BOLDER & WISER with Peter Wang and Michelle Kraemer

Allison Krausman: design leadership, there is a doc for that, no stupid questions

• Peter Wang • Season 1 • Episode 4

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I'm joined by Allison Krausman, a product design leader, and a friend. We had the good fortune of collaborating for 3+ years at BuzzFeed.

Allison shared her 13-year journey from college application rejections to navigating the wild wild west of BuzzFeed.

We dived into how she honed her craft as a designer to become an effective coach, the power of a writing culture, how to build trust with questions, how to reframe failures, and why mentorship is a must.

Peter Wang:

Welcome, this is episode four of the Work in Progress podcast. I'm your host, Peter Wang. I'm joined by Alison Crossman, a product design leader and a friend. We had the good fortune of collaborating for three plus years at BuzzFeed. Alison shared her 13 year journey from college application rejections to navigating the wild, wild west of BuzzFeed. We dived into how she honed her craft as a designer to becoming an effective coach. The power of a writing culture, how to build trust with questions, how to reframe failures, and why mentorship is a must. Please enjoy the episode. Alison, welcome.

Allison Krausman:

Thank you, Peter. Thank you for having me. I'm Allison Kraussman, mom, designer, manager passionate about all of those things.

Peter Wang:

Yes. Did you have you always grown up in Connecticut or did you move there?

Allison Krausman:

No, I'm a Connecticut transplant, so I'm originally from Long Island, New York spent a few years in New York City, and then my husband and I moved up here to Fairfield County, Connecticut.

Peter Wang:

Oh, nice. And you actually went to Carnegie Mellon University where I went

Allison Krausman:

did. Yes. Uh, yes. We have that in common.

Peter Wang:

Did you study design there?

Allison Krausman:

I did not I got rejected from the Carnegie Mellon design school two times.

Peter Wang:

Two times? How does that work?

Allison Krausman:

Good question, I applied to the design school as my first choice and the art school is my second choice. I got rejected from the design school and waitlisted at the art school and I ultimately got in. And even though it wasn't the degree I wanted, I went because it was my dream school and I was told that I could I would try to do an internal transfer. So I get to the school it's a big intimidating place, right? Everyone there is super smart. I made friends with the design department. I was able to take one design course that I guess for non majors, and so I applied as an internal transfer, and I thought for sure that would be easier than applying as an, I don't know, from externally and I didn't get in. So then I left and I transferred to SUNY Buffalo, got my degree from there, and ended up graduating early, and the best part of the story is that I ended up working with, over the years, a ton of CMU grads And so I ended up in the same place. When I graduated, it was a few years after 2008. My only options appeared to be internships. I was living at home on Long Island, so I was able to take a really short train into New York City. I didn't have to pay rent but I could still work in New York City. That was very cool. I got a job with my physical paper portfolio where everything was printed out. You'd come in with a printed resume. I don't know, do people still do this?

Peter Wang:

I remember

Allison Krausman:

um,

Peter Wang:

Yeah. Nice stock paper. I remember buying

Allison Krausman:

Oh, yes.

Peter Wang:

paper for that. printed.

Allison Krausman:

Yes.

Peter Wang:

it looks crisp.

Allison Krausman:

Yes, very nice paper. I got a job at a small digital agency called Plenty. I was an intern, barely making any money, but I was so excited to be there. I was going to be working on real websites for real clients, big names. It was a really, small shop. And I got to be closely mentored by the art director there and the creative director. And we became a family. And I came in early and I stayed late and I gave so much of myself. I went above and beyond. And I absolutely loved it. I learned everything that I, I learned Photoshop. We used to design websites in Photoshop. I learned Photoshop on the job. I didn't really have any experience designing websites, but somehow. I became good at it. I was an intern. I made 13 an hour. And it was like so much money to me. And then I was an intern for an entire year, and they offered me a full time job, and I can pretty confidently say it was one of the best days of my life. I remember that day just being... It was so special. It felt so good. I was getting a real salary. When I look back on it now, it seems ridiculous, but yeah I was full time there for almost three years after that. And it was awesome. It was really awesome. There was like eight of us. And we had a great time and we were like a, we were, it was a family and. It was very cool.

Peter Wang:

Not a huge. So it was not a huge agency.

Allison Krausman:

No, and I think that was one of the reasons why it was so special and was hugely impactful on those early years of my career was because I got this hands on experience from somebody who was 10 years more senior than me. We would sit at our computers next week. I would come over next day at his desk and. He would show me what he was working on. He would give me feedback. He would help me work through something. And so being able to sit with someone like that when I was fresh out of school and have them you and teach you and get to observe them. That's huge. And feel like it would have been different if I was in a bigger place.

