A strategic partner to multiply the real value of design.

Get transformative breakthroughs for you and your teams through fractional consulting, 1:1 coaching, or team workshops.

Second Wave Dive is the business name of Ryan Rumsey.

Standard design leadership advice only gets you so far. I offer something different.

Before I started working with design executives and their teams, I was a design executive and led design teams.

I became a boss, a boss of bosses, and then an executive. And each time I was promoted, I was told, "You’re a quick learner. We expect you to figure it out."

I did figure it out, but the hard way, through a lot of trial and error, mistakes, and self-doubt. Not because that was how I wanted to learn but because no one gave me any other choice. And as I found out, this wasn't exclusive to me and my career. This was how everyone I knew was figuring it out.

Second Wave Dive is something better.

I help design executives and their teams make smart choices quickly and confidently, together. These choices, grounded in real-world experience and insights, let their teams do great work, which is good for their businesses and customers.

I deliver trailblazing training programs for design leaders who want to shake things up but stay true to their beliefs. My programs are grounded in practical application and transform design leaders into business leaders. I’ve taught 1000+ design leaders worldwide, and they continue to refer to these lessons every day.

I write practical and useful books and articles explaining the logic and specifics of making sound, quality decisions. I focus on real, grown-up problems and proven ways to tackle them.

And yes, I like to keep things fun and lively, too, because work can always use a bit more of that.

Courses

The premier learning experience for Design Managers and Executives.

Chief Design Officer School is where the next generation of design executives get unstuck and level-up their careers.

You’ve worked for others.

Jump Ship! will help you give all your talent, energy, passion, and value to yourself.

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Content

Featured
When you lead Design, Design is the product.

When you lead Design people, teams, and the organization, the most significant shift is knowing that most of your colleagues don't think about design as a craft or practice. They think about it as a group of people with specific skills and capabilities with a budget… essentially a big pile of "features". Yes, they want to know how these "features" help customers, but they really want to know how those "features" also help them.

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How building repeatable systems helps you grow as a design leader • Christina Goldschmidt

Christina Goldschmidt, VP and Head of Product Design at Etsy, on how she creates repeatable systems through brain hacking, has learned to give things away, maintains her core self, and much more.

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Reconnecting with ancestry, culture, city, and community to build confidence

Hiya! I'm Carolina Tod. Working with product design in Brazil for at least 15 years, I learned to appreciate more things from abroad than my own. This fact made me compare myself with others with different experiences, backgrounds, and life stories than mine, leaving me constantly stuck. It’s important I reconnect with ancestry, culture, city, and community to build confidence.

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Stand out in a crowded job market and refine your leadership portfolio.

If you’re a design leader who has taken the management career path, you've likely thought about getting a new gig, and you've probably thought about "standing out." Standing out is really important, but being told that probably isn’t very useful to figuring out how. Let’s talk about differentiating yourself in the job market as a design leader

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Announcing Chief Design Officer School

The new home for Second Wave Dive’s renowned courses and learning programs. We’ve completely revamped everything for 2023.

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My boss left; and I was freaking out

There is nothing to prepare you for the first time you find out your boss has been fired. When you start to see signals, it’s important to notice them, then make deliberate decisions about what you’re going to do about them.

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SWOT and SOAR; analytical tools to share the pros and cons of solutions 

Learn two analytical frameworks, SWOT and SOAR, that are great for highlighting the pros and cons of different decisions and solutions.

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Create stronger business cases with The Situation, Complication, Resolution (SCR) framework

Learn the storytelling structure used across the world to influence business decisions: the Situation Complication Resolution (SCR) framework.

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Practice becoming empathetic in the moment with the Imago Dialogue Script

Learn a dialogue script to practice active listening with your colleagues to ask for small behavior changes.

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Finding executive sponsors and willing sidekicks–strategically with Stakeholder Mapping

If you want to try new things, build a case of evidence that those things work, and are looking to find yourself an executive sponsor, use our free Stakeholder Mapping canvas.

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Four issues that OKRs don't effectively address

When you're working on products in any other setting, there are four issues I see coming up time and time again that OKRs aren't effectively addressing.

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The biggest development gap for design executives and leaders

IMO, the biggest development issue in design leadership today is that many Design VPs still think and act like Managers/Directors. Your teams, customers, & you deserve better.

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When OKRs work well (and don’t)

Over the last 20+ years, many companies have implemented (or tried to) OKRs with varying degrees of success. There are some clear patterns around what is and isn't working.

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Introducing POKRs, a framework to help translate OKR theory into sense-making practice

POKRs stands for perspectives, objectives and key results. This framework is all about adding the quality factors that different individuals or teams think about when making decisions so they can make sense to each other.

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Why you should learn with Second Wave Dive and what we’re good at

When you’re trying to decide on who to trust with your development, it’s critical to know who you’re working with. Here are all the reasons to learn with us and and what we’re good at.

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