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A View on Teaming
By Tim Hale, Senior Vice President, Design, Fossil
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| Tim Hale |
For 18 years, the core philosophy of Fossil Design Studio has been
to focus on teaming and collaboration, and this has created a successful
arrangement in which design and business have coexisted with noted
results. During this time it has been my privilege to manage the
Studio. Recently, Earl Powell, President of DMI, posed this question
to me: “Where does this focus on collaboration and teamwork
come from? Is it intuitive or was it a learned management practice?”
(For what it is worth, this ‘mystique’ about the Fossil
Design Studio seems to have garnered as much interest as the body
of work that has collectively built up over so many years.)
My response was twofold. First, it came from the way that I intuitively
value people; and second, it was learned from the dynamic of being
a design manager in a trade where management of the creative process
has only recently begun to be talked about in a wider, more vocal
circle of influence. What has worked about the design group at Fossil
is partly a direct result of the understanding and commitment from
founding management that design would, and could, make a significant
difference in the life of the business model from the very beginning.
And as a result of that, the design groups as a whole and on an
individual level have a sense of value. Value begets ownership,
ownership begets accountability, and accountability begets a passion
to produce the best work that creates results for the company. Add
to that a recognized progression of the benchmark of what is defined
as excellence, and in a nutshell therein lies what has propelled
Fossil creatively since it was founded. In an environment where
design is valued, there comes a choice: respond with diligent accountability
to produce results, or rest on your laurels. The latter obviously
has disastrous results.
How did a young designer (myself) with a brief career and relatively
no management experience tackle the challenge of developing a recognized,
prolific, progressive in-house design environment with relatively
few models to mirror and little documentation on the subject? Early
on, it intuitively occurred to me that creating a successful design
group is not unlike any other design problem. There are lots of
pieces that must function to become a whole solution to a given,
stated objective or goal (albeit, in Fossil’s case, this has
been an ever-changing target). Further, I held and still hold to
a biblical teaching that, on a purely human level, in the way that
we are made, every person is of equal value and is valued highly.
Each of us has gifts and abilities that vary, but are nonetheless
important. As if we all are members or pieces of one body, not all
of us are hands or legs, etc., but each still plays an equally vital
role to the overall functionality of the whole. Over the years I
found that as this was reinforced in practice, there came a powerful
sense of trust, collaboration, and respect among the designers working
together. We became a group that liked and supported one another,
and on the whole consistently supported and bolstered one another
to achieve an ever-ascending benchmark of excellence. Now you’re
probably thinking that this is impossible, this is some sort of
designer utopia. No, it is not utopia, but it is working and it
is successful.
I came to the realization that as a design manager I am accountable
in two ways. First, to make the design group a profitable, revenue-driving,
respected asset of the corporation; and second, to properly steward
and direct the talents of the designers I have hired. In my mind,
many art directors and design managers get the equation backwards.
They hire designers with the attitude that they are hired to serve
their directives for their or the company’s purposes. And
while you can make that argument when deciding to hire them, there
is the more important and often-overlooked responsibility on the
part of the manager to be accountable to that hire for their development.
I see providing continuing education to my studio staff as one
of my indirect responsibilities to the design trade, because I know
that in all likelihood they will not be with me forever. More than
anything else, I not only want them to be successful on this job,
but every job after that. What is the net effect of this mindset?
When people sense that you truly value them and want them to succeed,
they tend to stick around longer and do better work—they are
willing to let you lead. Moreover, when they leave, the company
and the individual have both benefited from the experience. Not
only do they feel more prepared to move on, but they will speak
well of the experience, which in my way of thinking becomes a valued,
indirect recruiting mechanism; call it good PR.
I suppose that the intrigue in this is a result of the approach
being somewhat tangent to the norm (or at least from my exposure
to the industry). Typically, within many a design studio environment
there arises a corrosive culture of self-gratification and posturing
that erodes creativity and undermines any opportunity for collaboration.
The approach at Fossil has always been to value the spirit of collaboration
as a means to reach the greatest result. Leadership within this
environment is earned based on the recognized ability to consistently
contribute to those ends, and in doing so, garner the consensus
respect of peers. In this manner, we at Fossil continue to re-pollinate
the internal design culture with this notion. As a result, there
tends to be a self-determined willingness among designers to find
ways to do better work, raise the bar of creativity, and become
more pure and proficient in developing a repetitive design process
that delivers strong, fresh, design solutions.
In essence, what I would call a “value management ethos”
has been fostered at Fossil. This has resulted in a somewhat self-perpetuating
design culture that continues to feed on the influx of new talent
and ideas that keep creativity relevant and fresh, while still remaining
grounded in core brand values and never discounting the value that
uniquely talented individuals bring to the dynamic of the process.
For me, as a designer first and a design manager second, fulfillment
has initially come from the ability of the studio to consistently
do good work, but more than that, from seeing young designers become
mature designers and allowed to be somewhat unfettered in that pursuit.
Secondarily, as a “Design Manager”, there is fulfillment
in establishing the culture of the studio based on a philosophy
that came from a very personal place for me, and to see it thrive.
Growing up, my father was a bit of a Texas rancher-philosopher.
He always told me “you can attract more flies with honey than
vinegar.” In the application of this simple truth it was never
hard for me to understand that an open, collaborative environment
is much more attractive to talented people than the opposite. I
believe that the results speak for themselves.
This article appeared in the August
2004 eBulletin.
Feedback on DMI Viewpoints and article proposals
are always welcome! Please email jtobin@dmi.org.
All articles reflect the opinion of the author and not the Design
Management Institute.
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