Peter Wang:

Yeah, that's a good contrast because BuzzFeed is a much bigger place. When you joined, that was what 2012, maybe around 2014. Those are heydays of digital media. Lots of VC dollars pouring into the space. So you joined BuzzFeed eight long years with BuzzFeed. How would you describe that journey?

Allison Krausman:

Yeah. I was at BuzzFeed for almost nine years. That journey, man do we have enough time for that? So I was a big BuzzFeed fan. Like it was the heyday, right? BuzzFeed was huge. The quizzes, the posts that people really felt like they could relate to. It was so cool. It was such a cool time to be there All the designers had different titles when I joined. My title was officially web designer. And then some people were product designers. Like none of the titles like were streamlined in any way. The company had really grown from a small startup to about 400, 450 people. There were a lot of growing pains around that. It was really hard when I started. I felt like an outsider. I felt like all these people had been together, they were this unit. It was pretty lonely in the beginning, and I also just didn't have a lot to do.

Peter Wang:

Ah

Allison Krausman:

So I was a little bit like why, did you hire me? And it

Peter Wang:

coming and that's, and you are coming from a, such a family, like environment, small agency, always have project coming down. You have director working with you side by side a much bigger place where things are assigned to you. They're different different titles, different brands. Probably. Yeah.

Allison Krausman:

yeah, it was definitely disorienting. The people management discipline was not. At least from my early experience there was not really built up in the way that it ultimately would have been where there are people who are dedicated to supporting every individual contributor and everyone really who's there. I think that's why it felt so isolating. There just wasn't that support. It was a very interesting time, there were no teams, everyone just worked on whatever which I PMs would just show up at your desk and be like, I have this thing for you. So you would work on you'd work on all sorts of things, and you'd get to work with all different people, which, also was very cool those that kind of situation has its pros, of course.

Peter Wang:

yes.

Allison Krausman:

And designers weren't helping to define the actual work. It was really just hey, here's this thing handed to you. And oftentimes there was no project. We didn't have project briefs. There wasn't any of that. They were just like, here's a thing. And you were just like, okay. And you went and did the thing. But yeah, over time I got more comfortable there and I became friendly with a PM who was new who had joined after me. I was no longer like the new person. We were new together and we just started like making up projects that we wanted to do. We decided we wanted to redo part of the CMS that where you built quizzes, which we called the quiz maker. And so we redid it and it was like a multiple month, long project. The early days were really interesting, but just a very exciting time to be there.

Peter Wang:

I feel like there's a couple of transitions, right? One transition is you coming from agency to a non agency world, small to bigger. To a true startup, in this case, a growth stage startup which BuzzFeed was in 2014, where the pace of the company was faster than the foundation, right? And fast forward, how would you describe, how many stages you end up to become a director?

Allison Krausman:

yeah, I think the first really important stage was about a year in so early 2015. So I was pretty unhappy. By that point for all the reasons that we just talked about

Peter Wang:

Yeah.

Allison Krausman:

it was chaotic, again, no support and I was thinking about leaving, and but we had brought in a VP of design, so somebody to actually head up the design department, which was, like, not a thing. That we had. And his name was Cap Watkins, and he came in, and that was really exciting, and he sat us all down and had one on ones with all of us. And he said, tell me everything. And I was like, what do you mean? I can just tell you all of my feelings? And I can tell you everything that's bad? And he was like, yeah, and it was the first time that some that really somebody wanted me to just be honest and direct with them and that I could actually tell them how I feel and then they were going to do something about it to make it better. And that had not been the thing I had experienced before. And he said, I said, I'm going to leave and he said, give me 3 months. And I ended up staying for 8 years,

Peter Wang:

Welcome to

Allison Krausman:

so that was really. That was a really, big turning point. He implemented processes and a culture of transparency, a culture of direct communication and feedback feedback not only to each other. Not only like performance feedback or whatnot, but design feedback and how we shared how designers shared work with each other and that, that culture of manager, we have real people managers who support every individual and want you to talk to them honestly, and are here to support you and, keep you happy here and help you grow. All that stuff came in that era.

Peter Wang:

Yeah, that's a big one. Okay. I'll see you next time.

Allison Krausman:

That was a really important time and truly was the foundation of my knowledge of what it means to be a people manager and what it means to have a healthy team.

Peter Wang:

Yeah, that's such a very important point. A lot of people haven't been in a place where the culture is healthy, where how you communicate is healthy, and so on. So you had that. At which point did you start that transition, that path, getting on the path to becoming a manager?

