The Road to Senior: Ownership
Practical tips to accelerate your career growth as a product designer
👋 Hi there. I’m Filippos, a London-based product design leader. I share practical advice and tips on getting started in product design. If you enjoy this post, subscribe to get all the updates.
This post is part of a series of posts around transitioning from junior/mid-level to senior in product design.
At the beginning of my design career, one thing I quickly realized is that what separates most senior from junior designers isn’t strictly technical skill but rather a trait that normally comes with years of experience: ownership.
Here is the tricky part: Ownership is really hard to train.
Unlike technical capability, which is quite trivial to train or mentor someone in, ownership is a completely self-motivated trait and requires a healthy, safe environment for you to speak up, experiment, succeed, and fail.
What is ownership
An owner is the one moving the rest of the team, a person who doesn’t need too much hand-holding or management, and the one driving initiatives forward even with little to no instruction.
Ownership comes down to three things:
Initiative
Autonomy
Accountability
Let’s break it down:
Initiative, which is the hardest to build, is the ability to come up with ideas independently without needing someone else to manage input and triggers. “If I don’t give you a defined roadmap or priority list, will you start working on something?”
Autonomy means you can execute on such initiatives on your own, without the need for someone to micromanage or chase you. A better way to think about autonomy is, “If I don’t speak to you for a week, will the initiative progress?”.
Accountability is openly taking responsibility for your actions and initiatives, whether successful or not. Or, simply put, “If things don’t go well, will you own to it and suggest next steps?”
1. Taking initiative
Taking initiative is one of the most powerful ways to stand out and provide value to your team and organization.
However, it’s one of the most difficult traits to build due to a few reasons:
At the early stages of your career, you may have not yet built the confidence to suggest new ideas.
You may not belong in an environment that fosters initiative: Many teams and organizations, especially on the enterprise scale, don’t advocate taking initiative as it comes with some risk they may be averse to.
You may lack the motivation to take initiative because there isn’t enough skin in the game for you, or you aren’t passionate enough about what you are working on.
Confidence will come gradually as you start taking initiative.
Environment and motivation are harder to crack as they are also dependent on external factors.
But the key takeaway here is that — when possible — you should choose an environment and team that a) you are passionate about and b) that allows you to build an owner mindset.
The practical bit ✨
Let’s look at some practical ways you can build initiative:
Start the conversation: Instead of waiting for a manager to give you work to do, start these conversations yourself.
💬 “This seems like a big problem, I’ll do some exploration and research on my own so that we can uncover key opportunity areas.”
Ideate continuously: Instead of waiting for others to come up with ideas on given problems, build a habit of ideating even outside of defined initiatives. Familiarize yourself with key business and customer challenges, and continuously bring your ideas to the table.
💬 “I took a look at our customer feedback summary from last week. Have we ever thought of doing [idea]?”
Embrace the mundane: Design debt and other mundane tasks are rarely things to be passionate about. But if they provide benefit for your team (speed/efficiency/other), aim to tackle them when you have a bit of downtime, even if no one asks you to.
💬 “Hey team, we wanted to make this update to our design system libraries for a while so I went ahead and did it.”
Build process: There is a misconception that the job of defining and building processes falls strictly on the shoulders of senior managers. Yet the truth is that processes are built collectively, and the best processes are usually formed as a result of many individuals taking initiative and putting forward ideas and suggestions that aren’t part of their BAU.
💬 “We need a better process for recruiting participants for research. I have put some thoughts together in this document and set up a call in your calendars to discuss.”
2. Building autonomy
I’d simply describe autonomy as the ability to keep moving forward without external forces.
In a nutshell, being autonomous means that:
You are able to manage your own priorities.
When your manager — or client — is idle, you keep things moving in the background.
Even with limited guidance, you know how to get the input you need to move forward.
The practical bit ✨
Fill in the gaps: When you have limited knowledge/definition, be a facilitator for getting clarity around a given problem. Speak to the relevant teams, conduct your own research, and help your fellow team members come up with a full definition of a given problem.
💬 “I have spoken to our customer success team and highlighted some common issues around reporting for us to look at and solve.”
Be the driving force: If people or processes are blocking you, be the one moving others instead of staying idle.
💬 “We need to decide how to approach this solution from a technical perspective. I have put in a call for all of us later today to discuss.”
Ask for feedback, not permission: Avoid asking for permission from managers on everything you are working on unless you have agreed on a formal approval process. Most managers will appreciate autonomy as long as they have visibility on work being done. Seek feedback, not permission.
💬 “Hey [manager], we have come up with a better way for users to navigate our reporting tools. More information on the problem here [link]. I’d appreciate some feedback on the new navigation pattern by tomorrow as we are looking at launching a test in the following weeks.
3. Developing accountability
Part of ownership is being accountable for your ideas, actions, and their respective impact. An owner speaks up even in situations that aren’t strictly positive and avoids blaming others or deferring responsibilities.
When a product initiative is delayed, doesn’t work out the way we expect it to, or when negative feedback is given around an idea or solution, as product designers, we sometimes try to remove ourselves from the conversation and defer to others:
“That’s the direction I was given.”
“That’s what the product manager/stakeholder said we should do.”
“I’m not sure about this, maybe you should speak to X.”
Switching to an owner mindset means that:
You take responsibility and speak up for your ideas and actions.
You are able to provide arguments on why you made a decision.
You stay focused on the next best action.
The practical bit
Speak up: Avoid deferring to others in high-pressure situations. Speak up when it comes to your team’s initiatives and ideas, whether they are successful or not.
💬 “I can share a bit more detail on our approach and strategy here…”
Learn to answer the hard questions: When questioned by others, provide people with the arguments of why you chose to do something.
💬 “This was our original hypothesis. We decided on this based on [data, evidence]. Unfortunately, the test was unsuccessful, but we think it might be because of…”
Focus on the learning, not the failure: Even when something isn’t successful — which will happen a lot! — try to focus on the learning and next action.
💬 “Even though the initiative failed, we have documented our learnings and we know how to move forward.”
Wrapping up
Building ownership won’t happen overnight.
However, it can be a conscious and focused effort that you should incorporate early in your career to accelerate your growth.
Lastly, let me close this by saying that ownership doesn’t mean working overtime or glorifying pressure. Being an owner is a mindset shift, not a change in how much you work.
In summary
Start the conversation
Embrace the mundane
Build process
Fill in the gaps yourself
Be the driving force
Ask for feedback, not permission
Speak up
Learn to answer the hard questions
Focus on the learning, not the failure
Did you find this post useful? Let me know in the comments 👇
Gold!