Jackie Bavaro was most recently Head of Product Management for eight years at Asana, the well-loved work management software, where she joined pre-launch as the first PM. During her tenure, she grew the PM team to over twenty amazing people, helped Asana's go from $0 to more than $100 million in annual recurring revenue, and launched Asana's associate product manager program.
Jackie has since written two fantastic books on PM careers - 'Cracking the PM career' and 'Cracking the PM interview'.
In this episode we talk about Jackie's growth as a PM at Asana, defining impact in role, working with founders, navigating feedback and her 'Do, Try, Consider' framework which we've now implemented at Progression.
Links
Jackie's tweet referencing the framework we talk about in the podcast
Jackie's interview on Lenny's pod
Jonny can be found at https://twitter.com/jonnyburch
Who else should we be speaking to?
Be on the pod! Tell us about someone great! Just email hello@progression.co and tell us more.
Rate us!
It really helps if you rate us on iTunes. You can do that right here. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/progression-podcast/id1435509539
Progression is free for your first team of 10
Sign up at progression.co
This week Jonny chats to Steve Bianchi, CHRO and COO of talent operating system Beamery. A real futurist and systems thinker, Steve gets into the future of the people team, why people leaders make good Chief Operating Officers and imagines a future where we’re hired not based on our university and CV but by our skills and ambition.
Links:
Steve on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenbianchi
Beamery: https://beamery.com/
Jonny can be found at https://twitter.com/jonnyburch
Who else should we be speaking to?
Be on the pod! Tell us about someone great! Just email podcast@progressionapp.com and tell us more.
Our lovely sponsor: Progression!
We're tackling meaty problems around career growth and hiring engineers and designers at the moment. Read more and find our open roles on our careers page: progressionapp.com/careers
Rate us!
It really helps if you rate us on iTunes. You can do that right here. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/progression-podcast/id1435509539
In this episode Jonny chats to Lucas Coelho — VP of design at Roam Digital — about growing as a leader, his thoughts on how to build a bench of good junior folks, being honest and learning from failure and his experience building progression frameworks and using Progression. Lucas is a Progression customer, but we try and steer well clear of that until the very end.
Lucas Links:
https://twitter.com/coelholucas
Lucas's talk at Figma Config: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCsSKDh8gBg
Jonny can be found at https://twitter.com/jonnyburch
Who else should we be speaking to?
Be on the pod! Tell us about someone great! Just email podcast@progressionapp.com and tell us more.
Our lovely sponsor: Progression!
We're tackling meaty problems around career growth and hiring engineers and designers at the moment. Read more and find our open roles on our careers page: https://progressionapp.com/careers
Rate us!
It really helps if you rate us on iTunes. You can do that right here. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/progression-podcast/id1435509539
In this episode, Jonny chats with Brian about the rise of the very senior IC (Individual Contributor) - a subject close to our heart at Progression. We also go into the process of creating a startup and Brian's experience building and exiting Spectrum, his mixed feelings about how much we should be optimising for titles and putting yourself out there on the internet.
Brian is a designer at Github, co-host of the very popular Design Details podcast and most recently published a collection of interviews with senior designers on staff.design.
Brian Links:
Jonny can be found at https://twitter.com/jonnyburch
Who else should we be speaking to?
Be on the pod! Tell us about someone great! Just email podcast@progressionapp.com and tell us more.
Our lovely sponsor: Progression!
We're tackling meaty problems around career growth and hiring engineers and designers at the moment. Read more and find our open roles on our careers page: https://progressionapp.com/careers
Rate us!
It really helps if you rate us on iTunes. You can do that right here. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/progression-podcast/id1435509539
In this episode, Sarah Clatterbuck, Senior Director of Engineering at Google sits down with Neil to discuss a whole range of topics including:
Links:
Who else should we be speaking to?
Be on the pod! Tell us about someone great! Just email podcast@progressionapp.com and tell us more.
Our lovely sponsor: Progression!