Allison Krausman:

yeah. A few years after that, maybe 2017, 2018 we were all broken up into cross functional teams that each had a different mission. That's not how it was in the beginning, but that's how it ultimately was. We were doing a lot of team switching, sometimes every six months. And every time I was on a new team because of the way we were set up, I was essentially a leader on that team. You had a design lead, an engineering lead, a product lead, and you were together a cohort of folks responsible for leading that team. And so over time, it started to be clear that I was fulfilled by that kind of leadership role that I was really drawn to helping ensure that the team was being the best. It could be whether it was like making sure our product strategy was sound or making sure we were communicating well with stakeholders. Making sure the engineers were giving us design feedback, even if it was hard for them to talk. And if even if they didn't have a lot of experience giving design feedback, it was important to make sure that we were getting their thoughts because they're a part of the team. we want to know what they think.

Peter Wang:

Actually, let's touch

Allison Krausman:

Uh, yeah.

Peter Wang:

Like the art of it. How, is that natural? Is that an easy thing for people to do? Is that a learned skill? Do you learn that at school? To give each other notes?

Allison Krausman:

Yeah. So if you go to a fine arts program or a design program You typically are learning the practice of critique and you are being put in these scenarios where you're in a group setting and you have to in front of everyone and maybe on, and on the fly, come up with an opinion on somebody's piece and you have to say it out loud.

Peter Wang:

Yes.

Allison Krausman:

And so I did that in school. I didn't, but I'm trying to think because I feel like all the things I've learned about critique on the job. You're not really taught that in school Right? It's very different

Peter Wang:

Okay.

Allison Krausman:

and the stakes are higher Right?

Peter Wang:

it's not about a peer to peer, and, it's different. There are so many things that we're learning on the job, and, Most of them, I would say, organically, meaning no one is sitting you down doing onboarding and say, here are the key skills you need to be for your particular role as a designer. One of your jobs beyond design is to be able to give good design feedback. And over the years, I find there are some people who are much better at giving design feedback than others. The ones that were good, isn't particularly the best designers, but actually the ones that understand the context of where the design fit in the user's flow and the business case behind it and so on. Because when designing a product, there's no right answer, right? Most of the time, there's not like a true right answer, but you're

Allison Krausman:

Yep.

Peter Wang:

for something. So I used to find that a very interesting skill that how do people acquire that.

Allison Krausman:

Yeah. It's hard for a lot of people. There's a lot of layers to giving design feedback. While I was at BuzzFeed, I actually wrote a doc about giving design feedback. Originally I wrote it for a designer who was having trouble soliciting design feedback from their engineers on their team.

Peter Wang:

Yeah.

Allison Krausman:

I think a lot of designers have run into scenarios where they find themselves asking for feedback from non designers and they're either getting no feedback poor feedback, like it's just not valuable or Irrelevant feedback and so all of those scenarios are not good. If we want to cultivate it an environment where all disciplines are contributing to the thing we're building. It's important to have healthy and productive conversations about the thing we're building. 1 of the things I think is the communication aspect about how do you give someone criticism? For a lot of people, especially people earlier in their career that's really scary. People tend to only want to say, I only want to say nice things, right? Especially if you're giving the feedback to someone more senior than you or someone who's been there longer. That can be really intimidating.

Peter Wang:

Okay.

Allison Krausman:

Giving critical feedback is something that is a muscle you have to build. If it's something that feels really uncomfortable for you, the more you do it, the less scary it feels and the stronger that muscle gets. If you're giving critical feedback, criticism, but you're giving it in a kind and empathetic way. You're not sugarcoating it. But you're giving it in a way that someone's going to receive it well. And once you do that, and you say, oh, everything was fine. It wasn't that scary. Nobody got upset. They said, oh, thank you for the feedback. And they saw the value in it. I think another pitfall people fall into when giving feedback is that they don't explain the reason why they have the feedback. I like that one. I like option one instead of option two. Why do you like option one, Right. And I think some people just take the feedback. They're like great everyone likes option one. But it's really important to understand the reason why do they like option one because that's going to help you maybe go back to your team and be able to sell option one. It's also going to help you become a stronger designer I think especially With folks who are not, designers, they tend to not give that reason behind the feedback because it's harder for them to articulate. It's harder for a non designer to articulate the why. And so it's all actually on the designer to say thank you for the feedback. Can you tell me more about why you think that and to pull that why out.

