideas is the easy part. The hard part—and the part that sticks—is building a culture where the team buys into the vision because it’s baked into who you are. If everyone’s thinking in a similar way, you don’t have to waste time convincing them of the ‘why’—they already know it. They feel it. That’s the dream, right? Teaching your team how to think, not what to do or what to think. Empower them like that, and they’ll do their best work without you hovering.

Establish Design Values

Values are those behaviors that are not negotiable—what your team stands for, what you want to be known for. They’re the foundation of your character as a team, the qualities and standards of behavior that shape how you function. They’re deeply held, non-negotiable, and they help form your principles. For me, it’s stuff like bias towards trust—assuming the best in each other, even when shit hits the fan—and alignment through collaboration, because we’re stronger together than siloed. These aren’t just words; they’re how you behave.

When we were building that Bible app, for example, our value of simplicity drove us to strip away the clutter and focus on the reading experience. It wasn’t about adding fancy features—it was about honoring the content with clarity. That’s the kind of thing values do: they shape decisions without me having to spell it out every time.

So, ask yourself:

• What do you want your team to be known for?
• What impact do you want the team to have?
• How do you want the team to behave?

That’s where your values start. They’re not just fluff—they’re the foundation of who you are as a team.

My favorite process for defining a team’s values is pretty simple, and will feel familiar if you’ve ever done any research or product design in your life.

• Process: Provide a list of common values (e.g., integrity, innovation, collaboration) or allow open brainstorming.
• Bucket: Facilitate a discussion to refine into shared buckets, ensuring buy-in from all members.
• Define: Once you have your clear set of buckets, start to define what those groups mean together at their core. As you gain clarity on each bucket, find examples of where that behavior would have been helpful in the past or where you’ve seen it solve issues before they arose.
• Discuss: Encourage reflection and dialogue, helping your team see connections between individual and collective values.

Establish Design Principles

Principles are the rules you live by—the things that govern how you solve problems. They’re the yardstick for every design decision, especially when ideas clash or the path isn’t clear. Unlike values, which are about who you are, principles are about how you work. They’re stern, unyielding, and they apply to everything, from today’s headaches to tomorrow’s curveballs.

Good principles help you cut through the noise. They’re not universal truths—they’re your truths, the ones that make sense for our team and our users. Take build understandable experiences, for instance. That’s a hill I’ll die on. Or familiarity through consistency and cohesion—because if users can’t find their way, we’ve failed. And create extendable and scalable experiences, so we’re not painting ourselves into a corner.

These aren’t just nice-to-haves. They are your decision-making tools. When two ideas butt heads, principles tell you which one wins. They force clarity, reduce ambiguity, and—bonus—help non-designers understand why we do what we do. That’s gold when you’re trying to get buy-in from the rest of the company. Principles help resolve practical, real-world questions around specific design decisions, and they impart a human-oriented sense of “why?” that anyone can grasp—even the folks who don’t know a pixel from a paperclip. They’ve got a point of view, a sense of prioritization, and yeah, a rational person might disagree. That’s fine. They’re not universal; they’re truisms for us.

The process of defining your principles is similar to your values, with a few differences.

• Gather: Spend some time as a team gathering problems you’ve recently address. Focus on situations that were clear wins or clear difficulties.
• Process: Spend time articulating what could have helped preemptively solved the challenge or those things that clearly helped with the success.
• Bucket: Facilitate a discussion to refine those items into shared buckets, ensuring buy-in from all members.
• Define: Once you have your clear set of buckets, start to define what those groups mean together at their core. As you gain clarity on each bucket, find examples of where that behavior would have been helpful in the past or where you’ve seen it solve issues before they arose.
• Discuss: Encourage reflection and dialogue, helping your team see connections between individual and collective values.

Resources

🔗 Team Values Toolkit from Dropbox Design
🔗 List of Values from Brené Brown
🔗 Understanding Our Core Values: An Exercise for Individuals and Teams

A Note on Team verses Personal Values & Principles

The same work you put into defining your team’s values and principles can be done for yourself. I have a list of these for myself, that I use in how I lead and manage teams I’m a part of. So feel free to do that work as well. It will be remarkably helpful in helping you set your own growth trajectory.

