Summary
External agencies augment internal enterprise teams by providing fresh perspectives and adding energy. However, often the agency's capability is not being utilized to its full potential due to poor engagement strategy. In this talk, Séamus highlights obstacles to "inter-team" integration and presents tactics to prevent engagement issues and empower teams to work better together. We can achieve successful inter-team alignment with choreography, but it involves learning new routines, moving to the same beat, and not stepping on each other's toes. Séamus based this talk on real client stories from running an agency for 12 years.
Key Insights
-
•
Team dynamics are unique, impacting project outcomes significantly.
-
•
Unprepared internal teams can create friction and confusion at project kickoffs.
-
•
Lack of transparency for external agencies limits their ability to perform effectively.
-
•
Shifting job scopes can create miscommunication and role ambiguity.
-
•
'Dancing monkey' culture underscores the need for support from internal teams.
-
•
Effective collaboration requires shared understanding of project scopes and goals.
-
•
Choreography can be an analogy for aligning team interactions and workflows.
-
•
Time for onboarding and discovery is crucial for external agencies.
-
•
Building relationships through informal interactions can enhance team effectiveness.
-
•
The Team Alignment Canvas can help visualize and clarify team roles and responsibilities.
Notable Quotes
"Welcome everybody. It's an honor to be kicking off today's festivities."
"No two teams are the same. Every team comes with its own unique relationships and expectations."
"In the best interest of the client to get teams working well together, otherwise you're leaving value on the table."
"The first obstacle is unprepared internal teams."
"We're here to bring out-of-the-box thinking, but then you see uncertainty on their faces."
"We discover an iceberg of things that we never anticipated."
"When the external agency comes in, the overall orchestration of team interactions gets trickier."
"We need to be more prepared to dance together."
"Collaboration should start at the very beginning of the engagement."
"If you see a dancing monkey, you know what you got to do, right?"
More Videos
"This session will teach you how to organize things to get productive with AI."
Noz UrbinaRapid AI-powered UX (RAUX): A framework for empowering human designers
May 1, 2025
"Not just making things up here on stage; there's actually an underlying structure."
Jim KalbachJazz Improvisation as a Model for Team Collaboration
June 4, 2019
"What would you do if info sets said you can't use this tool?"
Holly ColeUnderstanding Experiences: When you have to do more than work
November 8, 2018
"All the rules defined for the header apply, ensuring consistency throughout our design."
Jack BeharHow to Build Prototypes that Behave like an End-Product
December 6, 2022
"David Nicholson is a senior UX designer at PwC with a passion for helping design enterprise scale products."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
October 3, 2023
"We are the ground control, building our systems gradually to reach our organizational 'moon'."
Erika FlowersAI-Readiness: Preparing NASA for a Data-Driven, Agile Future
June 10, 2025
"The future of education lies in collaboration and adaptation."
Kristin SkinnerFive Years of DesignOps
September 29, 2021
"Big ears mean listening to other people more than you're listening to yourself."
Jim KalbachJazz Improvisation as a Model for Team Collaboration
November 6, 2017
"We need to tap into everybody's creativity to find solutions for societal challenges."
Surya VankaUnleashing Swarm Creativity to Solve Enterprise Challenges
June 10, 2021