Peter Wang:

Yeah, it's true. I've seen a few very good design CRIT sessions at BuzzFeed. It's not an easy thing to do. Even the efficiency with which it was run. And if there's a moderator, how much time, who's presenting, and every person who steps up to present has a bit of a very similar structure around it, which makes it easier and more efficient for other stakeholders to be able to absorb because you can quickly talk about one project on mobile for one brand, then you switch right over to internal tools. What problem space are we in now? Do quickly switch that, but I've seen that's definitely one thing I'm, was very impressed by. Actually if you still have a doc about how to give good feedback, maybe there's something we can Open source.

Allison Krausman:

Yeah. I Love to. Oh, I would love to. I have a lot of docs.

Peter Wang:

Yeah. Let's talk about doc. One thing we joke about with maybe we should title this episode. There's a doc for that. So that's the other thing I noticed when BuzzFeed, there's a doc for everything. How did that start?

Allison Krausman:

I wrote a lot of docs. Definitely sometimes got made fun of it for it, but I think they proved their worth over and over again. I, started finding the need to write things down as the source of truth in a shareable artifact. Once I was having the same conversations over and over again. There was this point when another designer and I realized that our onboarding process for product designers wasn't great. It could be better. What information do we need to give to new people coming onto the team? How can we scale that? How do we keep it updated over the course of a few years? This might have been where the whole doc thing started This was probably a shared idea between myself and Lindsay, one of my colleagues. We call them Product Design 101 docs. Referencing like a one on one class, right? Here's the stuff you need to know. These are the basics and we put them in a folder on Google drive and each doc went over a specific topic. So we had a doc for how to use Basecamp. We had a doc for design critiques. And over time, I started to create shareable artifacts that were not just around onboarding. How do we set goals with our direct reports? I wrote a doc to align on how we did that. Timelines for designers, which was secretly not only for designers, because it was applicable to everybody. I wrote docs about how to manage your time because people were coming to me saying do you have any tips on time management? And I, turns out I had a lot of tips on time management. So I wrote a doc. I found it really important for aligning with my design leadership team, the tech leadership team. When you have to write this down you, you gotta decide, hey, do we all agree on this or do we not? And so that's why I did it.

Peter Wang:

Yeah, there's a lot of benefit. That's a great origin story of the doc. There's so many benefits compared to a verbal communication. One, doc scale is a lot better because the team was getting bigger. it clarifies your own point because you have to write things down and say, okay, what

Allison Krausman:

Yes.

Peter Wang:

really mean by X? Three, it's alignment, which is a big deal. And anyone who's been in a big company knows alignment is one of the hardest thing

Allison Krausman:

Yeah.

Peter Wang:

right.

Allison Krausman:

I think one of the most interesting examples I have of this is we had these part of the ladder in the product design discipline at BuzzFeed was about was about transparency and being transparent with your work. And so there's language in the letter that, that basically says for each level, this is how to be transparent. And for folks who had been there for a long time, we understood the culture. We understood that's, that transparency means this, and this. But it wasn't written as explicitly. Over the course of the years, as the team evolved and changed and people left and people joined we found ourselves split where there was a few folks who had been there for a really long time, doing it a certain way, understanding it to mean one thing. And then the new folks doing it a different way and not really understanding it in the same way. People were frustrated that that people weren't doing it in the same way. And we've realized the expectations are not clear. We're pointing to this thing in the ladder saying it says it here, but it's actually not as clear as it could be. So the design leadership team set out on this thing we had been wanting to do for so long, which was to clarify the expectations around what does it mean to be transparent? And so of course that meant we wrote docs and it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. There was a lot of challenge in reaching alignment between just design leadership. It was that moment of we're writing this down. We have to agree on this. And it feels a lot bigger to have to write it down as the rule than just saying it off the cuff. It was actually a wonderful process. Our design leadership team was just, the best. We all came at it from different angles. We ended up coming up with very actionable, practical, clear criteria for what did it mean to be transparent as a product designer? How do we hold people accountable for this? One of the things that made the team so special. And allowed designers to grow in the way they did because transparency meant you were seeing more. You were seeing all the designers work. You were getting a chance to give more feedback. You were getting a chance to get more feedback. It helped us become better designers, not only do better work, but become better designers. It was very important to us. This was a very key part of our roles. Anyone who was a product designer at BuzzFeed, this was a very important part of the job. And that's why we took it so seriously.

Peter Wang:

Some people can say transparency is one way, right? But the truth is. Transparency is two ways. By sharing something, you get the feedback. And if everyone's sharing, that's how we can grow together. And that becomes the multiplier effect.

Allison Krausman:

Something you said on before I want to touch on, you were asking about how people learn how to give good critique. It's not someone necessarily sits down and teaches you. I think a lot of the way people learn is by observing others. A lot of what I learned about giving a critique, I learned by watching my mentors do it. And the more you observe that, the more you internalize that.

