Chapter 22 – Be flexible and resourceful

“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
~ Charles Darwin “Success is not about your resources. It’s about how resourceful you are with what you have.”
~ Tony Robbins

You should do everything in your power to avoid uttering “No, I’m a designer…I don’t do that”.

This isn’t to say that you are a mindless yes person who does anyone’s bidding. However, there are incredible benefits to your value in being a flexible and resourceful contributor to your team.

Let’s say the client really needs something that is slightly out of your wheelhouse, perhaps a video animation. You’re not an animator or video editor, thus a natural response may be simply “no”. 

But why not step up and try? Why not stretch yourself to be useful and help the team.

As a designer, think about how some of your main strengths set you up to take on many tasks:

• You are attuned to pleasurable output
• You know when something is well crafted and aesthetically well directed to achieve a goal
• You know how to research, find inspiration, and bring together ideas from many sources
• You are familiar with many visual design tools, and have the “language” to learn new ones
• You are empathetic and can place yourself in the shoes of those consuming the output

Could you not learn a little code to contribute? Could you not learn some video editing? Could you not research physical mediums and how to best apply them? Could you not be the hero and valued team member who put in the work to figure out how to solve the problem?

To consistently narrow your work output is to continually specialize in one area that may not be required.

Learning itself is a skill, and if you allow yourself the flexibility to gain experience outside your own expertise, you’ll find it easier to pick up new skills in future.

Another point for consideration that perhaps hits closer to home. In my working with designers I often hear of their ambition to move up in rank. They want to manage a team, be client facing, or manage a department.

Think how absolutely different management is to designing. How similar is crafting a web page to directing a team of 6? How similar is crafting a style guide to preparing a quarterly statement for upper management? 

Who is better suited to the challenge of these higher roles? The designer who narrowly defined their task list to design only? Or the designer who was willing to expand themselves, face down challenges, grow, and learn new disciplines to help the team.

Be flexible, be resourceful. Stretch yourself, and thereby expand your opportunities.

What I’m not saying:

• Do any task any time for anybody
• You need to learn 50 different skill sets all the time
• Don’t focus on sharpening your design skills

What I am saying:

• Be open to expanding yourself into areas beyond your current focus
• Be willing to learn new things and output to help your team
• Understand that flexibility and resourcefulness are incredible important skills
• Don’t get tunnel vision with UI / UX / Design
• Appreciate how the skills that make you a great designer can be lent to other pursuits