Design leadership insights and coaching by Esko Lehtme

I hated picking berries as a teenager.

The pickle season hides five business mechanisms – retention, content marketing, growth – newspapers used two centuries ago.

Tactical content fades.

A corrupt file, a four-hour rebuild, and the realization that starting over is sometimes the only way to find what actually matters.

Life phases tell you more about your customer than demographics.

Ten years after NNG’s UX certification, I can see it actually gave me a map of my own blind spots – and why structured learning accelerates a design career.

AI will not care about the outcome.

AI tools now produce junior UX designer output from a single prompt.

What blank journal quarters show about growth, leadership, and the stories we are not ready to keep.

Measuring UX maturity once gives you a snapshot.

The most worn button in our elevator is the close door button.

Unclear terminology erodes trust between designers and stakeholders.

I reserve two hours before every development talk.

It’s how you grow.

Why I keep my calendar open to shadows – and what I have learned from hosting and being one.

Edison did not invent the light bulb alone.

What makes a skill fundamental and how to identify yours.

When perfectionism paralyzed my project, I tried proving it would fail.

Measure design impact by mapping experience, business, and technical metrics across customer journeys.

The Leadership Roots exercise from “Care to Dare” helped me see which past influences I was carrying and which ones to keep.

By focusing on three key areas of UX maturity – awareness, processes, and outcome measurement – we created a powerful catalyst for organizational change.

How I used lean process mapping to move a UX team from service provider to strategic partner – eliminating waste and clarifying responsibilities.

Evolve from accessibility to digital inclusivity.

Kolm lihtsat ja mõjusat tehnikat klientide mõistmiseks.

I listed every task my design team handled and evaluated each using VRIO.

Measuring UX work is necessary.

Refresh Conference 2024 talk – how to communicate design’s value, align UX with business metrics, and drive organizational change as a design lead.

What I look for as a design lead reviewing LinkedIn profiles and cover letters – from headlines to experience descriptions that win design roles.

Game theory gave me a structure for organizational politics.

How I connected responsibilities to specific skills, evaluated team capabilities, and used the matrix to guide development plans.

The things we use most get worn first.

McKinsey’s 7-S framework applied to design leadership – hard and soft S’s, spans of control, three-tier authority models, and team identity shifts.

How I used NNG’s UX maturity model to assess our team, align on where we stood, and decide what to prioritize next.

A simple matrix maps your skills to the positions you want.

Kolm lähenemist disainitöö tutvustamiseks TalTechi IT-ametite päeval.

Kuula, jagame Kristina Lilloga Äripäeva Raadios nõuandeid IT- ja disainikarjääri alustamiseks SEBs.

I embrace imperfect action in content creation.

My Refresh Conference 2023 talk – four frameworks I used at SEB to assess UX maturity, identify leadership gaps, and lead with measurable results.

Outdated (2016): Integrate CodeKit 3 with PatternLab 2 to control CSS generation, streamline development, and use CodeKit as a debugger, processor, and server.