Peter Wang:

Yeah, it's true.

Allison Krausman:

I think that's, huge.

Peter Wang:

Yeah, how we speak, how we communicate, how you ask questions, even the tone, little things like that.

Allison Krausman:

Yeah.

Peter Wang:

That's interesting. In 2020, we all went remote. How has that affected observation?

Allison Krausman:

The big thing it did going remote was it took away those spontaneous moments, those moments of walking by someone in the hallway and and then the fact that they see you in the hallway makes them, Just something goes off in their head and they said, Oh, I want to talk to you about this. Or, Oh, can I, do you have a second? Or they walk by your desk cause they're like going to talk to someone else next to you. And then they happen to be there and then Oh can I show you this thing? And so we no longer had that. And that. just meant that managers and leaders and mentors had to get better at knowing when and how to offer help. And people who needed the help needed to build the confidence and get comfortable asking for it. Hey, Do you have some time to pair with me today? Especially for someone who's new to the company or new in their career and is still building their confidence as a designer or as in any discipline, it's hard to ask for help for some people. The other thing is Slack becomes a lot more important because more conversations are happening in Slack. You can't pay attention to everything. It's also wildly distracting In some ways it's good because most of the design feedback, for instance, is actually happening, it's either happening in Crit, on Basecamp, or in Slack, at least at BuzzFeed. And so you actually now might be privy to even more feedback than you were before because the stuff, there's less happening in that one on one pairing session situation, so more of it is probably happening, On the computer and so you actually have access to more of it, but you got to pay attention to it. You got to read it and it takes a lot of brain power to sit and read through someone's feedback. And the other thing is when you're in a synchronous critique situation, we all know how hard it can be to pay attention

Peter Wang:

Yeah.

Allison Krausman:

in, a long meeting or in any meeting really, right? You got Slack, you got other windows, you got your phone, you got your dog have kids and actually literally just listening to the people who are talking is a lot harder than it was when we were all sitting in a conference room, because you can't hide behind your phone in a conference room, you can't hide behind your computer. So I think those are the things that make it, different, that remote world.

Peter Wang:

So the positive side is everything's recorded. It just requires you to take extra effort to read through it, watch the video and so on. And then the negative side are a few. hard to pay attention. I think the raising hand part, how do you know as a manager who needs help and as a new person, how do you develop the confidence to ask for help? I think that piece maybe we can, maybe zoom in there

Allison Krausman:

because I build up the confidence and I know how to do that. But me 13 years ago would not have been that person. There's a lot the manager can do and then there are things that the individual person can do. There's that saying, there's no stupid questions. The people who ask all the questions in their head are the people who are going to get more information because you're never gonna know if you don't ask, right? Even if you feel like you need to give a disclaimer of I know this is a stupid question, but you don't even have to do that. You can just ask the question. You can just say, I have a question. Eventually I would encourage you to drop that because I want you to have the confidence to just ask the question. And not put yourself down because you don't deserve to be put down. But if that makes you feel better, I think it's an okay place to start. It's important to remember that chances are, if you have a question, Someone has either asked it before, or maybe they also have the question. I can't tell you the amount of times I've been in a room and it's very obvious that this question needs to be asked. No one's asking it, so I ask the question. And you can tell everyone thinks thank goodness she asked that question because we all had the same question. It's a muscle that needs to be built. It's a skill that needs to be built, and just practice, right? Start small. If it feels too scary to ask the question in front of everyone. That's okay. Ask it on Slack. Ask it in a one on one later on. But ask it. Eventually figure out a way to work yourself up to asking it in front of everyone so that other people can benefit from the answer to that question.

Peter Wang:

1 thing you said was important. The person who's leading is setting the tone. You and I know all kinds of managers are out there. Every team feels different. How does the manager sets the environment in a way that a new person comes in, feels welcomed, different than what you felt when you first joined BuzzFeed?

Allison Krausman:

It's a great question. As managers, there's a lot we can do. One really easy thing is to get the questions out of them by asking. What questions do you have? Not, do you have any questions? Because that's A the answer to that is a yes or no and it's a lot easier for someone to say no, I don't have any questions than it is if you pose them with an open ended question and you say, what questions do you have? They might even think about a question they didn't even know they had just because you phrased it in that way, where it's like an open space. It's, I want to hear your questions. Another, there's no silly questions, there's no dumb questions. You can literally ask me anything, just repeating these things over and over. Is going to, over time, make someone trust and believe that you actually mean that. Also lead by example. So if you're in a setting whether it's Slack or in some kind of in person meeting ask a question in front of them and show them what it's like to ask a question in a group of people that maybe it's a hard question. I think that just repeating all the things a person starting out would want to hear, right? I'm here to support you. My calendar is open to you. You don't even have to ask me. You can just drop a meeting on my calendar. Or I'm here whenever you need me. Don't don't be afraid to Slack me. You can always Slack me. You're not bothering me. Someone might not act on them right away because they still might not have that confidence, but just hearing them from a manager from a leader is probably going to make them feel a little more comfortable. Another thing I used to do along the lines of approachability was I used to hold open office hours for the design team. I might have just been a senior person on the team, but definitely when I was a manager I would hold open office hours. I would make it convenient for me. I would have 2 slots a week and it was a self service thing. And it was easy for them to sign up. And people used to come to my office hours and it was amazing. So I was getting these touch points with all these designers on the team who I wasn't managing.

Peter Wang:

I'm a huge fan of open office hours. I remember I would do it in Fridays. It's true. It's more about relationships. And relationships takes time and relationship isn't just about the project you're working on, right? That particular thing, but it's more about who are you? What are you about? What do you like? You need both formal sessions to talk about something you're working on, but also very informal sessions. You probably need more informal sessions than formal sessions for a healthy working relationship.

Allison Krausman:

Yeah. I think especially early on, in a relationship, that's learning about the other and connecting on things, even if it's like we both like pizza helps you build trust, helps you build empathy for the other person. It's going to be a lot easier to work through conflict. And chances are if you're working closely with someone, you will end up in some kind of conflict, whether it's big or small.

Peter Wang:

It's inevitable.

Allison Krausman:

It's inevitable. But if you've got that basis of trust and you genuinely understand you know who this person is as a human being. You've got a leg up.

Peter Wang:

Yeah, you remind me of something else. When a new person joined the team, I don't know if you knew this, I would set a one on one with them. It doesn't matter who they are. Anyone, any new person comes in, but instead of setting it right away, if the person joins, I would set up the one on one about four to six weeks in.

Allison Krausman:

Huh.

Peter Wang:

The person start date, because by then, the person has enough context about the team, what this company is about, and so on then the conversation can be different, versus if I start right away, the person is too blank of a slate to have informed conversation.

Allison Krausman:

I love that. I didn't know you did that. And that's awesome that you did that. I love that though, because you're so right. Starting a new job, it's so disorienting. You have no idea what's going on. Everyone's saying these terms, you don't know what they mean. And love that. I think that, that was really smart.

Peter Wang:

I think 1 thing that separates good leaders versus not as good. I would say is that decisions have consequences. A good leader can articulate the consequence for different people. Who's going to be affected? How are they going to be affected? What's a tangible impact for them? What's a emotional impact for them? if they can actually articulate that's really powerful because then you know, you have a lot more confidence that the difficult decision you're making, but you can anticipate and prepare for it.

Allison Krausman:

Yeah.

Peter Wang:

you can only do that once you know the people, what they're like, right?

Allison Krausman:

Yeah. I'm thinking back to the times that you pulled me in to ask for my opinion on something you were working on, and it made me feel very valued and very special. And, It definitely made you feel even more approachable. Because you were genuinely asking me what I thought,

Peter Wang:

Yeah.

Allison Krausman:

open invitation to just speak my mind, and I'm sure you recall, I was like

Peter Wang:

He did.

Allison Krausman:

was very, Yeah. I was very comfortable like just being like totally honest with you. Because you were wanting to be totally honest with me. And it just felt really cool.

Peter Wang:

Yeah, that's transparency. I do want to talk to you about the path to manager.

Allison Krausman:

So we were talking about the cross functional teams and how I found myself really drawn to that leadership role. How do we make this team operate better? How do we make sure our communication is good? That we have good relationships with our stakeholders? That we're working on the right thing? That the leads are working well together? All that stuff became really important to me because I was on a team where we had some challenges and I took the lead to solve those things. Also around that time, I started mentoring other designers. I was able to help other people and that felt really good. And once Cap left and Kelsey took over the team she presented me and the opportunity to take on a hybrid role where I could still be an IC, but manage one designer. And this was like, an easy yes, because it meant that I could just try it out, and if I don't like it, I can undo it. Nobody wants a manager who doesn't want to manage. That is like the worst kind of manager.

Peter Wang:

Yeah.

Allison Krausman:

So I took that opportunity on. Becoming a first time manager is incredibly scary. Very exciting because all of a sudden you have this power, but like I was managing someone who used to be my peer.

Peter Wang:

Yeah.