Building a Design Strategy

As a VP of Product Design, my role goes beyond helping my team craft beautiful interfaces or intuitive user experiences—it’s about setting a strategic vision that aligns with broader product and business goals, influencing the roadmap without necessarily owning it, and navigating the complex interplay of stakeholder relationships and shifting priorities. I’ll share my approach to these challenges, drawing on real experiences like my time leading the redesign of Yahoo Mail. This journey highlights four key pillars:

1. Influencing the roadmap collaboratively
2. Framing design’s value to stakeholders
3. Setting a flexible yet inspiring vision
4. Adapting to feedback and changing needs

Turning vision into strategy is where the magic happens. Your strategy should outline how the vision comes to life through specific projects and goals. This work will be challenging—you don’t own the roadmap, but you still need to shape it. This is where building trust, influence, and strong relationships comes in.

Your vision should be robust but still simple. Think of it as an investor pitch.

Example Vision: Through design, we elevate the mundane to the extraordinary. We focus on crafting tools that blend seamlessly into workflows, empowering users with intuitive and elegant solutions that are as enjoyable as they are essential.

Concise enough for people to understand, inspirational enough to inform what you’re trying to create. There are plenty of exercises for you to run with your team (or yourself) to define your vision, but make sure that you spend some solid time in crafting what feels best.

Breaking Down Your Vision

Once you have your vision, you’ll be spending a disproportionate amount of time defining what it means in practice and delivery. From a high-level, you’ll need to make sure to address a few things, regardless of what work you want to create.

Focus Areas and Timing

Break your initiatives down by short-term, mid-term, and long-term priorities. Focus on key areas like UX fundamentals, design systems, or innovation. Map these to the product roadmap so your work aligns with the team’s priorities.

Aligning Stakeholders

You don’t own the roadmap, but you do own the way you frame design’s value. Identify allies in product and engineering who share related goals, like improving workflows, efficiency, or scalability. These shared priorities are where design can quietly make its mark.

Measuring What Matters

Set realistic metrics for success. The best strategies are measurable but flexible—they can adapt when business or product needs shift. Examples might include improved task efficiency, increased user satisfaction, or reduced friction in critical workflows.

Design Strategy Deliverables

Do what makes sense for you, your company, and your product, but try and aim for a digestible deliverable that helps your teammates understand what it is that you’re trying to accomplish. Make sure that you have a healthy balance of actionable ideas and changeable, fluid ideas that can inspire without feeling overly prescriptive.

1. Visualize the Future State
   1. Storytelling: Create narratives or scenarios that depict how users will interact with the product in the future.
   2. Mood Boards and Style Tiles: Use visual tools to convey the look and feel of the product.
2. Communicate the Vision Effectively
   1. Presentation: Developing a compelling presentation that tells the story of your design vision will be essential.
   2. Documentation: Create accessible documents that team members can reference throughout the project lifecycle.
   3. The Why: Being able to articulate the core value is the most important part of your vision.

What the Deliverable Looks Like

The deliverable for a design vision is typically a comprehensive document or presentation that includes:

1. Executive Summary A brief overview of the vision, goals, and key takeaways.
2. Introduction Background information, including market context and business objectives.
3. User Insights Summaries of user research, personas, and key user needs.
4. Unique Value Proposition A clear statement of the product’s unique benefits.
5. Design Principles A list of your guiding principles with explanations and examples of how those manifest in your decisions, and why they matter.
6. User Journey Maps Visual representations of the user’s interaction with the product over time.
7. Future State Scenarios Narratives or storyboards illustrating the envisioned user experience.
8. Implementation Roadmap High-level plan outlining how the vision will be realized over time. Having this shows that you’re connected to your partners across the product.
9. Appendices Additional research data, detailed findings, or supplementary materials.

Tips for an Effective Design Vision Deliverable

1. Clarity and Simplicity: Use clear language and avoid jargon to ensure understanding across all stakeholders.
2. Engaging Visuals: Incorporate high-quality images, illustrations, and diagrams to make the document visually appealing.
3. Storytelling Approach: Craft the deliverable as a narrative to make it more compelling and memorable.
4. Accessibility: Ensure the document is easily accessible to all team members, possibly through a shared platform. While you may love Figma, others might not be as adept at navigating it as you are.

