• Make things happen

    I was recently catching up with a designer I used to manage, who was consistently one of the top performers on the team throughout our time working...

  • The Rebalancing of Design Management

    Anyone who's been reading my blog since I started managing is probably acutely aware that I've historically seen management as a people-first...

  • The Quiet Times

    About two years into working at BuzzFeed, I reached a moment one summer when I looked around and realized I had very little to do. I'd been working...

  • Should I Become a Manager?

    Since starting Practical Works, I’ve spoken with a lot of folks who are at a crossroads in their career and aren’t sure which way to go. Do they...

  • Two Questions

    As I've written about in the past, I think managers should put a very high value on recruiting. Beyond just being active participants in the process,...

  • A Review Process

    Whenever I talk about how we (and how I) think about reviews and feedback in the BuzzFeed Tech org, I'm struck by how many people outside our team...

  • Holistic Management

    When new managers start out, they tend to become hyper-focused on what's right in front of them: the designers they manage, the product team(s)...

  • Designing Inward

    A little over a year into my job at Etsy, we had made a lot of changes to the design team and how we operated. We'd hired a bunch of amazing product...

  • The Great Reanchoring

    When I joined BuzzFeed just over a year ago, I spent the first few months of my time there setting the Product Design team up so it could scale well....

  • The Perfect Company

    In the last year or so, every time I've given a talk on collaboration or building an organization, an audience member has approached me (either...