Rosenverse
Expand DesignOps Leadership as a Chief of Staff

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Expand DesignOps Leadership as a Chief of Staff

Gold
Thursday, September 8, 2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Share the love for this talk
Expand DesignOps Leadership as a Chief of Staff
Speakers: Isaac Heyveld
Link:

Summary

Today’s design organizations continuously face increased scope, complex deliverables, challenging people dynamics, and pressure to hit business goals. For this reason, it’s important to reevaluate how DesignOps leadership is supported so that they can be as efficient and effective as possible. An emerging solution to this challenge is the Chief of Staff role — DesignOps practitioners skilled in values-driven leadership at scale, ruthless prioritization, and building trusted partnerships, who can serve as an advisor, proxy, and operational leader to the heads of large design teams. Here’s what Isaac has learned while defining this new leadership path in DesignOps at Salesforce. Takeaways: How to lead your team as the scope of your responsibility widens How to build trusted operational partnerships How to navigate complex situations on your team as you scale up

Key Insights

  • The Chief of Staff role in design ops focuses on enabling the executive and leadership team to scale operations and strategy, not just managing individual projects.

  • Isaac Hayvin partnered for over a decade with EVP Jason Day, exemplifying the trusted partnership critical to the CoS role’s success.

  • Salesforce’s Customer 360 UX team grew from 30 to 170 practitioners almost overnight, prompting the formal creation of the Chief of Staff role.

  • The CoS serves multiple personas: goalkeeper, operator, implementer, integrator, proxy, and advisor, tailoring support to executive needs.

  • Chiefs of Staff operate closely with executive assistants and design program managers, forming a triad essential to operating a large design org.

  • Operational tasks for a design CoS include talent reviews, budget planning, quarterly business reviews, and global team investment strategies.

  • Spreadsheets remain the primary flexible tool used for resource allocation and strategic planning despite their low-tech nature.

  • Emotional intelligence and strong communication skills are vital for a CoS, who works across multiple leadership levels and teams.

  • The Chief of Staff role can be a natural next career step for Design Program Managers, expanding from team-level to organizational leadership support.

  • Adding a Chief of Staff is advisable once a design leadership team surpasses about 100 practitioners or undergoes rapid growth requiring dedicated executive support.

Notable Quotes

"The trusted partnership between the chief of staff and the executive is critically important."

"We went from a team of 80 to 170 overnight, and that was a wide open cheeks flushed moment for me."

"The chief of staff serves as a bridge between the design program managers, executive assistants, and other ux and product chiefs of staff."

"The persona of a goalkeeper is helping to triage and prioritize strategy and work for the executive."

"Emotional intelligence is key to navigating situations with senior leaders multiple grades above you."

"A lot of our work still happens in spreadsheets, because they’re flexible and dynamic."

"The chief of staff is the bridge between our executive leadership team and the design ops practitioners."

"If you’re managing over 100 design practitioners, it makes sense to start looking at a chief of staff role."

"The chief of staff can be a natural next step from a design program manager or design ops leader of one."

"Communication is an integral part of the chief of staff role, whether with leadership, the org, or partners."

Ask the Rosenbot
Sam Proulx
SUS: A System Unusable for Twenty Percent of the Population
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Mansi Gupta
Drawing from Feminist Practice to Make Inclusive Design Operational
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Deirdre Hirschtritt
Research is Only as Good as the Relationships You Build
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
David Cronin
Discussion
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Bria Alexander
Opening Remarks
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Mackenzie Cockram
Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Research from Discovery to Live
2022 • QuantQual Interest Group
Laura Gatewood
Beyond Buzzwords: Adding Heart to Effective Slack Communication
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Jerome “Axle” Brown
How to Use Self-Directed Learning to Ensure Your Research Insights are Heard and Acted Upon
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Saara Kamppari-Miller
Theme Three Intro
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Sydney Lawson
Anatomy of a Strong User Panel
2026 • Advancing Research 2026
Gold
Tricia Wang
The most popular design thinking strategy is BS
2022 • Enterprise Community
Alba Villamil
Stereotyped by Design: Pitfalls in Cross-Cultural User Research
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Patrizia Bertini
Designing Within the Lines: How the EU AI Act Can Spark Better AI Innovation
2025 • DesignOps Community
Chui Chui Tan
Global insights: Embracing international and intercultural research for innovation
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Tara Tressel
Investigating qualitative depth of AI-moderated interviews
2026 • Advancing Research 2026
Gold
Amahra Spence
Designing for Liberation, Rehearsing Freedom
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold

More Videos

Anna Avrekh

"Don’t position yourself as the research expert; you are the expert in facilitating the quest for knowledge."

Anna Avrekh Dr. John Pagonis Klara Pelcl Sina Schreiber

Expert Panel: Leading in and with Research

March 10, 2022

Taylor Klassman

"AI-driven results are often 30 to 50 percent hallucinogenic—meaning not real—so we need to be cautious about overreliance."

Taylor Klassman

Shaping the Next Era of UX Research: Collaborative Forum

March 11, 2025

Dr. Jamika D. Burge

"We see value-based research strategies emerging that center equity and ethics at the highest levels."

Dr. Jamika D. Burge Steve Portigal Alba Villamil Sam Ladner

The Future of Research: Bridging the Gaps

July 29, 2021

Marisa Bernstein

"Build your pool, build your practice. If you provide a great testing experience, you’ve got another person to add to your group."

Marisa Bernstein

It Takes GRIT: Lessons from the Small, but Mighty World of Civic Usability Testing

December 9, 2021

Dan Mall

"If you use AI tools, ask for five different ways to do something, not just one, to force exploration."

Dan Mall

“Ask Me Anything” with Dan Mall, Author of Upcoming Rosenfeld Title, Design that Scales

October 2, 2023

Chris Geison

"We need to create learning frameworks that allow researchers to be effective, even without big tech pedigree."

Chris Geison

Theme 1 Intro

March 9, 2022

Bruce Gillespie

"Using the inverted pyramid doesn’t mean dumbing down your findings, it means explaining complex issues clearly."

Bruce Gillespie

Learning from journalism: Balancing impactful communication with compassionate storytelling

March 13, 2025

Nancy Douyon

"We all want to design for scale, but empathy alone is sometimes a shortcoming when thinking about scale."

Nancy Douyon

We'll Figure That Out in the Next Launch: Enterprise Tech's Nobility Complex

June 15, 2018

Liz Ebengo

"Redemptive design means to buy back or restore something or someone to its rightful place."

Liz Ebengo

The Burden on Children: The Cost of Insufficient Post-Conflict Services and Pathways Forward

December 4, 2024