Setting a design vision is a strategic process that requires deep understanding, collaboration, and clear communication. The deliverable should not only encapsulate your vision but also inspire and guide your team towards creating a product that resonates with users and achieves business success. Remember, the design vision is a living document—it should evolve as you gather more insights and as the market landscape changes.

Alternative Approach for Early-Stage Products

If you don’t have significant data yet, you’ll need to rely on softer signals:

1. Qualitative insights: User interviews, surveys, and usability tests can reveal valuable trends. If multiple users struggle with the same process during testing, that’s an obvious design signal.
2. Market research and proxies: Competitor analysis, customer support tickets, or even internal feedback can fill in gaps. If your sales team hears the same concerns repeatedly, that’s data worth exploring.
3. Interim KPIs: When you’re launching something new, set interim goals, like pilot user engagement or success rates during early testing phases.

Finding the Right Business Metrics: Selling the Vision

But let’s be real—a vision without buy-in from the top is dead in the water. And to get that buy-in, you’ve got to speak the language of the business: metrics. Numbers. Results. It’s not enough to say, “This will make users happy.” You’ve got to show how it moves the needle for the company. Metrics are your ticket to the big table, proving that design isn’t just about pretty pixels—it’s about driving the business forward.

Start with Business Objectives

First things first: know what the hell the company cares about. Are we chasing growth? Retention? Efficiency? Expansion? That’s your North Star. If the goal is growth, metrics like user acquisition, conversion rates, or time-to-value are your jam. If it’s differentiation, maybe stickiness or sales targets matter more. You’ve got to tie your design vision to what keeps the CEO up at night.

Layer in Design-Specific Metrics

But don’t stop there. Add in design metrics—both the squishy stuff like user satisfaction scores and the hard numbers like task success rates or user-reported pain points. Even if you don’t have data yet, your vision should point to a future where these things are measurable. Usability testing, for example, can give you baselines for task completion times or error rates. That’s ammo for later.

Align with Product Outcomes

Design doesn’t live in a vacuum. Work with product teams to understand what success looks like for them. A lot of their metrics—like daily active users, feature adoption, or churn rates—are heavily influenced by design. Take onboarding: track completion rates or first-time user success to show how your work makes or breaks the experience.

Set Measurable KPIs

Pick 3-5 KPIs that design owns or impacts—like reducing task time by 20% or boosting satisfaction scores by 15%. Focus on behaviors, not just features. For instance, instead of saying, “We’ll redesign the dashboard,” say, “We’ll cut the time it takes users to find key info by 30%.” That’s the kind of thing that gets leadership’s attention.

Having Effective Conversations with Cross-Functional Leaders and Influencing the Roadmap Without Owning It

One of the trickiest aspects of design leadership is shaping the product roadmap when you don’t hold the reins. It’s not about dictating direction—it’s about building trust, fostering collaboration, and weaving your vision into the organization’s larger goals.

During my tenure leading the Mail team at Yahoo, I saw a chance to elevate the email client beyond a simple communication tool into a platform that anticipated users’ needs and delivered tangible value, like saving them money. I kicked off a design sprint with my team, tasking them to research and prototype next-generation experiences. We landed on a bold concept: embedding commerce features directly into the inbox, tailored to everyday activities like travel, purchases, and receipts. Picture this: a user gets a flight confirmation email and sees a subtle offer to save on their next trip, or a receipt email suggests a discount on a related purchase. It was a holistic idea, enhancing the user experience while tying directly to business goals like revenue and adoption.

The hurdle wasn’t the idea itself—it was getting leadership on board. They needed to see this as more than a flashy design gimmick; it had to fit their priorities. I started by sharing rough prototypes and user research data, showing how these features could drive measurable outcomes. But I hit resistance. Some leaders felt it was too ambitious or questioned its place in the existing roadmap. To bridge that gap, I leaned on collaboration. Rather than presenting a polished, unchangeable plan, I invited their input and let the vision evolve. One stakeholder suggested focusing on travel and purchase features, arguing they’d deliver the biggest revenue bang. I took that feedback, refined the prototypes, and showed how it aligned with their goals. That shift turned doubters into co-creators—they felt ownership in the solution.

