The part nobody teaches designers before they are promoted: how to structure a UX function so it produces good work reliably — design standards, the tool stack, job families and levelling, and how UX actually fits into agile delivery without becoming a ticket queue.
Designers get promoted for craft and then judged on things nobody taught them: headcount cases, levelling, tool budgets, and defending research time to a delivery manager.
I founded a division's first UX group inside an engineering-led company and led it to a division-wide function. This course is that experience, structured — including the parts that went wrong.
What good looks like in your organisation, documented well enough to onboard someone against it.
Job families, levels and reporting lines that fit how your company actually builds product.
A cadence where research happens ahead of delivery instead of alongside it, or not at all.
With a rationale, a migration path and an owner for each part of it.
A standing practice with structure — including teardown analysis of your own live products.
Measures a CFO understands, and a maturity picture you can show progress against.
Every module produces a draft artefact for the participant's own organisation — by the end they have the beginnings of an operating model, not a set of notes.
Leadership cohort — a group of design and product leaders from one organisation, working on the same function together so the output is agreed rather than personal.
Cross-company cohort — leaders from different organisations, which produces sharper comparison and honest benchmarking.
1:1 coaching — for a single leader building or rebuilding a function, run against their real calendar and constraints.
Including governance, contribution and deprecation rules.
Expectations per level, written so HR can hire against them.
Cadence, decision rights and the discovery track.
A baseline of the current function and the two changes with the highest return.