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I currently work at a company that has around 250 employees. I am the team lead for Marketing and the UX department at my location, my company's plan is for me to take on being the team lead of the entire Marketing and UX team (of all locations) by summer.

Our Marketing team consists of 10 people, UX out of 2 excluding myself. I have worked at the company for 7 years now and have been team lead since around a year.

The thing is, I feel like I am being torn in two. I don't have enough time to commit to marketing and UX fully, and obviously they are very different departments. I feel the only reason these two departments are "together" is because I was the first creative to join back when the company was smaller (my background is computer science and UX, but I am also a graphic designer) and bring up the importance of UX. I still have the feeling that I could contribute so much more if I would commit more to UX.

I really want to talk to my bosses about wanting to commit to UX 100%, but I'm not sure how I should approach this. Has someone been in the same or similar shoes?

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You're overthinking this. You're obviously valued and appreciated by your company (they wouldn't be promoting you otherwise), so just go to your bosses and say what you've said here - you just need to explain why you feel you would be more impactful in a purely UX role.

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    Thank you for this, I think you are right in saying I'm overthinking this. I might be afraid of feeling like seeming I'm "not up to the task", but actually it is quite the opposite. Explaining why and defining the structure how I think it should be is part of the job. Commented yesterday
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I really want to talk to my bosses about wanting to commit to UX 100%

That's the way to go

but I'm not sure how I should approach this

You want to sell your company on your proposal. That's a basic marketing job and so you should be better qualified to do so than most other people!

  1. Flesh out the idea into a specific actionable plan to the extent that you can. Try to tackle some of the details too (org charts, hiring plans, budgets)
  2. Present the plan and the motivation behind it
  3. Honestly discuss the potential pros and cons & benefits and risks for the company. Don't tip toe around the cons. Any half way intelligent boss will bring them up anyway, so tackle them proactively.
  4. If there is business case to made make a business case and show your numbers
  5. Discuss a few alternatives or variations
  6. When you are done ask open ended questions and listen carefully. The goal here is to flush out concerns and obstacles and the best way is to say little and listen a lot. Clarification question are fine but don't start to argue.
  7. Once you have the feedback you can start working at the concerns (if there are any) and proceed from there.

Has someone been in the same or similar shoes?

Yes, of course. That's pretty normal and most (good) manager welcome this. Managers are also human beings: the more mature your proposal is, the less work it will be for the manager to implement it and the more likely they will be to agree.

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    It would help if there was an obvious replacement to lead marketing ... Commented 17 hours ago

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