Career Clarity

A team needed clarity. An org needed a system.

When designers don’t understand how to grow, they don’t just become anxious — they leave. At Macy’s Digital Experience, a confluence of signals made it clear that the team lacked a shared language for career progression. 1:1 conversations kept circling back to the same question: “What do I need to do to get to the next level?” During performance review cycles, managers and designers weren’t working from the same rubric. And the Lead Designer role, in particular, was a black box — no one could clearly articulate what it meant to be a Lead versus a Senior, or how to know when you were ready to step into people management.

Rather than waiting for an HR-led initiative, I took ownership of the problem. I defined, designed, and delivered a career growth framework from scratch — earning VP-level buy-in without a committee or top-down mandate. What started as a team resource became a company-wide standard.

The problem

Three signals, one structural gap

Career conversations at Macy’s Digital Experience were happening in a vacuum. There was no shared artifact — no map, no rubric, no language — that designers and managers could point to together. Three overlapping signals confirmed this wasn’t an individual problem; it was a systemic one.

1. Pulse Survey & Feedback DataTeam feedback consistently surfaced confusion around growth expectations. Designers couldn’t connect their day-to-day work to a progression story.
2. 1:1 Anxiety Around the Lead RoleThe Lead Designer title was the most ambiguous level. Designers didn’t understand if it was a stepping stone to management or a distinct IC track — and managers couldn’t answer that clearly either.
3. Performance Review GapsReview cycles exposed misaligned expectations. Without a rubric, conversations became subjective — and high performers were the most frustrated.

Sole author. VP sponsor. No committee.

This was not an HR-assigned project. I identified the need, proposed the solution, and built it entirely on my own — then brought it to leadership for buy-in rather than permission. I secured VP-level sponsorship and support without a steering committee, which accelerated both the quality of the output and the speed of adoption.

That independence was intentional. Career frameworks built by committee tend to get watered down or stalled. By owning the definition work myself — and grounding it in real team signals — I was able to ship something opinionated and actionable rather than safe and vague.

Approach

From ambiguity to a navigable system

The design challenge wasn’t just documentation — it was communication architecture. The framework needed to be something people would actually use and remember, not a PDF that lived in a shared drive. I approached it in three phases.

Phase 1: Research and pattern recognition

I audited how career growth was being discussed elsewhere — at peer companies, in the broader design industry, and inside Macy’s own HR infrastructure. I also synthesized patterns from 1:1 conversations, performance reviews, and team feedback to build a picture of where the real confusion lived. The Lead Designer role emerged immediately as the critical inflection point: designers didn’t understand whether Lead was the last stop before management, or a legitimate long-term IC path.

Phase 2: Framework definition

I defined two parallel growth tracks — the IC path and the People Leader path — with explicit role expectations at every level. For each role, I mapped four dimensions that scaled in complexity as seniority increased:

• EmpathyHuman-centered understanding paired with industry knowledge
• CraftDesign execution quality and cross-discipline knowledge
• ImpactMeasurable outcomes that support business strategy
• AutonomyCommunication, influence, accountability, and leadership

I also wrote “How do I know I’m ready to move up?” prompts for every level — specific, behavioral questions that a designer could honestly self-assess against. This turned the framework from a description into a mirror.

Phase 3: The subway map

The most important design decision wasn’t content — it was form. I was leading an NYC-based team, and I knew a traditional ladder diagram or spreadsheet would be ignored. Instead, I visualized the career framework as a subway map, with the IC path as the Red Line and the People Leader path as the Black Line.

Landmark labels — “City of Hard Skills,” “Bridge of Trust,” “Steep Hill of Development” — gave designers a shared vocabulary for the transitions between levels. The map became a reference point that teams could point at in a meeting, not just a doc to read once.

The framework

Two tracks. Eight levels. One shared language.

🔴 The Red line: IC Track

• Advisor
• Senior
• Lead
• Principal
• Sr. Principal

⚫ The Black line: Manager Track

• Sr. Manager
• Director
• Sr. Director
• VP

The IC track was anchored on craft excellence, domain depth, and cross-functional influence without requiring direct reports. The People Leader track required a fundamental shift in energy source: from “I am a maker” to “I empower people.” Making that distinction explicit — rather than treating management as a default promotion — was one of the most important moves in the framework.

Each level included: a primary activity statement, a scope definition, detailed behavioral expectations across all four dimensions, and the self-assessment prompts. This meant the framework could support a promotion conversation, a quarterly 1:1, a new hire onboarding, and a skip-level calibration — all from the same artifact.

What clarity actually produces

The framework was adopted widely and quickly — not because it was mandated, but because it answered real questions. Impact materialized across four distinct areas.

Clearer Performance Conversations

Review cycles shifted from subjective to criteria-driven. Managers had a shared rubric; designers knew what was being measured. The ambiguity that previously fueled anxiety became a tractable conversation.

Promotion Clarity That Drove Movement

The framework led to clearer, more defensible promotion criteria — which in turn led to actual promotions. Designers who had been waiting for undefined “readiness” signals finally had a map to work from.

A Living 1:1 Tool

Designers began referencing the framework in growth conversations proactively. It gave them agency: instead of asking “Am I doing well?” they could ask “Here’s where I’m strong, here’s the gap I’m targeting.”

Company-Wide Adoption

What began as a resource for one team was adopted across the organization. Other teams adapted the structure and visual language, and the framework became a company standard — validation that the definition work was solving a systemic problem, not just a local one.

Reflections

What this work taught me about leading through definition

The most impactful design work I’ve done as a manager isn’t always visible in the product. Sometimes it’s the systems work that enables the product team to function better — the kind of work that removes friction, builds trust, and creates the conditions for people to do their best.

Three things stand out in retrospect:

1. Form shapes behavior. The subway map format wasn’t aesthetics — it changed how people engaged with the content. A visual that resonated with the team’s identity made the framework feel like theirs, not HR’s.
2. Ownership accelerates adoption. Building this solo and then seeking sponsorship — rather than building by committee — produced a more coherent artifact and got it into people’s hands faster. Inclusive process is important, but so is knowing when to ship a strong point of view.
3. Naming the unlabeled is a leadership act. Giving the Lead Designer role explicit definition, and articulating the fork between IC and management as a choice rather than a hierarchy, changed how designers thought about their own careers. That’s the kind of clarity that compounds over time.