Allison Krausman:

so you're redefining that whole relationship. It's awkward. It's weird. Kelsey was an amazing manager to me, super supportive and going back to the asking questions thing. I was all day long in her Slack asking her questions. Like how, what should I do? How do I do this? Like, how, help me. She was always there for me. And she was super supportive, and also over time started flipping the question around to me and said what do you think you should do? She wanted my brain to start to go through the motions of, okay, like how what is a good way to solve this? She would never lead me down a bad path, but she wanted me to feel autonomy over my role and to start to practice those critical thinking skills. Eventually I started getting better at it. It's just time in the role. It's getting exposed to all sorts of different kinds of management challenges. There are infinity of them, but if you're managing for you're going to run into them. And then I took on another report. I became a hiring manager for the first time. I went through hiring, which I realized was an entirely different skill. Management was really hard, but really fulfilling. Maybe three years in, I really felt like I hit my stride.

Peter Wang:

How did you know what does that feel like when you know you're hitting the strides? Was

Allison Krausman:

oh, what is it?

Peter Wang:

Did

Allison Krausman:

Yeah, I think it felt easier. I felt like I knew what to say I knew the right thing to say or the helpful thing to say or how to say it early on I was doing a lot more advice giving and like answer giving and a lot less coaching where I'm literally like Not giving the answer. I'm asking questions in order to get the person to the answer

Peter Wang:

Yeah, Yeah,

Allison Krausman:

coaching is really hard and not anyone's like default mode.

Peter Wang:

Right.

Allison Krausman:

When to coach and when to use it. And

Peter Wang:

yeah,

Allison Krausman:

walk them through how you would solve it. And then

Peter Wang:

right.

Allison Krausman:

of 20 minutes, you can just ask a bunch of questions, like literally say nothing of value, except asking questions and they can get to the answer by themselves. And then like that's a beautiful thing and person on the other side of the call feels empowered to move forward with that information or that decision because they came up with it on their own.

Peter Wang:

It's interesting, I feel like when we talk about your career, it's almost like we're slowing down time

Allison Krausman:

Yeah.

Peter Wang:

and I'm zooming in and I'm looking at the shape of it and say, what characteristics in different stages. At first you were gaining the confidence of being a good designer. Then you gain the confidence an agency of being a designer at a bigger place, then you learn a lot of functional skills, like how to write a doc, skill sets necessary to be an effective individual. And then you had to transition to solving not just like design problems, but people problems.

Allison Krausman:

Yeah.

Peter Wang:

And the moment you felt like, okay, I'm actually an effective coach is when you felt like you hit the stride of being a manager. Another common thread is every stage you had someone. The first

Allison Krausman:

yes,

Peter Wang:

director, second stage, CAP, VP of design, third is Kelsey. At every stage, you had someone to look up to, who gave you a good model.

Allison Krausman:

Yeah. And that truthfully, the support. When I think about how I got here, I think about those people. There's one person I would add in that mix. That would be Tom Harmon, who is one of the, an amazing manager who I had. When I think about how I got here, it's those people. And back to the observation thing, right? The way I

Peter Wang:

Yeah.

Allison Krausman:

Tom giving me feedback was influential in how I give designers feedback. He taught me and showed me how it's okay to just Slack someone with some positive feedback. And it's, not just Hey, good job today. It's descriptive. It was, why you did a good job and, what the impact of that was, and you really felt like he was cheering you on. And then he also showed me to give respectful but direct critical feedback.

Peter Wang:

Yeah.

Allison Krausman:

