In April, I joined Webflow as Director of Product Design overseeing Webflow’s core product and CMS, along with some upcoming product areas that we're truly excited about.

Overall first impressions

The Product Design team was quite intimidating at first—my direct reports are completely made up of Senior, Staff, and Senior Staff Designers with impressive resumes and even more impressive skills. But I found kindness and curiosity amongst people who are truly passionate about their work, motivated by solving interesting, complex challenges.

The Webflow Product org is a user-centered, data informed culture, driven by PMs that are highly collaborative with designers and researchers early in the project discovery process. Product, Design, and UXR advocate passionately for ideal user experiences, while taking technical constraints and timelines into account. This may seem like an obvious description of most orgs, but it was actually a big positive change for me—the engineering-led culture of some of my previous orgs often resulted in product visions heavily weighted down by technical constrains that impacted the user experience. I love how Product Design has the agency to propel our mission here at Webflow.

The Webflow leadership team has been in the process of major transitions during my first 90 days and the 6 months prior (new CEO, new CFO, new CPO, etc.). Throughout the process, I felt they were as transparent and communicative as possible about Webflow’s transformation through these growing pains. I am personally pleased with internal changes to our processes that will unlock quicker and more streamlined decision making.

Webflow also feels like an environment where teams have a roadmap held accountable by genuinely useful OKRs that will bring us further toward our long-term strategic vision as a company.

All of this to say, I’m even more excited now than I was on Day 1. And perhaps a little less terrified.

What did I accomplish in my first 90 days?

Hiring was already underway for my team when I arrived. In the first 3 months on the job, my team literally doubled, from 4 to 8 people (and growing). Not only did we hire and onboard 2 awesome new Product Designers to the team for our AI and Analytics product areas, but Webflow also acquired a company, Intellimize, and brought a fantastic Product Designer with them. The last addition to my team came from a Product Designer who transferred from another organizational pillar onto my team to not only fill a gap, but to also give a long-tenured team member a fresh opportunity in a new space.

Beyond my own reports, I also used my first few months here to influence the design org evolution more broadly, requesting additional management support to better enable us to scale up, and getting alignment that a few of our design team members should take on roles of larger scope better aligned with their levels and career goals.

I used my “newbie” card to advocate for a few cross-functional cultural changes, including that we must have design staffing in place before committing to projects, requesting more UXR presence in our public events, asking for more accountability on risky projects, and suggesting an internal think-tank craft some AI Principles and Guidelines that could drive AI-related strategy across our products more broadly.

Finally, I also attended two in-person events (we're a remote company): an offsite in San Francisco at Webflow HQ with the Intellimize acquisition team to kickoff our integration plans, and our annual company retreat in Quebec City, Canada. Both were so energizing—I feel lucky to have been able to attend two in-person events in my first 90 days.

Lessons and Regrets

I wish I had used the newbie card even more often and earlier. My imposter syndrome was paralyzing at times—I felt (and still feel) at any moment someone would discover that I’m not supposed to be here. Ultimately, everyone was more than welcoming of my observations and questions, thanking me for bringing up topics they agreed needed change. It's clearer now to me that most folks actually want more change, and the “newbie” card is truly an underutilized super power.

I wish I had dove in to understand our data science team better. This isn’t something I had in my previous org, so I need to learn more about how they work, and how I should be collaborating with them. On my to-do list!

This was my first experience incorporating an acquired company into a bigger one. We’re still in the middle of this hairy process, but I’ve learned a lot along the way so far regarding just how  complex it can be to integrate a product, the people, and processes. That’s a whole other blog post!

Finally, this was my first time onboarding to a new company in the Director role. Wow, it’s wildly different than onboarding to a company as an individual contributor (IC) or even a first-line manager. As an IC, I might have only needed to learn a single product area, and usually had an assigned project or two with relatively clear deadlines and deliverables. Onboarding as a Director requires a rapid understanding of tens of different projects in flight, with interoperability complexity and exponential cross-functional partners for each.

I have a newfound respect for people in leadership who can join a new space, quickly find their footing, and make meaningful impact in their first few weeks. I think this largely requires skills in: quickly discerning the minimum level of information needed to make good decisions, making astute observations (”vibe check”) and knowing where to direct them, and building trust with peers.

What a fun ride so far, and it’s only just begun!

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