I’d be thinking about doing all of these things.

1. Meet everybody – not just the designers. Pay especial attention to any person or group who touches customers – sales, customer support, technical authors, etc. – or who drives product direction – CEO, product managers, etc.
2. Get everybody to tell you stories. About how the company started and how the product got to its current state. Almost nothing about the company culture gets written down – especially in early stage startups. The quickest way to get a handle on the company and its politics are to listen to peoples stories about how the company got to where it is now. They may not be true – but they will be useful.
3. Who are you replacing and why? You might not be replacing somebody with your job title – but people will have been trying to do the work. Find out who those people are. Listen to the stories they have to tell. The company didn’t promote from the inside. Figure out why.
4. More leading. Less doing. Remember as a director your job is not to do all of the UX work – it’s to lead all of the UX work. Designers seem more susceptible than most to the sin of micro-management.
5. Figure out what the company believes their product vision(s) are. What do people think they are building? Do not be surprised if different parts of the company have different ideas of what this is.
6. Figure out what the company believes their customer(s) are. Who do people think they are building for? Do not be surprised if different parts of the company have different ideas of who these are.
7. Figure out who the company’s customers really are, and what they think the product vision is. Do not be surprised if these differ from (5) and (6).
8. Look before you leap. The temptation to immediately jump in and start fixing things is worth resisting. Watch how things normally run for a week or two first. Figure out what the biggest problems are – not the most obvious ones.
9. Get alignment as a first step. Get everybody on the same page on the direction of the product and the customers it serves. This doesn’t have to be final. It doesn’t even have to be vaguely correct. But it’s much easier to move everybody once they’re in a group heading in the same direction.

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If there are other designers who report to you, set up regular 1-on-1 meetings. They’ll tell you where the problem spots are.

Arrange interviews with users. They too will tell you what the problems are.

Meet with the executives. What’s their vision for the product?

Armed with this knowledge, map out where the product needs improvement and then pick something small to get an easy win right off the bat. if there’s been no one in your position, it’ll be good to demonstrate value quickly.

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