My learnings from 2022
This year has been one of the most challenging of my career. I’ve gone through ups, downs, and a lot of uncertainty. I believe that every challenge gives me an opportunity to learn and grow. Naturally, as I enter into a new year it’s always a good time to reflect, here are my top learnings from the year.
Good vibes does not equal happiness
At the tail end of 2021, my team and I were rocked by poorly handled salary reviews and pay rises. As expected 1 designer in my team decided to leave - little did I know they would be the beginning of a mass exodus.
Our team was the best design team in the business and it wasn’t me just saying it was others. We had a really great culture and good vibes in the team. I knew salaries alone wouldn’t keep designers but I felt the great team culture and the problem space were enough to keep the designers at Cazoo. Boy was I wrong, slowly but surely designers started leaving not just from my team but across the organisation, career progression and pay being the top reasons.
As a leader, there are many things that happen within the company that are out of your control and it’s your job to try and protect and create stability within the team, for some people it won’t be enough and people will leave the team. I knew that there was very little I could do about pay so I knuckled down on:
ensuring designers had a development plan and received regular feedback
making sure that designers were using our training and development budget
having team socials and ensuring we had good vibes in the team
Unfortunately, I still had designers leaving to get higher salaries and promotions. Reflecting on it now - I should have been one step ahead thinking about how the team will evolve if certain people leave. Now with the current team, I ensure the knowledge is spread and give ownership to multiple people to minimise risk.
Going into 2023, I will ensure:
each team member has an understanding of their career progression within Cazoo.
continue to be as transparent as possible
have regular reflection points and retros
set the expectations around pay and progression at Cazoo
lean into the positives of working at Cazoo eg. Work flexibility, domain complexity, etc.
work with the team to shape the team
When things get tough - Weather the storm
I’ll be honest most of the time if a work environment starts to make me uncomfortable, I start looking for new opportunities. If you know me, you know that I always keep an eye on the market, and as a result of everything happening in the business, I started applying. As I applied and started looking into different roles, I felt a lot of the roles were lacking and didn’t quite match what I was looking for.
So I took a step back and reflected on my next step and the skills I needed to achieve it. In order to get to my next step I realised, I needed:
more time in my current role
more experience managing different roles ie. Managers and other disciplines
demonstrate my capabilities over a longer period of time
I enjoy working at Cazoo, I like my work colleagues and the product. It is also a great place to experiment to flex my skills. I also felt like I had a unique opportunity to rebuild the UX craft and my team within Cazoo. To rebuild it with great peers and a supportive leadership team. I decided to weather the storm and help to rebuild the UX community whilst helping the business achieve its goals.
Just go for it - even if the odds are against you
During the summer the director of UX left Cazoo and instead of replacing her, the company created a new director role that brought together the Product and UX functions and was opening up the role to internal candidates.
Although I had some knowledge of Product I wasn’t an expert and knew that the likelihood of me getting the role was slim. But I thought I would apply for the experience and feedback. As predicted I didn’t get the role but unexpectedly I got a promotion and my role got extended to a wider remit.
As well as getting a promotion, I learned that:
I don’t enjoy Product and firmly want to stay as a UX Leader
The interview was an opportunity to showcase my skills and knowledge as a UX leader
What I need to work on in order to get a director position
Without going for the position I wouldn’t have realised the things above. Going into 2023, I know what I need to focus on to reach my career goals.
So there you have it, my learnings from the past year:
Good vibes don’t equal happiness
When things get tough - Weather the storm
Just go for it - even if the odds are against you
You can learn from every situation you go through. What are your top learnings from 2022?
