Quick Summary
As the Director of Product Design for the B2B / Parking Operator side, I lead a team of 3 product designers that own 8+ product squads. Quick view: 30% product and company vision/strategy, 30% product design processes, 30% team manager coach and hiring, 10% IC design, and other various duties to create the best possible product team. Recently, I’ve helped define company goals using correlative data and user research, rewrote our design career ladder, led a research project for a future partner, and shared Annual Check-In feedback with the designers. Additionally, I lead hiring for the team, am a partner in the 2023 company planning, and define the product vision for the B2B side of the market.
When hiring, the core traits I look for are deep curiosity, a drive to be better than you were yesterday, and the forethought to be proactive when possible.
Results
Aligned the design team of 9 on a new career ladder; accounting for Maker, Manager, and Researcher roles. Run multiple rounds of official continuous research/year with the team providing clarity, growth opportunities, and team equity.
Adapted team processes for a team that recently spreads across 3+ cities, for a team eNPS of +48 (“great”)
I pair with the Product Management team to create quarterly and annual product plans for 15 squads, and a ~150-person Product and Engineering team.
Lead through ever-changing company climate (covid, team growth, rotating executive leadership) with 100% retention (over last 18+months, a team of 9)
Align team on our core design OKRs (summarized for brevity): higher design quality, stronger company influence, tighter research processes.
Below is a list of recent quotes from the last round of anonymous feedback from direct reports (via skip levels and forms):
“Danny organizes and communicates direction for all of the operator league designers and I have seen how he thinks at a higher level about the product vision and strategy and cascades that down into more incremental changes. I see that he gives energy to understanding problems and calmy directs towards learning as much as possible to guide choices. His leadership is more nurturing than dictating and I think this is incredibly powerful and yields good results.”
“I love working with Danny. He is probably the best manager I’ve had in my career so far.”
“There isn’t a company value missing in Danny’s work. He consistently builds trust, has fun, communicates well, listens and understands, and pushes us to think and innovate.”
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