The result? We got the go-ahead to proceed, and the initiative paved the way for features that boosted engagement and opened new commerce streams. Exact metrics escape me here, but the bigger win was the lesson: influencing a roadmap you don’t own means anchoring your vision in user needs, backing it with evidence, and adapting it to fit the broader picture. It’s less about control and more about partnership.

As a design leader, your influence often relies on your ability to collaborate, align goals, and speak your partner's language. These relationships are where strategy becomes real.

Framing Design’s Value to Stakeholders

Influencing stakeholders hinges on making design’s value clear—and that starts with understanding your audience: their goals, their pain points, and what they see as worthwhile. Everyone appreciates good design, even if they don’t always know why. My job is to uncover what they value and tie it to the product and problems we’re solving.

This requires tailoring your approach to who’s in the room. Take a CFO I worked with at Yahoo who saw design as a cost center, not a revenue driver. I knew I had to speak his language—numbers. I pointed to a previous redesign that lifted user engagement by 20%, translating directly into significant revenue gains. That single, strong example flipped the switch: design went from an expense to an investment in his eyes, sparking a wider dialogue about its strategic role.

Design’s impact can be slippery because when it’s done well, it’s often invisible—like air, only noticed when it’s missing. To make it tangible, I zoom in on specifics. For instance, I might show how moving a button cut user errors by 50%, streamlining the experience and lifting satisfaction. These concrete wins help stakeholders see what they love about design and why it matters.

This isn’t a one-off pitch—it’s a marathon. Shifting a company’s view of design takes countless conversations, persistent advocacy, and proof through action. I celebrate design wins—big and small—and tie them to business outcomes, building a narrative of design as a strategic asset. It’s easy to get frustrated when appreciation isn’t instant, but that’s why I’m there: to bridge that gap, advocate for users, and chip away at skepticism. Every example, every chat, moves the needle.

Find Shared Goals

Start by looking for common ground. If you’re working with Engineering, you might both care about reducing technical debt. Position design as a tool that helps improve efficiency and make systems easier to maintain.

Build Trust with Data

It’s easier to influence when you can point to real impact. Use user data—both quantitative and qualitative—to support your arguments. Share case studies where design improved retention, increased adoption, or simplified workflows.

Co-Create Roadmaps

Design doesn’t exist in a silo, and neither should your strategy. Involve product and engineering leaders in crafting a shared roadmap. When teams help build the vision, they’re far more likely to buy into it.

Propose quarterly roadmap sessions to check alignment and identify opportunities where design can make an impact. This ensures design stays visible and valuable.

Balance Trade-Offs

Sometimes, speed will trump perfection. Instead of pushing for a complete solution, offer minimum viable designs that maintain quality without slowing teams down. By being flexible, you show that design is a partner, not a roadblock.

Setting a Flexible Vision

A design vision isn’t a rigid blueprint—it’s a North Star, inspiring and aligning the team while leaving room to pivot. It’s about big ideas that spark excitement, not a checklist of features to churn out.

When I led the Yahoo Mail redesign, our vision was to transform a basic email tool into a personalized, commerce-driven experience that anticipated user needs. We didn’t lock into a specific feature set; instead, we rallied around solving user frustrations and seizing opportunities—like helping users save money through their inbox. The “why” was clear: make email smarter and more valuable. The “what” was high-level: a platform that blends utility and commerce. The “how”? That was up for grabs.

We started with user research showing cluttered inboxes were a top gripe, so we tackled that first with a cleaner interface—a quick win that built momentum. As we went, we saw the need for a scalable design system to support growth, so we shifted gears to prioritize that. Later, when we rolled out commerce features—like travel deals tied to emails—user testing revealed some felt overwhelming. We dialed them back, opting for subtle, contextual integrations over bold promotions. The vision stayed steady, but the path flexed with new insights.

