If you're a senior designer, a new manager, or a manager who's struggling, this series of exercises might help. These are not advices. I believe folks have the capability and the right intentions but in the day-to-day, the basics get lost. Consider these exercises as simple reminders.

There are 25 weeks left this year. Here's the first of next twenty-eight exercises you can start immediately to become better.

Make your team's work visible.

If you don’t become the voice of your team’s and your work to your peers, who will? Try doing the following.

Next week onwards, post a summary of your and team’s work for the week in your common slack channel. It could be the design channel, product channel, or similar. Ideally, you could do it on every Friday. Any time on Friday works, whenever you're ready. This simple activity will take about 15-30 minutes.

Make it as easy to consume as possible. Use screenshots, short screen-recordings, videos, etc. to make it easy to consume. Write this summary in prose, not in bullet points. It shouldn't feel like an update. It should read like a personal note — with excitement, some struggle, some passion, some rough-patches, and so on. Make sure you remember calling out team members for good work, effort whenever applicable.

Tip #1: Don't add supporting Figma, document links for each project update unless absolutely necessary. Most folks typically end up giving a thumbs-up to the update and move-on. If your update is good, and there are folks who are curious, they'll reply in the thread asking you share links to know more. You'd want that.

Tip #2: Share a small thing — ideally a short <3 mins video, something you discovered that week and think will be interesting to others as well.

Doing this simple thing will help you write sharp and clearly. Over time, you'll also learn how to change your articulation. If you do this along with a few others, you can all pick a thing or two from each other.

All the best!