We're tackling meaty problems around career growth and hiring engineers and designers at the moment. Read more and find our open roles on our careers page: https://progressionapp.com/careers
Rate us!
It really helps if you rate us on iTunes. You can do that right here. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/progression-podcast/id1435509539
Image credit: Kevin Scott
This episode, Jonny chats to Jessie Hayes, VP People and Talent at Whereby, the London video platform.
As one of the first 'People people' on the pod, Jessie goes through her personal career journey to get to Whereby, through large companies (Goldman Sachs, Box) to small, then we dig into how to treat your people function like a product which your employees subscribe to (very novel and clever) and then get Jessie's thoughts on progression frameworks, where they've succeeded and failed and what they're doing about it at Whereby today as they scale to 160+.
Jessie's links:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicamayhayes/
https://twitter.com/hijessiemay
Jonny:
https://twitter.com/jonnyburch
Who else should we be speaking to?
Be on the pod! Tell us about someone great! Just email podcast@progressionapp.com and tell us more.
Our lovely sponsor: Progression!
We're tackling meaty problems around career growth and hiring engineers and designers at the moment. Read more and find our open roles on our careers page: https://progressionapp.com/careers
Rate us!
It really helps if you rate us on iTunes. You can do that right here. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/progression-podcast/id1435509539
We're back after a bit of a break with a new series of Progression Pods - this time we're mixing up the presenter so watch out for some new voices from the team.
In this episode, Gonçalo Silva, CTO at Doist (creators of Todoist and Twist) sits down with Neil to discuss the nine month process they went through to create a progression framework for their globally distributed team of 100 people.
They discuss building the framework transparently, iteratively gathering and incorporating team member feedback and how they use their framework to help determine compensation.
Links:
https://twitter.com/goncalossilva
https://doist.com
https://todoist.com
https://twist.com
Neil on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ncameron
Who else should we be speaking to?
Be on the pod! Tell us about someone great! Just email podcast@progressionapp.com and tell us more.
Our lovely sponsor: Progression!
We're tackling meaty problems around career growth and hiring engineers and designers at the moment. Read more and find our open roles on our careers page: progressionapp.com/careers
Rate us!
It really helps if you rate us on iTunes. You can do that right here. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/progression-podcast/id1435509539
It's been a while since Jonny and Neil sat down to talk through Product progress, plans and strategy. This somewhat unplanned ramble-chat covers how we're thinking about high touch vs low touch go-to-market, COVID impact, honing the problem we're solving and for who.
Of course, Neil also reviews a biscuit.
We have no new guest interview episodes planned (it's been a busy few months) but if you like these team chats please let us know and we can do more of them!
Anti-racism statement
During this episode we reference a statement on anti-racism and our stance, that we planned to be an intro to the episode but we decided to make it its own episode. The audio and transcript of that is here: https://www.progressionapp.com/posts/anti-racism-statement/ — please do give it a listen, we're learning and would love your feedback.
Other links
As always, you can give Progression a try at https://progressionapp.com
All previous episodes now available on our blog: https://progressionapp.com/blog
Jonny on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jonnyburch
Neil on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ncameron
A statement about our Anti-racism stance and plans for making Progression an anti-racist product and business.
Read the full statement and more detail on our action items here: https://progressionapp.com/posts/anti-racism-statement/
Cap Watkins is CXO at Primary, where he's responsible for Design, Product, People and engineering (oh my!).
In the recent past, he was a professional leadership coach and organizational consultant at Practical Works, helping senior contributors, first-time managers and managers-of-managers grow and evolve in their roles. Previously, he was VP of Design at BuzzFeed, where he managed Product Design.
While at Buzzfeed Cap also created one of the most popular design frameworks on progression.fyi – https://www.progression.fyi/f/buzzfeed, which he then blogged about warning people not to use it directly. We talked about that along with several of his blog posts, including:
https://capwatkins.com/blog/skip-the-shortcuts
https://capwatkins.com/blog/two-questions
I'd been following and nagging Cap for an interview for months, so it's funny that it then took me six months to get the resulting interview out. It's a great and very much evergreen interview though, so lots to dig into.