That adaptability is the magic. A vision like “revolutionize how people connect online” could start with one feature, then pivot based on fresh data—all without losing its soul. By keeping it directional rather than prescriptive, you empower the team to own the journey, fall in love with the problem, and innovate along the way. It’s clarity with breathing room.

Adapting to Stakeholder Feedback and Changing Priorities

Stakeholders are as much my “users” as the people using the product. Listening to them, validating their concerns, and iterating based on their input is how I land on solutions that stick. It’s not just about the design—it’s about the relationships that make it work.

Back to Yahoo Mail: our bold commerce vision hit a snag. Users found some features—like shopping suggestions in their inbox—too aggressive, while stakeholders pressed for faster monetization to hit quarterly goals. It was a tug-of-war between user experience and business demands. Sticking to the original plan wasn’t an option.

Here’s how it unfolded:

• The Plan: Launch a full suite of commerce features—travel deals, shopping prompts, the works—to boost engagement and revenue.
• The Curveball: Users felt overwhelmed; stakeholders wanted quick wins without alienating anyone.
• The Pivot: I huddled with the team to recalibrate. We scaled back to subtle integrations—like a “Save on your next trip” link next to a flight email—and pitched stakeholders a phased rollout. I leaned on user data to show a lighter touch would build trust now and set up bigger wins later. Regular check-ins and transparency sealed the deal—they trusted the shift because we’d built that foundation.
• The Payoff: We launched a streamlined version that users embraced, lifting engagement and delivering revenue without the backlash. It wasn’t the full vision yet, but it kept us on track.

The takeaway? Flexibility, rooted in user needs and business realities, is non-negotiable. Strong stakeholder relationships—forged through listening and showing up—make those pivots possible. It’s not about caving to every demand; it’s about finding the overlap where users and business both win.

Conclusion

Strategic leadership in design is a balancing act: holding a bold vision while staying nimble, influencing without controlling, and framing design’s worth in terms that click for others. It’s a journey of patience and persistence, grounded in a deep understanding of users and business alike. My time with Yahoo Mail showed me that anchoring your vision in the problem, adapting thoughtfully, and building trust with stakeholders can turn big ideas into real impact. As design leaders, we’re not just solving problems—we’re shaping how others see the power of design, one step, one conversation, one win at a time.

Advocating for Design

Advocacy is about making design’s value impossible to ignore. If you’re having problems getting buy-in for your vision, the problem may be in how design is valued at your company. Some things to keep in mind:

1. Link Design to Outcomes: Show how good design solves real problems. Use examples—from your company or elsewhere—where thoughtful design improved revenue, retention, or efficiency.
2. Educate Stakeholders: Help others see design not as a deliverable, but as a way of thinking—a process for solving complex problems.
3. Make Design Visible: Embed designers into key projects, share your team’s successes, and host showcases. The more people see design in action, the more they’ll understand its value.
4. Case studies: Share internal or external case studies of design-driven ideas that show success in your product, in a way that targets user goals.

Connecting the Dots

Here’s the thing: vision, values, principles, metrics—they’re not separate buckets. They’re a system. The vision sets the direction, values and principles shape how we get there, and metrics prove we’re not just spinning our wheels. Miss one, and the whole thing wobbles.

Looking at NeuBible again, our vision was to build the best reading experience, period. Our value of simplicity kept us honest, and our principle of familiarity through consistency made sure we didn’t reinvent the wheel for no reason. Then, when it came time to pitch it, we tied it to metrics like time spent reading and user retention—stuff we cared cared about that showed people were connecting with our solution. That’s how you make it stick.

As a VP of Product Design, your job isn’t just to dream big—it’s to make sure the dream pays off. That means setting a vision that inspires, building a team that lives it, and proving its worth in dollars and cents. It’s messy, it’s hard, and you won’t always get it right. But when you do? That’s when design stops being a support function and starts driving the damn bus.

Take a second to think about your own gig:

• What’s your design vision right now, and does it light a fire under your team?
• Are your values and principles more than just words on a slide?
• Can you tie your next big project to a metric that’ll make the C-suite sit up and listen?

If you can answer those, you’re already ahead of the pack. If not, well, that’s what this chapter’s for. Get to work.