Realface of Corporates for Designers - 5 Strategies to adapt

The real world of corporates is much more different than what it may seem from outside. Particularly when it comes to product design. When it comes to a creative feel like visual design, ui, UX design, graphic design, it's way more different. That is why lot of people have this mismatch problem. Even though when they are paid more, even though when they are paid less they have both end the problems of overcoming this. This particular podcast is going to give you what are all the real world challenges which people who are working in corporate really faces and what are the real face of corporate. Right. We need to know that. So this is going to really give you an awareness, clarity and way forward 5 different strategies how you can overcome that and make a very successful career and a beneficial future out of it. Okay, lets jump into this topic. Lot of things may be glamorous from the outside as I said, but reality is always a reality. Right? Lot of people jump into it field. It's because of this reason. Lot of payoff and you get a good salary, you get a secured income and then you get to work with multicultural environment and then you have men, women, both gender, what you call equality and all these things are fine. But there are some challenges also which I personally come across like to tell about myself. I have 8 plus years of work experience working for multinational companies in terms of engineering as well as product development as well as product design as well as a holistic design development process. Okay. From physical products to digital products. The very first challenge, what I would say is limited creative freedom. Designers often are dictated by guidelines from the marketing, sales and client requirement. Right. That leads to a lot of frustration. And you know what? This makes people uninspired also many times. Okay Jagdish, is it really required to hear that feedback? Yes, of course. It is very important to listen to them and empathize. But the end of the day the decision should be driven by you because you have to do your job properly. Right? You have to satisfy the need of the user user centric design. What's the point of it? If you're doing only the job which was given to you from the sales and marketing then they could itself do that. Right? I don't, I don't think it's going to add any value for anybody being a designer. You need to understand the difference. Many point, many times what happens is people really ignore this or people go into the other side fighting with the other team, ignoring completely the feedback whatever they are giving. This is the most case what will happen because you can't just neglect Ignore, but people will going to fight more. 56% of the designers feel their creativity is stifled in corporate environments. This is a survey did by Adobe design trends in 2023. Very surprising, right? Almost half of the design population is facing this problem. How do you overcome this jagdish? Let me tell you guys. You need to have your own process defined. You need to have your work ethic clearly defined. When people come to you for discussions, for statistics for any kind of a project to be done, they will be driven by your process. It's not like you intuitively talk, hey, this concept is good. That concept is good. Blue color is good. Orange color is good. No. Then automatically fights will happen. You should be more justifiable saying, hey, our competitors are having orange as a color. Our users have found our users of given a feedback. They are more satisfied while they are using with this color experience. That is the reason we are choosing this color Simple. You guys are saying blue is good. But this is a statistics, this is a data, this is a research. That's why we are going for orange. End of the story. Who will talk against this, right? People don't know how to tackle this thing. That's why they get into a problem and they really call like hey, I have a limited creative freedom. No, that's not the real case. Okay. The second big challenge what people face is tight deadlines and workload. So high pressure is always there to meet the deadlines. Often, sometimes unrealistic timelines is given. Guys. It's true. Many times it is said that you should deliver a project before, you should deliver a project yesterday. You should not deliver a project tomorrow or today. It should be delivered yesterday. How it is possible, right? So this timelines should be managed properly by having a priority and sequencing in your work life. This will lead to a lot of burnouts. You know what? 42% of the designers report working overtime weekly. 42 percentage of the designers, they are really not having a proper work life balance and 17 percentage work more than 60 hours per week. It's good that you wanted to work for 60 hours or 80 hours, but you should be happily doing that, right? If it is coming in a statistics, then people have not really been very happy. A source called Upwork Design Industry Trend Report 2023 has said that Appwork is a very good platform for freelancing project and full time design projects and all you can get it. They have did this survey. Okay, so how do you manage this timeline and deadline pressure? By setting a very clear expectation and having a process, having A sequence having a priority. This is how you can manage it. Jagdish. I'm just a fresher. I don't know what is even a corporate. Learn it now by joining a very good mentorship program or joining a very good design program or very good design community where you can learn all these things. Ask your mentor. Hey, can you teach me how I can handle timeline pressure, how I can handle budget pressure, how I can handle work priority? What does mean by sequencing? So if you have learned to do that, your practice and habit starts from now. The third important challenge is lack of appreciation and recognition. Right? So what happens is typically in corporate when you really work for a long hours or when you deliver a project on time, really people don't really take time to really appreciate you, give you gifts or rewards or any kind of even a moral support or maybe even a small hand clap inside your team that is really lacking. What happens is the morale of the employee gets hindered. 