SimplePractice Career Framework

Product & Design Career Framework for SimplePractice
Strategy & Storytelling

I joined SimplePractice in March of 2023 to lead their Design organization. Part of the early work was getting to know the talent I would lead, then reshaping the team to deliver on our business goals.

With clarity on where we needed to push our fantastic design talent, I partnered with my PM counterparts across our business units to rewrite our division’s playbook for career growth.

The company’s Product & Design Career framework includes a career planning framework, clarifies what it takes to succeed at the next level, correlates the company’s mission and principles to our performance framework, and breaks down the specific responsibilities across our career levels.

In the ancient wisdom of Greek poetry, we find a compelling metaphor for career growth: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” This dichotomy, popularized by Isaiah Berlin, contrasts two distinct approaches to success: the adaptable, versatile fox versus the focused, specialized hedgehog. In the realm of career development, this analogy offers a guiding light.

The fox, with its range, does well when things keep changing and finds its way through complexity fast. The hedgehog goes deep into one domain and masters it.

However, when growing our teams, we value the middle ground: the generalizing specialist. (Hedgefox? Foxhog?) It’s a person who has deep skills in one area but can apply knowledge from other areas of expertise. These thinkers are also often called T-shaped people, reflecting their ability to dive deep into one area (the vertical bar of the T) while covering a broad range of topics at a lower level (the horizontal bar across the top of the letter).

SimplePractice plans careers on the T: deep, specialized skill in one area (the vertical bar) and broader, complementary skills that span disciplines (the horizontal bar). It matters to us for four reasons.

Deep expertise in product and design. The vertical bar is specialized knowledge in the areas our products depend on: UX and UI design, product management, particular technologies. That depth is what lets us build for the demanding needs of the practices we serve.

Cross-functional collaboration. The horizontal bar is a working understanding of the neighboring skills: project management, customer experience, analytics, basic coding. That breadth makes collaboration across departments easier and keeps the end product close to customer needs and business goals.

Agility. A T-shaped person adapts to changes in the market or the technology faster, and sees connections between their specialty and the rest of the business that a pure specialist misses.

Leadership and influence. T-shaped people are well placed to lead, because they know their own domain in detail and can talk with specialists from other areas, which makes for better decisions and better-run projects.

By connecting our org’s career framework to the company’s mission and values, we could set more explicit goals and say plainly which behaviors we expect people to bring as they define a customer challenge and agree on the solution.

With our People & Operations team working on new performance factors, I also led the work to create a translation layer to the three dimensions our Product and Design organization measures across our various levels. These are Solving Customer Challenges, Driving Business Outcomes, and Embodying a Leadership Mindset.

The project also gave PM and Design the same number of levels, so everyone can see their path and knows what it takes to reach the next step. That clarity helps with satisfaction and with keeping people.

Parity in role levels also simplifies the talent management process, including performance evaluations, promotions, and lateral moves within the organization. When the structure is consistent across disciplines, it’s easier for HR and management teams to apply uniform standards and processes, reducing complexity and potential biases.

Equal levels across disciplines also make the organization fairer. They remove the sense that one department gets a better deal than another, and when people see that their discipline does not hold back their progression, they feel more part of the company and more committed to it.

And a uniform structure makes it easier to move between disciplines if someone’s interests change: a designer drawn to product management has a much simpler transition when the levels are equivalent and the expectations at each are written down.

Our career framework must also clarify what it takes to get promoted to the next level. These include (1) a business need and funding for a role, (2) a track record for at least six months showing competencies at that new level, and (3) manager support for promotion (including asking for feedback from teammates the person has worked with). Beyond those foundational items, here’s what else we look for:

Look outside your role. Take on projects beyond your immediate remit, show initiative, and learn how our business works so your goals ladder up to the company’s.

Keep learning. Seek out development, take on hard things, learn from mistakes, and ask for feedback.

Communicate well, written and spoken. Put ideas across clearly, listen, and adjust to the audience in front of you.

Hold a high ethical standard. Be reliable, respect people, keep confidences, and act with honesty and integrity.

Be a teammate. Build good relationships, listen to other perspectives, contribute to the group’s work, and help the people around you succeed.

Finally, we wrote these design-specific expectations for each level to support career growth.