Behind the Teams

Who is truly responsible for your career growth?

On this episode of Behind the Teams, host Nicole How sits down with Simone Attanasio, Head of Design, User Voice at Canva and founder of Therapy for Designers.

Simone breaks down why creatives must look beyond craft to take radical ownership of their development, how to lead people who do not mirror your personality and why approaching AI as a playground beats productivity anxiety every time. We also explore regional design cultures, what it takes to protect team unity and why modern design leaders need to get their hands dirty in the tools again.

Key takeaways:

• Owning Your Growth: Why leaders are guides, but personal progression is entirely your responsibility.
• AI as a Playground: Replacing fear with playful exploration to understand technical constraints and LLM behaviour.
• Leading Different Minds: Adapting your communication style to manage and collaborate with people unlike yourself.
• Back to the Tools: Why design leaders must return to hands-on UX workflows in the age of AI.

On this episode of Behind the Teams, I sit down with Storm Jarvie, who has spent 18 years at the intersection of product, data, and experimentation, building and leading teams inside complex organisations before recently stepping out to work independently.

We covered:

• What she's had to unlearn about leadership — the assumption that people decide logically, when most decisions are actually driven by emotion or politics
• How to scale an experimentation culture inside large, siloed, and regulated organisations — and where the resistance really comes from
• The hiring signals that separate people who thrive in experimentation from those who just interview well
• Why she believes any org serious about experimentation should build the capability in-house, and what led her to go independent

Connect with Storm: stormjarvie.com.au

James Comer (Global Head of Strategic Workforce Management, ResMed) breaks down what strategic workforce planning actually looks like when 39% of the workforce needs new skills by 2030.

We get into:

• Scenario-based planning vs. headcount planning
• Why vulnerability-based trust separates the best teams
• Why "feedback" might be the wrong word entirely
• And what it looks like to plan your own succession plan.

If you're building, leading or planning for a team right now this one is a must listen!

Jim Nelson has spent decades leading digital teams from scaling startups through a pandemic to selling luxury brands online but nothing quite prepared him for leading at Beyond Blue.

In this episode:

• Jim unpacks the mindset shift from commercial conversion metrics to upstream care,
• The ethics of not collecting user data in a mental health context
• Why he's rethinking "hire for skill" in favour of "hire for cause alignment
• And what it's really like feeling like a commercial outsider inside a not-for-profit.

A candid conversation on leadership and purpose.

Simon Lester, Head of Product Design at Nuix, has spent his career proving that great teams don't need scale — they need proximity, trust and honesty. In this episode, Simon takes us back to the bosses who shaped him early on (the good and the genuinely bad), and unpacks what he's built since: small, high-functioning teams where mistakes are safe to make, feedback happens daily rather than in a monthly review, and nobody gets to hide behind the numbers.

We discussed:

• What psychological safety actually looks like day to day
• Why empathy is non-negotiable when hiring
• How his own experience with workplace bullying shaped the way he leads now.

If you've ever wondered whether bigger really is better when it comes to teams, this one might change your mind.

What does it actually take to build a high performing digital team?

Candice Pendergast, Head of Digital at Future Group breaks down why behaviour is the leading indicator of high performance, while results are the lag indicator.

She shares:

• How she leads a remote-first team across five superannuation brands,
• Why wellbeing and performance aren't in conflict
• What leaders get dangerously wrong when they introduce AI as a cost lever rather than a growth lever.
• She also makes the case that when performance drops, the first place to look isn't your team

If you lead a product, design or digital team and you've ever focused on hitting the number without asking how you got there, this one's for you.

In this episode, I sit down with Darren Smith, Senior Director of Product Design at Multiplier for an honest and wide-ranging conversation about the state of design leadership. 

We cover:

• Why design leadership isn't broken but is often set up to fail, and the formula for getting it right
• The difference between "big D" and "little D" design, and why AI is coming for one of them
• How blurring boundaries between design, product and engineering are reshaping the role
• The resilience it takes to lead design in organisations that don't fully value it and how to move upstream anyway

If you're in a design leadership role or thinking about stepping into one  this conversation will resonate.

What does it really take to turn the leaf and transform an in-house creative team from an execution studio into a true strategic partner? 

In this episode, I sit down with Gemma Poesaste to unpack the journey of building Roam, Telstra's internal creative agency. From growing the team from 12 to 30, to navigating the very human side of change, we covered:

- Why quick wins matter more than people think

- The two-speed model of transformation

- How to build psychological safety for creatives in a corporate world

- Why getting creatives in the room early leads to better outcomes

- Tje biggest misconception non-creatives have about leading creative people.

If you lead, manage, or work alongside in-house creative teams, this one will resonate.

In this episode of Behind the Teams, host Nicole How sits down with Matthias Schreck, Head of Design at WiseTech Global. With a career spanning nearly two decades, including nine formative years at Atlassian, Matty shares his philosophy as a "proud pragmatist". We dive into why the best design leaders are willing to negotiate on "gold standards" to ensure the ultimate success of the product.

Key Takeaways:

• The Pragmatic Design Leader: Why sticking strictly to a process can be a trap and how to gain the confidence to "go right" when the process says "go left"
• Hiring for Intellectual Horsepower: Why Matty prioritises a designer's raw ability to solve high-complexity problems over their ability to simply follow the Double Diamond
• The "System" Trap: Why implementing design systems or rigid processes too early can stifle innovation and create blind spots.
• AI and Future Workflows: How the rapid evolution of AI requires us to stay in an "era of experimentation" rather than rushing to build new guardrails.

In this episode of Behind the Teams, I sit down with Simon Hilton, the Head of AI Products at MYOB, to explore the intersection of leadership, team dynamics and the rapid evolution of technology. Simon shares his career mission of building great teams that build great products, emphasising that a high-performing team is the fundamental requirement for software success.

The conversation dives deep into:

• The Leadership "Middle Ground": Simon describes his style as a balance between top-down direction and total autonomy, focusing on creating space for talent while maintaining strict accountability for results.
• The Kitchen Metaphor: A unique look at organisational strategy, comparing "McDonald’s style" teams that follow strict processes to "hatted restaurant" teams that innovate and solve complex problems.
• AI and the "Team of One": How AI is shifting roles from technical execution to managerial oversight, allowing individuals to manage "parallel agents" to ship products faster than ever before.
• The Future of Career Growth: Why "getting your reps in" through AI-enabled shipping can compress years of traditional experience into a much shorter timeframe.