Jan Pautsch
Director Kooku X, the expert search service of Kooku Recruiting Partners.
As a global design headhunter based in Berlin, I offer deep insights into the German and international design markets. In many conversations with industry experts, topics such as the evolution of the role of the product designer, the challenges in design leadership and new working models emerged. In this three-part series, I explore these changes. Welcome to Part 2: Leadership Challenges in Product Design.
From Jan Pautsch, Director Kooku X, theem Expert Search Service from Kooku Recruiting Partners.
As a global design headhunter based in Berlin, I offer deep insights into the German and international design markets. In many discussions with industry experts, topics such as the evolution of the role of the product designer, the challenges of design leadership and new working models came up. In this three-part series, I explore these changes. Welcome to Part 2: Leadership Challenges in Product Design.
Challenges in the management of product design teams
From Vision to Void: Leadership problems in product design
The quality of leadership is crucial to the success of design teams. But what happens when leadership is missing or inadequate? A lack of technical knowledge and a lack of diversity in leadership, especially in terms of gender equality, can have a serious impact on innovation and strategic direction.
How poor leadership inhibits innovation
In an interview with Tjeerd Hoek, an experienced UX design lead and former VP of User Experience, we discussed the biggest challenges in design leadership. His insights, although coming from the US UX industry, are equally relevant for the German market.
Tjeerd points out that many managers lack the necessary expertise, process knowledge or technological skills to lead design teams effectively. This leads to a lack of strategic direction, resulting in teams working without clear direction. Junior designers often do not receive the necessary feedback or mentoring and repeat designs without understanding their purpose. As a result, design teams lose credibility, are reduced to production roles, and innovation is stifled.
“Managers often try to lead designers without having sufficient specialist knowledge, an understanding of current processes or sound technical expertise.” – Tjeerd Hoek
Agile development exacerbates this problem as it often prioritizes short cycles and technology-driven feature development over user needs. Especially in traditional European industries, managers underestimate the complexity of digital transformations due to limited software knowledge.
Gender equality in product, technology and design management
In addition to expertise, gender equality in design leadership plays a key role in innovation. Homogeneous teams tend to reproduce existing power structures, creating blind spots – especially in complex challenges that require diverse perspectives.
An analysis by Sifted shows the inequality: Only one in seven executives in the C-suite of European tech companies is female. In Germany, the German Startup Monitor 2024 confirms similar figures. This inequality reinforces the “leaky talent pipeline” that makes it difficult for women to rise to management positions.
Katja Bauer, Partner at i-potentials, puts it in a nutshell:
“Homogeneous management teams usually reproduce themselves unconsciously.” – Katja Bauer
The consequences of these unbalanced structures are serious: only 13% of Chief Product Officers in German start-ups are women. Such imbalances limit the diversity of perspectives required for modern product development processes and inhibit the ability to innovate.
Strategic recruiting for management positions
To address these challenges, companies need to develop a targeted strategy for design leadership recruiting. Gender-balanced leadership teams cannot be achieved through traditional internal hiring practices.
Sanna Kröger from Mercuri Urval explains:
“One reason for the lack of female talent is that start-ups often only search within their networks or draw on the same pools of university graduates.”
Recruiting design and product executives requires specialized expertise, broad networks and targeted approaches. By working with specialized headhunters for product design roles, companies can find top design talent and strategically diversify their teams.
Future-proof design team: Let’s talk
In the third part of this series, I will examine how flexible management models are changing the design industry and what opportunities they offer.
As a design headhunter and specialist in product design recruiting, I support companies in finding product design specialists and developing sustainable team structures.
Are you looking for design talent or do you want to diversify your management teams? Visit our website:
KookuX – your headhunter for designers and product design recruiting.
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