Find cap on:
Who else should we be speaking to?
Be on the pod! Tell us about someone great! Just email podcast@progressionapp.com and tell us more.
Our lovely sponsor: Deliveroo
Our wonderful sponsor Deliveroo is looking for loads of designers, researchers, writers as well as leaders and managers. Go check them out at https://deliveroo.design
Join the waitlist
We’re aiming to launch soon, but if you want to jump the gun or just be in the loop, get involved in our waitlist. progressionapp.com
Rate us!
It really helps if you rate us on iTunes. You can do that right here. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/progression-podcast/id1435509539
About Irene
Irene is a designer and veteran design leader, leading design and user experience at Google, Yahoo, Netscape, and Udacity. She was once even the most prolific hirer of UX talent in silicon valley.
She now works as an operational partner at Khosla Ventures, working with fast growing portfolio companies on design and strategic problems at the highest level, as well as teaching yoga.
Our conversation covered scaling design across some of the most well known and iconic companies in the world as well as extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation, using envy to identify what you enjoy and finding the thing that gives you joy.
I loved this conversation – Irene absolutely (but politely) schooled me on some of my assumptions about the evolution of design and I learned a ton. I hope you do too!
Irene's website: ireneau.com
Irene on Twitter: twitter.com/ireneau
Design your Life – Irene's medium blog: https://medium.com/design-your-life
Who else should we be speaking to?
Be on the pod! Tell us about someone great! Just email podcast@progressionapp.com and tell us more.
Our lovely sponsor: Deliveroo
Our wonderful sponsor Deliveroo is looking for loads of designers, researchers, writers as well as leaders and managers. Go check them out at https://deliveroo.design
We're looking for new sponsors! hit us up: podcast@progressionapp.com
Join the waitlist
We’re aiming to launch soon, but if you want to jump the gun or just be in the loop, get involved in our waitlist. progressionapp.com
Rate us!
It really helps if you rate us on iTunes. You can do that right here. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/progression-podcast/id1435509539
About Ryan
Ryan Carson has been a huge figure in tech and online learning for a long time now through his company Treehouse, but his journey to get there and onwards from this success story is a journey of learning about himself, what he loves and also his privilege. From Carsonified, his tech conference startup based in the UK through Treehouse to Project unlock the American dream (training 100,000 Americans from diverse backgrounds into software engineering apprenticeships), he talks through his biggest challenge yet.
Ryan on twitter: https://twitter.com/ryancarson
Treehouse: https://teamtreehouse.com
Project unlock the american dream: https://projectunlocktheamericandream.org
Ryan's book recommendations
The New Jim Crow: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1595586431
Seeing White: https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-White-Introduction-Privilege-Race/dp/1442203080
Who else should we be speaking to?
Be on the pod! Tell us about someone great! Just email podcast@progressionapp.com and tell us more.
Our lovely sponsor: Deliveroo
Our wonderful sponsor Deliveroo is looking for loads of designers, researchers, writers as well as leaders and managers. Go check them out at https://deliveroo.design
Join the waitlist
We’re aiming to launch soon, but if you want to jump the gun or just be in the loop, get involved in our waitlist. progressionapp.com
Rate us!
It really helps if you rate us on iTunes. You can do that right here. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/progression-podcast/id1435509539
Today’s guest: Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Anne-Laure is a prolific writer, thinker and learner. From a background in tech at companies like Google, she's spend the last year or so focused on entrepreneurial projects, culminating in her own Venture Studio Ness Labs, dedicated to products that help people be happier and healthier. She's hugely active in the online entrepreneurial community, championing learning and personal development with a broad set of 6000+ folks following along through her newsletter.
As a fellow maker and founder, Anne-Laure and I talk less about team building and more about the journey of starting something new, compound interest when it comes to writing, being an active learner and a company of one.
