Mark, thanx.

I think if you are seeing DesOps as only about Design Systems you are missing a good chunk of what Design Operations is all about. I hope you’re coming to the Design Ops Summit to learn about this large new arena for improving design outcomes and amplifying design value.

Regarding the role of Design Coach. To be honest, I don’t see it as an internal role per se, though it can be incorporated into other roles. E.g. at Capital One they have roles around “Design Management” practice area. In other organizations they have a Studio or Practice manager role. I.e. I was the Head of Interaction Design while at Rackspace.

However, most organizations have set up leadership and management to include the coaching elements but they never get enough attention given what all levels of leadership and management are already dealing with. Bringing in someone from the outside who is outside the orgs OKRs/Goals and not hamstrung by that perspective can really help an organization from this outside perspective greatly.

This being said, I’m excited in my new organization that we have leadership coaching as an internal role. So maybe as we scale we can scale design coaching as an internal role as well. But it feels like we’ll need 1000’s of people (exponential scale from where we are now) in order to get to that space, again, like Capital One.