One of the quiet failures in design leadership is pretending that “a designer is a designer” — like we can swap people around the board without thinking about who they are, how they work, or who they work best with.

It’s a bit like chess: every piece is important, but they don’t all move the same way. Treat them like they do, and you’ll spend most of the game reacting to problems instead of shaping the win.

That’s how you end up with brilliant people burning out, projects limping to the finish line, and design orgs wondering why the quality bar never quite gets met.

It’s not about talent. You can fill a room with world-class designers and still get mediocre outcomes if you place them poorly. The fix isn’t complicated: put designers in the right seats, and pair them with people who make them better.

See them clearly before you place them

The first step is knowing what you actually have. Not their title. Not what they were hired for on paper. What they’re good at now.

Look at two things:

• What they can do – The tangible skills. Visual craft, prototyping, storytelling, systems thinking, facilitation.

• Where they work best – The “altitude” they operate at:

  • Strategic – Mapping the big picture, defining product vision, connecting teams.

  • Applied – Translating strategy into flows, prototypes, usable UI.

  • Support – Strengthening the whole org with documentation, tooling, production polish.

A senior designer who thrives on vision work will wither if you bury them in production tickets. A junior who loves execution will drown if you drop them in the deep end of ambiguous strategy. See them for who they are and place accordingly.

Match the seat to the person, not the vacancy

Too often, we fill the seat that’s empty instead of the seat that fits. That’s backwards.

If the work is strategy-heavy, give it to someone who can untangle complexity and influence direction. If it’s execution-heavy, hand it to someone who’s happiest pushing pixels until they’re perfect. If it’s systems work, give it to the person who lights up making processes better.

Start with where they’ll succeed, then give them room to stretch. That’s how people grow without breaking.

Pair them like you mean it

Placement is only half the job. Pairing is the multiplier.

Some of the most effective duos I’ve seen looked like this:

• Visionary + Executor – One shapes the future, the other makes sure it actually ships.

• Big Picture + Pixel Perfect – One keeps the concept intact, the other keeps the details clean.

• Veteran + Newcomer – One brings experience, the other brings fresh eyes.

Pairing isn’t just about mentorship. It’s about balance. One person’s strength catches the other’s weakness. The work gets sharper because neither is trying to be everything.

Building a team around deficiencies

When I led design at Adobe, I helped to build the team this way—deliberately filling gaps instead of doubling down on what we already had. Every resume crossed my desk before it went anywhere. I wasn’t just screening for “qualified,” I was scanning for complementary. If the team was already heavy on visual craft, I looked for someone with strong prototyping skills or deep systems experience.

Once they were on the team, I recommended pairings so their strengths and weaknesses balanced out. If one designer had impeccable visual polish but slower prototyping chops, I’d match them with someone who could rapidly test and iterate but needed more exposure to visual refinement.

Over time, these pairings didn’t just deliver better work—they helped designers grow in the areas they were weakest. The team’s collective skill set leveled up, and no single person had to carry the full weight of every discipline. The goal wasn’t just to ship better designs—it was to make sure every designer walked away stronger than they came in.

Keep moving the pieces

Strengths change. Roles shift. Products evolve.

Placement and pairing aren’t one-time events — they’re ongoing maintenance. Revisit every few months. Ask: Are they still in the right seat? Does the pairing still click? Is there a gap forming we didn’t see before?

Small adjustments now prevent big messes later.

The takeaway

The brilliance of a design org isn’t about collecting the best individual players. It’s about knowing where to put them and who to put them with.

Think of it like chess—you don’t win by pretending every piece moves the same way. You win by knowing each piece’s unique strengths, placing them where they have the most influence, and pairing their abilities so one covers what another can’t. The queen’s range means nothing without pawns protecting her path; a rook’s strength is wasted if it’s trapped behind a wall of its own pieces.

Design teams work the same way. Misplaced talent gets stuck. Well-placed talent moves with purpose, clears the path for others, and builds toward something bigger than any single move.

Get that right, and the work starts to take care of itself.