Summary
How can you recognize and harness all forms of leadership within a team operating in a fast-paced environment? This talk will explore the strategies to identify and leverage both visible and invisible leadership in teams formed quickly to deliver high-impact work. Using the example of the Photoshop AI team, which developed the Generative Fill feature just months after being assembled, Briana will discuss how to cultivate a culture that elevates all contributors. Learn how to foster and sustain an environment where every form of leadership is valued, leading to extraordinary transformations in your organization.
Key Insights
-
•
Silent leaders drive impact through action and intimate advocacy, not always vocalizing in large groups.
-
•
Understanding individual team members’ strengths and working styles fosters an environment for high-quality work.
-
•
Comparing product design to a restaurant kitchen highlights the behind-the-scenes coordination essential for successful outcomes.
-
•
In fast-evolving fields like generative AI, having a clear mission and list of 'don’ts' prevents chasing shiny objects.
-
•
Collaboratively building a team mission helps ground efforts and align multi-disciplinary stakeholders.
-
•
Design leaders can embody metaphorical roles (gardener, farmer, forger, delivery driver) to contribute uniquely to team success.
-
•
Protecting focused work time while encouraging collaboration is critical in fast-paced innovation projects.
-
•
Amplifying diverse leadership styles within a team cultivates growth and results in world-class products.
-
•
User trust is maintained by enhancing existing workflows and providing creative control without disruptive changes.
-
•
The Photoshop AI team’s work influenced broader Adobe product strategies by establishing core UX principles for AI integration.
Notable Quotes
"Silent leaders prefer action over words and advocate in more intimate settings."
"Product design and development can often mirror what happens in a chef’s kitchen: lots of coordination and spinning plates behind the scenes."
"We had no recipe, no formula, just vibes, and some mystery box of ingredients."
"I simply asked the team about their strengths and needs instead of figuring it all out on my own."
"We decided to let it rip with clarity about who we were as a team and what we wanted to achieve."
"Dana and Davis weren’t seen on stage at Adobe Max, but you felt their impact throughout the experience."
"Michael became our farmer maintaining a steady flow of the team; Dana was our gardener cultivating quality work."
"As the delivery driver, my role was connecting the dots, getting briefs, and sometimes saying no to lofty requests."
"We didn’t chase shiny objects; we gave creatives access to tools to inspire the future of creativity."
"The Photoshop AI design team fundamentally changed how Adobe products incorporate AI technologies."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Failures of empathy between developers and players lead to the collapse of online worlds."
This Game is Never Done: Design Leadership Techniques from the Video Game World
November 6, 2017
"Diagramming is this kindness that we give to ourselves to get our bearing on something that we're stuck on."
Abby CovertStuck? Diagrams Help (Videoconference)
October 27, 2022
"You don’t know in the moment that something is going to become a war story."
Steve Portigal Susan Simon-Daniels Tamara Hale Randolph Duke IIWar Stories LIVE! Q&A-Discussion
March 30, 2020
"The government UK design system only works if the community contributes."
Kara KaneCommunities of Practice for Civic Design (Videoconference)
April 7, 2022
"UX research is a journey, not a simple flick of a switch – every challenge you face, someone else has been through."
Caroline VizeThe State of UX: Five Lessons from 2021 to Accelerate Digital Experience in 2022
March 9, 2022
"We all will be here today if we haven’t practiced human centered design for as long as we remember."
Lada GorlenkoTheme 3: Introduction
June 10, 2021
"MidJourney’s AI showed white men consistently as CEOs and professors, revealing systemic bias in training data."
Jay BustamanteNavigating the Ethical Frontier: DesignOps Strategies for Responsible AI Innovation
October 2, 2023
"Designers often said, I didn’t realize research was this hard, or more humorously, what you go through is traumatic."
Marjorie Stainback Kelsey KingmanTransforming Strategic Research Capacity through Democratization
October 24, 2019
"Start journaling to identify environmental triggers and stressors that affect your emotional responses."
Rachael Dietkus, LCSW Uday Gajendar Dr. Dawn Emerick Dawn E. Shedrick, LCSWLeading through the long tail of trauma (Videoconference)
July 13, 2022