Anne-Laure's company: https://nesslabs.com/ and newsletter: https://nesslabs.com/newsletter
Maker Mag: https://makermag.com/
Anne-Laure on Twitter: https://twitter.com/anthilemoon
Our lovely sponsor: Deliveroo
Our wonderful sponsor Deliveroo is looking for loads of designers, researchers, writers as well as leaders and managers. Go check them out at https://deliveroo.design
Join the waitlist
We’re aiming to launch in the first quarter of next year, but if you want to jump the gun or just be in the loop, get involved in our waitlist. https://progressionapp.com
Rate us!
It really helps if you rate us on iTunes. You can do that right here. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/progression-podcast/id1435509539
Who else should we be speaking to?
Be on the pod! Tell us about someone great! Just email podcast@progressionapp.com and tell us more.
I loved chatting to Kara back in August, excited to finally get this episode out to your ears!
Kara started her career as an instructional designer, eventually working her way to leading user experience design through experience at (amongst others) top-flight companies in sport (the Super Bowl), Film (Oscars) and politics, both as senior advisor to 18F and as Biden's Director of UX during Obama's cancer moonshot. She was also one of the first Presidential Innovation Fellows.
We talked about Instructional design, meeting Obama, pale males, career progression of a person vs a professional and where you can use existing skills in new ways and readjust your career to suit the things you’re good at AND the things you love.
We also covered attempting to cure cancer, doing user-centred design in government, being a good sponsor and our mutual love of the West Wing.
Show links
Obama announcing the cancer moonshot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W2Fl_X_6I4
Kara's article on how to care and feed a team: https://medium.com/@karadefrias/the-product-managers-guide-to-the-care-and-feeding-of-humans-ee2854bc5944
Find Kara on the web at https://www.karadefrias.com/, and on twitter at https://twitter.com/karadefrias.
Who else should we be speaking to?
We have a fantastic set of interviews already recorded so we're sorted for getting into your ear-holes for this year, but we're looking for guests for 2020 episodes, so if you or someone you know is doing great work, let us know! Even better if it's someone who might not be regulars on other podcasts or stages.
Just email podcast@progressionapp.com and tell us more.
Our lovely sponsor: Deliveroo!
Our wonderful sponsor Deliveroo is looking for loads of designers, researchers, writers as well as leaders and managers. It really is an exciting and fun place to work (I should know as an alumni).
Go check out the team, blog and open roles at deliveroo.design or follow them on twitter: https://twitter.com/deliveroodesign
Dave Malouf is a veteran design leader, strategist, facilitator, researcher, and educator who has worked with some of the largest and fastest growing organizations globally. He's probably best known for his work around Design Ops, that slightly nebulous set of practices that help design organisations to scale.
We get right into defining then pulling Design Ops apart, as well as touching on how speaking globally informs his practice and gives him energy.
Dave on Twitter: https://twitter.com/daveixd
Worth watching: Dave's keynote at IxDA Rio
Who else should we be speaking to?
We have a fantastic set of interviews already recorded so we're sorted for getting into your ear-holes for this year, but we're looking for guests for 2020 episodes, so if you or someone you know is doing great work, let us know! Even better if it's someone who might not be regulars on other podcasts or stages.
Just email podcast@progressionapp.com and tell us more.
Our lovely sponsor: Deliveroo!
Our wonderful sponsor Deliveroo is looking for loads of designers, researchers, writers as well as leaders and managers. It really is an exciting and fun place to work (I should know as an alumni).
Go check out the team, blog and open roles at deliveroo.design or follow them on twitter: https://twitter.com/deliveroodesign
Join the waitlist
We’re aiming to launch in the first quarter of next year, but if you want to jump the gun or just be in the loop, get involved in our waitlist. progressionapp.com
You can also follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/progressionapp – send us a tweet with your thoughts on the pod!
Hey friends! It's been a while...
We're having a mini-break from regular episodes for the summer, but to celebrate Neil officially joining the team (about 4 months ago) as a cofounder, we decided to chat about working together and finding each other, our new feature 'check-ins' and our favourite office snack, the mighty Choco Leibniz.