this, wasn't so great, I here's something to think about for next time. And he gave the feedback so that you didn't want to be defensive. You were like, oh, yeah, he's right. That's good feedback. I model things after these amazing people who've supported me. And I'm just like, oh my God, I'm so lucky. We didn't get to the end of the story which was transitioning into full time management. I was in the hybrid role for almost 4 years. I was essentially doing 2 full time jobs. I was a full time. Individual contributor designer. And I was a full time manager managing the careers of three designers. And as a part of being a product design manager at BuzzFeed, you were not only managing designers, you were also helping to run the entire design team with the rest of design leadership, which I absolutely loved. Over the years, my manager and I talked about what's, the end game here? Do I want to be a do I want to be in a purely management role or do I want to stay in this hybrid role? And I kept saying hybrid role Eventually I had pushed so far into both of those worlds that I had hit a point of burnout. I was not only managing three designers, I was mentoring designers who I didn't manage. I was in the weeds and trying to help them. I cared so much about it that it was affecting me. I started getting physical symptoms of stress, like stress headaches. And I was like, I'm not okay. This is no longer sustainable. At the same time, my manager and I were talking about potential promotion paths. I had to pick a path. At that time I was going out on parental leave, I had my second child, and Kelsey said, Here's some resources, go think about this. And the decision seemed so hard I had literally put it off for multiple years. I kept telling Kelsey, it's the hybrid role. I can't do anything else except this role. I also knew she secretly wanted me as a full time manager, but she never pushed me. She was very supportive in me coming to this decision on my own. I went out on leave and I was home with the baby. I knew I had to come back with a decision. I talked to my husband about it and he was of course you want to be a manager. He saw the things that I came to the dinner table about. And then I thought there was no world in which I was going to not be a manager. That was obviously what I should be doing. I think just the impact of being able to, this sounds really corny, but like it actually is what it is. The impact of being able to, the feeling of being able to change somebody's life in a positive way. It sounds corny, but it's like actually what a manager's job is. The feeling of doing that is amazing and. I love shipping design work. I loved working with a team of people to make something together. And I realized upon reflection that was actually the thing I was holding onto. It was that feeling of doing something together with people and toward a common goal and that collaboration. I don't think it was so much the actual work that was drawing me to that IC role. And of course I'm still able to get that as a manager in lots of different ways. I came back from leave and I told Kelsey, I wanna be a director. I don't remember what she said, but she probably was like, Yeah, of course. So last summer I, moved into a purely management role, took on some more direct reports, and I had all this time to do all these things now. I know you're joking, but yes, I did have time to write more docs, and they were great. sure.

Peter Wang:

one, you showed the natural aptitude for helping people, willingness and the ability to do it. You have someone who believe in you, right? Belief is one of the most powerful things that leaders can show someone or some group of people. And three, you had a method so that you can believe in it. The hybrid, which is four long years It sounds like a long time, but maybe it didn't feel that way.

Allison Krausman:

Ha, it was a lot of work It really was, like I was working at a hundred fifty percent. But I loved it I, I felt like being on both sides each side helped the other side, like, by being a manager, I became a better leader, and then by being a better leader, I became a better manager, and it was really cool

Peter Wang:

It's important to go back to the craft. So you don't lose touch with the craft itself. Dipping back your toe into it for a bit and then coming back out, then you become a better, right? You have better perspective, right? I feel like we, we've talked about your entire career every stage of it, and it's been, I think, very inspiring. If you could share some advice for folks who are starting out, what are the best advice? Would you them to accelerate them gaining confidence?

Allison Krausman:

I love that we're going to end on this. Hopefully you'll be in an environment where this statement can be true. When something goes wrong, when you don't do it the way you wanted to or the way someone else wanted to you to do it, and it feels like a failure. I want you to take the word failure out of your head, and I want you to reframe this as there's no failing here. You're learning. All of these moments are learning moments and learning moments are growth moments, and so the more learning moments you have. The more you're growing and they build on each other. I've heard people say I don't want to fail or I don't want to be a failure. And I've literally told people, I, there is no failing here. Like me as a manager. I'm not even thinking about that word. I'm thinking about this as a growth opportunity. It's not just verbiage I'm using. I really mean that if it's something doesn't go the right way. Let's talk about it. What didn't go? I'm gonna give you feedback. I'm gonna say hey, here's what? Here's how to do this better next time. I'm gonna ask you how you feel about it Let's have a conversation about it, and let's look at it as a learning opportunity. On the topic of mentorship, finding a good mentor is so important, really can shape the trajectory of your career. And if you're in a situation where you feel like, you don't have a good mentor, you don't have a good manager. Try to get out of that situation or go get one. Then finally back to questions. Just ask all the questions. All of the questions. And it truly relates to anyone at any stage of their career, right? You can start a new job as a senior person you need to come in and need to be comfortable asking all of the questions. And if you're reframing it, asking the questions as not, I'm ignorant or I'm dumb, you're reframing it as I'm learning.

Peter Wang:

Yeah, that's a good one.

Allison Krausman:

curious,

Peter Wang:

People didn't want the question to define them, to color how people perceive them. That's why they not ask as much.

Allison Krausman:

exactly because it thinks they think it makes them look. Not smart, ignorant, naive, I don't know. But the truth is that the managers typically respect the people who ask the questions actually get more respect. Because it shows me that you want the information, you can be vulnerable and put yourself in that space where you say, Hey, I don't know this, so I'm asking. Actually builds trust. Managers want to know what's on your mind. They want to know what you don't know.

Peter Wang:

Yeah, asking questions is one of the best ways to build trust.

Allison Krausman:

Yes.

Peter Wang:

Well, Alison, what a great finish. Thank you for sharing your story with us.

Allison Krausman:

Thank you so much, Peter. This was so fun. I really

Peter Wang:

It's fun.

Allison Krausman:

you having me.

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