Steve ‘Buzz’ Pearce on The Power of Design in Business

Our final guest in our Leadership Series was the legend that is Buzz Pearce, SVP of Design at checkout.com. Buzz has over 20 years of experience in the design industry, leading teams at Skyscanner, Skype, Microsoft, to name a few. We discussed how to communicate the value of design to your leadership team. Also, he explained how to build a safe, company culture to give honest feedback.

Here are some of the best insights from our chat:

FLA: Describe yourself in three words? 

BP: Kind, chilled and disorganised.

FLA: When did you find your passion for creativity which inevitably led you to the field of product design?

BP: I remember this very distinctly. When I was 16, I was lucky enough to have work experience at a small graphic design agency in southeast England. I was struck by the Mac and Quadra equipment – I had never seen these machines before. But they let me play on these and before you know it, I was picking it up quite quickly. I was actually offered a job there but decided to go to university to hone my craft more. 

Then when it came to going to university, the internet had happened. Then one thing led to another and here we are today.

FLA: Wow, we’re not surprised you were offered a job so young. Could you tell us more about your journey from a designer who loves making things, to becoming a designer who loves helping teams succeed?

BP: Well, I can tell you it was a complete rollercoaster! I was a designer in my twenties very much honing my craft and progressing. The biggest change was when I went from being Design Director at Poke Agency to Creative Director at Skype. At Poke, it was a very flat structure – I kept designing as a Design Director and not managing anyone. Skype was my first baptism into the world of competency frameworks and performance reviews. To be honest, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. But luckily, there were a lot of good training courses there to accelerate and teach us those skills.

FLA: What were the skills you developed at Skype that helped you become a better design leader?

BP: There was a lot of trial and error. The first thing I wanted to do was build trust with my team. Creating an environment where designers feel comfortable sharing their opinions and sometimes disagreements, so we can honestly and openly interrogate the problem. I always try to give feedback as compassionately as possible – that’s my modus operandi.

FLA: Going from Skype, then Microsoft to Skyscanner, what leadership skills did you learn at Skyscanner?

BP: Skyscanner was a very different culture. At the time, I was based in the London office as a team of four. Where Edinburgh was ‘the spiritual home’ of Skyscanner if you like. The biggest learning was to collaborate across all the different offices internationally. Not having an ‘us and them’ mentality to communicating and operating. Working in this way was a challenge because there was a lot of groundwork that needed to be made across all teams to see the progress you’re making on a project. 

My good friend, Brian Duff, CEO of Skyscanner at the time had a favourite saying which helped. As a leader, you need to be strategically patient, but tactically impatient, having constant tension between the two. Often, we want to get to where we want to get to much quicker. But you need to bring key stakeholders within the business along with you and calmly reassure them that it’s okay, we’re making progress.

FLA: To add to that point, what key points do you need to share and update business leaders on?

BP: You’re basically reporting back to business leaders the progress you’re making against your objective, your OKRs. To communicate the depth of the work you’re doing, you need to reflect what customers are experiencing with your product. Your design team, which is made up of research, copywriting, product design, service design and strategy. As a design team, a critical part of our design strategy is knowing what your customers need and how your product and service makes them better. Then report those key insights to key stakeholders in the language of business, rather than of design.

FLA: As design leaders, are there any executive decisions that can or need to be made without referring to metrics?

BP: Yes, there was one example at Skyscanner, where we were tasked to re-design the CTA button on the site to be more clickable. This was the chief revenue button for the business, so we did an insane amount of user testing. With so many different iterations of the button. In terms of performance, the difference was almost negligible. So we actually spent more time and money on the testing, than we would have made money back on in a year using the new button.

FLA: What’s the best part of working in Product Design?

BP: It’s the joy of seeing something very intangible in a collective mind becoming tangible. I never lose enthusiasm for that.

If you want to hear more of Buzz discussing his leadership style and journey to a SVP of Design, listen to the full interview on our Creative Capes Podcast

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If you want to learn how to be a great designer leader like Buzz, check out our Executive Programme For Design Leaders, inspired by the amazing Bauhaus. Learn more here.