We'll be back with a new season, fantastic guests, a shiny new sponsor and more great interviews in a couple of weeks.
Neil can be found at:
Jonny is, as ever, at
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Remember to join the Progression waitlist for all the latest on our product, including invites to the product before anyone else.
Todd is a Design leader, leadership coach and lifelong learner. He recently released findings from a survey of over 800 design teams globally, with a focus on career growth and team health.
We dive into his findings- getting through everything from hiring to attrition and the relative importance of different factors in someone's decision to leave. And the results are interesting: it turns out that 35% of people list lack of career growth as their reason for leaving a company, but under 4% of design teams have a progression framework.
We also dig into some of the stats around progression frameworks – when do companies roll them out and when should you start considering one for your team.
Enjoy!
Todd online:
On Twitter: https://twitter.com/zakiwarfel
Todd's site: http://zakiwarfel.com
The report: http://zakiwarfel.com/dci-report/
His great talk at Leading Design last year: https://vimeo.com/297967955
Progression
Get your waitlist spot at progressionapp.com (we're going into Beta now so many more invites coming soon)
Me and progression:
Sana Rao was born in India, educated at the School of Visual Arts in NYC and spent 4 years at Twitter designing a bunch of the mobile experience we use today.
She's now Interim Head of Experience at Deliveroo, working out how to support the designers, researchers and content writers on their journey with the company as it grows.
Sana has taken huge risks, experienced twitter abuse, seen companies successfully improve diversity and has a fascinating story of her career to date. She's also a great friend and really interesting person!
Sana's links:
Sana on twitter: https://twitter.com/sanarao
Redesigning the content research and design org on Medium: https://medium.com/deliveroo-design/redesigning-the-content-research-design-org-50a204425b5c
Course materials from SVA: https://postindustrialdesign.school/#resources
SVA: http://www.sva.edu
Sponsor: Progression (har har)
This episode is sponsored by Progression, because why the hell not. Get your waitlist spot at progressionapp.com (we're going into Beta now so many more invites coming soon)
(A real sponsor will be back next episode)
Me and progression:
In this twelfth episode of the Progression Podcast I'm chatting to Peter Merholz, co-founder of Adaptive Path, long time speaker and blogger on design scaling and co-author of Org Design for Design Orgs (2016).
We get into the weeds on his back story, including learning how to write and speak confidently. We then got onto managing up, down and across, his book and the ethics of design (and a designers' role within it). Finally we got to some listener questions from various Slack channels that I hang out on.
Peter's links:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/peterme
Peter's blog: https://www.peterme.com/
Org Design for Design Orgs (Amazon) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Org-Design-Orgs-Peter-Merholz/dp/1491938404
Coach, Diplomat, Advocate, Architect. Peter's talk at Leading Design: https://vimeo.com/243666544
Sponsor: Onfido 🙌
This episode is sponsored by Onfido! They're ruddy great, and are looking for a VP design (amongst other interesting design and product roles). Check out their open jobs here: onfido.com/jobs
Want to sponsor an episode, or suggest a guest? Email podcast@makegrow.co to get straight to me.
Me and progression:
In this episode I'm talking to Braden Kowitz, an SF based designer and founder.
Braden's work has been hugely impactful on how we design today through his work on the Sprint book at Google Ventures. But his journey has also been an interesting one, leading from Google to working with startups to founding his own, Range.
We talk about finding meaningful work, bucking the trend of an expected design career, the dangers of a rigid ladder in a small team and much more.
Braden's Links
Range: https://www.range.co/
Braden's personal site: https://kowitz.co/
Braden on twitter: https://twitter.com/kowitz
The Sprint Book: https://www.thesprintbook.com/
Sponsor: Onfido 🙌
This episode is sponsored by Onfido! They're ruddy great, and are looking for a VP design (amongst other interesting design and product roles). Check out their open jobs here: onfido.com/jobs
Want to sponsor an episode, or suggest a guest? Email podcast@makegrow.co to get straight to me.
Me and progression: