There was no African benchmark to point to. This founder invested in design leadership anyway.
The bet: if design decisions kept reaching the CEO desk, the company was paying an executive salary for design leadership already, just badly.
The decision
A fractional design executive, one day a week, owning quality disputes and the hiring bar. The CEO desk cleared within a quarter.
We were paying for design leadership either way. We chose to pay for the real thing.
The result
Release rework fell, senior designers stopped leaving, and the first full-time design hire landed into a working system.
This essay draws on the open dataset. Add your numbers to it.
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