Designing Work That Moves You Forward
Align company goals with your personal growth path
When I was a design manager, one of the questions I come back to again and again is: how can designers make their daily work meaningful on multiple levels? Not just delivering for the business, not just ticking off project goals, but actively building a career they’re proud of.
I’ve seen talented designers feel stuck—not because the work wasn’t important, but because they couldn’t see how it connected to what they wanted long-term. I’ve also mentored designers who knew what they cared about, but didn’t know how to align that with what the company needed. That gap—between company direction, project execution, and personal growth—is where so many frustrations and missed opportunities live.
So let’s talk about how to bridge it. Because when your work contributes in all three areas—business, project, and self—it creates momentum that’s not only productive, but fulfilling.
The Three Layers of Meaningful Work
To make your design work more strategic and more satisfying, start by understanding that most of your efforts live on three layers:
Company Direction
The vision, strategy, and business priorities set by leadership. This shapes what gets funded, what gets attention, and how success is measured.Project Execution
The day-to-day design tasks you own: screens, flows, research, iterations. This is what your team sees and what you’re held accountable for.Personal Development
Your evolving skills, career goals, and creative motivation. This is what keeps you learning and makes the work feel like it’s yours.
If these three layers align, things flow. You feel motivated, supported, and useful. But when one layer gets ignored—when a project has no clear business value, or when you’re delivering results that don’t stretch your skills—it can lead to burnout or disconnection.
Understanding the Company Direction
Start with this: what is your company trying to achieve this year? Not just at the feature level, but at the strategic level.
Maybe it’s growing a new market. Improving retention. Entering a new business model. These goals shape how decisions are made across teams—even if no one says it out loud.
As a designer, you don’t need to write strategy decks. But you do need to understand how your project ladders up to these goals. That understanding helps you:
Prioritize your effort
Anticipate feedback from stakeholders
Frame your design decisions with impact in mind
If you’re unsure, ask your product manager or team lead: How does this project connect to the broader company vision? It’s a small question that can unlock a big shift in perspective.
Owning the Project Layer
Designers often operate at the middle layer—delivering product outcomes. This includes:
Aligning with product specs
Conducting user research
Designing and testing flows
Collaborating across functions
This is where your craft shows up. But it’s also where you can start to take more ownership.
For example, instead of just handing off a polished UI, consider:
Framing your design choices with business outcomes in mind
Anticipating edge cases or rollout concerns
Collaborating with ops or data teams to close the feedback loop
This level of ownership turns a task into a contribution. It shows your team you’re not just executing, you’re thinking ahead.
Tapping Into Personal Growth
Then there’s the personal layer—your career, your growth, your identity as a designer.
Ask yourself:
What kind of designer do I want to become?
What skills do I want to develop this year?
What gives me energy, and what drains it?
Now look at your current project. Is there a way to stretch in the direction you care about?
If you want to get better at systems thinking, maybe you can propose refactoring a flow instead of just tweaking the screen. If you want to grow your communication skills, offer to lead a design review or write a rationale doc.
You don’t always get to choose the project. But you often get to shape how you approach it.
Finding the Overlap
The sweet spot is where all three layers overlap:
Your project drives a business goal
It leverages your strengths and grows new ones
You care about what you’re learning
It’s rare to have perfect alignment all the time. But you can design toward it—by being intentional with how you show up in your role.
Here’s a simple way to reflect regularly:
What does the company care about right now?
How does my current project support that?
What am I learning or practicing through this work?
Is there anything I can tweak—approach, scope, visibility—to make it more meaningful to me?
Answering these questions monthly or quarterly can help you steer your own growth within your current job, rather than waiting for the perfect opportunity to appear.
The Role of Managers and Teams
For this alignment to be sustainable, managers need to participate. Great design leaders help their team members:
Connect daily work to company strategy
Identify opportunities to grow inside projects
Normalize open conversations about motivation and direction
Design work is often fast and reactive. Without these conversations, it’s easy for personal growth to get buried under deadlines. But when teams make space for it, both the individual and the product benefit.
Design Is Not Just Execution
Too often, designers are seen as deliverers—not decision-makers. But when you understand how your work connects to the company and your own goals, you start to show up differently. You ask better questions. You make smarter tradeoffs. You advocate with more clarity.
This doesn’t mean overworking or turning every task into a masterpiece. It means working consciously. Seeing every project as part of a larger journey—for the business and for yourself.
Final Reflection
In modern product design, success isn’t just about craft. It’s about alignment—connecting dots between big goals, small tasks, and personal purpose.
So ask yourself:
What are you designing toward, beyond the screen in front of you?
And how might your work change if you treated every project as a chance to grow—not just to deliver?
Because when you align your work with what the company needs and what you want, design becomes more than a job. It becomes a practice that keeps you moving forward—intentionally, skillfully, and with meaning.