99 Percentage I've seen designers don't get this appreciation. And let me tell you, there is a survey by 99U in 2023 only 38% of the designers feel their work is regularly recognized by their employers. Remaining 62 is gone. They're not even doing anything right. So creative field definitely needs to be appreciated. It should not go underappreciated. So you need to have a good way of appreciation and a system to do this. Even though when a boss appreciates or not, the employer or a subordinate or a super boss appreciates or not, a system needs to really help the people get recognition properly. Like let's say annual meetup, half early meetup, a quarterly meetup or maybe a weekly quickly, weekly quick call catch up where gifts and rewards could be exchanged. It can be initiated from the employee side as well, not necessarily from the design organizations or the corporates. But this is reality. It's not there. 38 Percentage of the designers only feel recognized. Reminding is unnoticed. So you need to get this awareness more. The reason behind this podcast is to give you the awareness and preparedness so that you can be more ready for that. Okay, the other challenge, what I would say the fifth, the fourth challenge, what I'm saying is red tape and bureaucracy, right? This is very common. You might be really guessing this. So navigating the corporate ladder and following the hierarchies, approvals, the kind of complex process, what they have, it will many times end up hinder your progress. Definitely it will slow down your creativity. There is no doubt about it. Can I tell you something? LinkedIn report 2023 India particularly. They suggest 54% of the designers believe that excessive bureaucracy hinders their productivity. And it is true. Because what happens is whenever you are presenting a creative idea, whenever you're presenting any kind of work concept or something like that, what happens is when a lot lot of politics happens or what of what you call a bureaucracy happens for a particular person, maybe a biased opinion, it will kill the reality of what is a need for the user. Nobody will be able to have that consciousness to think through the user's lens. People will think from cost perspective, timeline perspective, client perspective, business perspective, ego perspective, different teams perspective. We want to save ourselves. What if the top management says no? All this judgment, fear of loss, everything happens. But nobody really sees what is really need for the user. Is it really solving the problem creatively? That is a big problem. And trust me guys, nobody is able to really find out a great solution for it. Everybody is here and they're navigating, going. But there are some good reports like let's say you can go to LinkedIn learning platform where they have given some blogs and articles about it and you can read it even. I'm also a learner in that it's not like I worked. I've worked with almost 10 to 15 different country clients and I worked in more than 60 plus project for this 8.5 years. Honestly telling, this is a subject which I have not mastered it because politics and bureaucracy you need to know how to navigate. Maybe I am good, maybe I am better compared to the start of my career. But definitely it is an ongoing process. You need to be more curious, you need to be continuously upgraded, creating yourself, you need to learn and move ahead. You know what? That is the only way and the only cure for this. If you have stop learning yourself and then you're following some politics and following some BS people around it, bullshitting it and then talking back to them and then getting to what you call back mouth people and talking about them in the back. What happens is somebody else will talk about you also like that. It's same, it's karma, simple. So you need to understand all these things will waste your time and your career's growth. You need to focus on learning continuously, being curious and finding right people to talk to. Again, how to find the right people to talk to separate podcast can be recorded. But this is a very deep subject in the networking topics I've covered here and there. But let me record a separate podcast for it because finding out the right people whom are really helping you to grow in your career is very difficult to do. It's very crucial. It requires a knack and a skill to do. Choosing wrong people will hinder your career in a different way. And you will lose the morale of working in design career. That's a very big problem. The fifth important challenge which you need to understand is skill gap and adaptability. This can be really developed from a student side or maybe an experience guy who is working in different organization. Going into design field. See rapidly evolving design trends in software requires constant learning and adaptation. You cannot stop it, which can be challenging for many designers. 72% of the designers feel the need to continuously update their skills to stay competitive. That's why it is suggested to learn through good programs, through mentorship programs, through design schools, through design online programs or workshop. It's. It's definitely important because AI is already taking lot of designers job, lot of critical jobs, lot of repetitive jobs. This is a report suggest given by creative economy by UNESCO 2023. So you need to understand 70% of the people are already willing to improve their skill. Definitely one or the other way they'll be moving ahead. The question is, are you in that? So take action if you wanted to do that. Okay, so there is a positive side also for it. Okay, the first positive side of this corporation corporate. A real phase of the corporates are collaboration and learning. See, you can work with different team, you can get more opportunities, learn new skills, you can share different perspective, you can expand your horizons. 85% of the designers value collaborative aspect of working in a team. It's a survey by Adobe Design Trends 2023. It's a beautiful thing, right? So the first important thing is collaboration and learning. The second important advantage is career growth and stability. See, whenever you're working for a corporate, you have a very structured career path. You have a mentorship opportunities, training and development programs. You get a steep salary growth. And then you have a very good trajectory of learning as well. You know, a LinkedIn report suggests says 62% of the designers feel optimistic about their career prospect in corporate world. This is really true, guys. Lot of people will not agree. It's a report by LinkedIn 2023 India. You can check that 62 percentage who are in the design. People who are outside of the design will not really talk good things. They'll be like very insecure mindset. But people who come into design, including me, they really feel optimistic about their career prospect in the corporate world. That's the point. Like if you jump into a corporate, you will. You are Your this thing will little bit change. It's not like completely. You will get in a different direction. Okay. The third advantage is financial security and benefits. You have a very good competitive salary because corporate needs to maintain its standards and average salary salary. And you will have your family health insurance covered. You will have compensation plans yearly and you will have bonus. And then you will have paid time off. And then you will have other benefits for car relevance like rent allowance, like pf. And you will have a stability in your job where the project comes or not. Sometimes if the market is really bad, that's a different situation. But if you constrict your upgrade your skills, you will get a better very good corporate job which can be very peaceful. You know what few hours. If you work properly in a corporate, you can deliver all the project safely. That's the reason you need to have a very clear goal, know what is priority and sequencing. You can beat any corporate leader using this small technique. People don't do this. That's why they get burnout, stressed out and then they get low paid, no salaries and no promotion. And they work for 1415 hours a day. No results. Right. People who work few hours very smartly using the step by step process, they earn 2x3x more than this average people. Right? You know what Bureau of Labor statistics say average median salary for a graphic designer is really high. It's let's say in US dollars it is 59,000. It's a great salary. Right? It's around 3 to 3.5 lakhs. Again, it's not India. It's like US. Okay. In 2023. And the fourth important advantage is impact and the reach. You can get a very good global setting. You can reach to wider audience. Like I told you, 60 plus project. Right. If I would have worked in a startup, maybe I would have not get this clarity. Right. I worked from some of the big clients in the medical field, from Johnson and Johnson to a small startup. So I get. I mean I get to see a different range of expectation and design. So that is the point. And you can even what you call refer a survey which is 99 Euro design surveys is 78% of the designers believe their work makes a positive impact. Which we've already said. Right. And the fifth important element is resource access and technology. That is the real advantage of being in corporate guys. You get to have premium design software like you cannot really afford Adobe all the tools. It will be more than 1.5 lakhs per month to afford all the Adobe tools. Right. If you're working in a corporate, definitely you'll be getting it for free of cost and you can get more trainings, high quality training program, programs you won't believe. I've applied a training program in my office which is seven habits of effective, seven habits of highly effective people, which is a two and a half days program. The cost is around 1:58,000. I'm saying in 2015. Eight years back. Seven years back, yeah, 2016. So the point is I got some of the biggest learnings of my life. Till I remember. Still I remember even in this podcast also I've mentioned some of the learnings from that. So that level of an impactful training you will get outside, you can't find first of all these kind of people even if you find the money will be really high. How can you afford 1 lakh 60,000 or something like that, right. For two days. So you need to understand corporates really provide that offer of advanced trainings and design software and tools and technology to improve your creativity. Upwork again suggests that 65% of designers believe that access to advanced technology has made their work more efficient. Right. See and let me tell you guys, globally 38% of the creative professionals report that they are highly engaged in their work. Only 38 percentage people. It's a survey by Gallup. In 2023 remaining people, you have to understand what is happening, right? But India May 74 percentage of the designers find their work interesting. In the design field it's just little interesting. But out of them, only 58% of them are really satisfied with their overall work experience. Again, this was a survey by LinkedIn. So what does it really imply? There is a flip side. There is an advantage also. You need to understand what is really your drawback. Where you wanted to really improve and learn and how you can continuously upgrade yourself. If you have that mindset, no matter where you are, you will be more successful. Okay, so thank you so much guys for listening to this podcast. I hope it would have helped you a lot. And if you need proper mentoring and support to tackle all these challenges and good cut short your growth in your aiming for three to four years growth, how you can get it in a span of just 3 to 6 months by an accelerated program which I've designed for my students in just 42 days, you can able to double and triple your salary in less than three months. Okay, so if you wanted that kind of a special mentoring and support, you can send an email and I'll be happy to enroll you. And there is a small qualification for that. If you're qualified, definitely. I'll be happy to enroll you guys. Okay. Thank you so much, guys. If you find this podcast valuable, give me a best rating in Spotify and Apple. Thank you so much. Take care. All the best. Bye. Bye.