Bias Towards Action: Building Teams that Build Work
Summary
Key Insights
-
•
Agency structures with separate creative and technical teams create cultural barriers that hinder project success.
-
•
Defining, writing down, and holding teams accountable to core values is essential for cultural change.
-
•
Successful cross-team collaboration requires knowing and valuing the people behind different roles, not just enforcing process rules.
-
•
Building software that structurally enforces department collaboration can mirror and support cultural shifts.
-
•
Cultural values should answer why a team exists and how it fits within the larger organization.
-
•
Recruiting from the usual talent pools risks attracting people who reinforce existing cognitive biases and fail to embody desired team values.
-
•
Quantifying cultural fit during interviews helps reduce bias and align hires to team values objectively.
-
•
Teams must remember that their work is ultimately for human users, fostering empathy to improve products.
-
•
Creating opportunities for team members to bond as people builds trust and better collaborative outcomes.
-
•
Tech creators have a responsibility for the social impact of the tools they build and must remember the humans affected.
Notable Quotes
"Ideas that get sold without knowing how they work or how they’re made reflect a cultural problem in the team."
"No one hated technologists, they just didn’t know who they were because there were no personal relationships cross teams."
"Process for process’s sake doesn’t help anybody; processes must reflect your core values."
"Talent is everywhere. You find talent when you look for it without skepticism and bias."
"Quantify cultural fit by scoring candidates on how they align with your values before hiring decisions."
"We made a system that wouldn’t work if any part of the code or any team disappeared or refused to cooperate."
"We are making things for human beings, and we too are people who must own that responsibility."
"It wasn’t just about process changes, it was about changing how people think about their work and each other."
"When I walked into the office, my team was ready to quit because they were taking rude user emails personally."
"Our hands make all the things, and our brains form the teams that run the hands making the things."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Craft is not just about a beautiful final object, but a facilitative anchor that enables productive teamwork across departments."
Uday GajendarThe Wicked Craft of Enterprise UX
May 13, 2015
"Sacred civics requires us to hold higher order accountabilities to ecosystems and future generations."
Jayne Engle Tanya Chung-Tiam-FookCivic Design for the Next Seven Generations—A Discussion on Sacred Civics
August 25, 2022
"It’s not just the design work you see; it’s the unseen operations behind the scenes that determine quality."
Kristin SkinnerOpening Keynote: Org Design for Design Orgs
November 6, 2017
"Most AI fails because projects require near perfect accuracy, which AI can't reliably deliver."
Dan SafferWhy AI projects fail (and what we can do about it)
May 14, 2025
"We want you to feel included and be able to take advantage of the awesome content and speaker efforts."
Bria AlexanderDay 2 Welcome
September 24, 2024
"The faster the reaction, the less distorted it is by cognitive processes, capturing genuine gut feelings."
Daniela Magaña Flores Ariane Rahn Jeff Ephraim BanderAhead of Competition: Learn What UX Benchmarking Can Do for Your Business Today
March 10, 2022
"Building a network early can create amazing opportunities further along the career path."
Laine Riley Prokay Lisa GordonCarving a Path for Early Career DesignOps Practitioners
September 9, 2022
"Being able to traverse different levels of abstraction helps to make systemic complexity more navigable."
Luke Roberts Christian Bason, Ph.D. Amanda Woolley Ben ReasonPanel Discussion
December 4, 2024
"Nearly 30 years into my career, I’m doing the most rewarding work of my life helping modernize military space systems."
Michal Anne RogondinoSaving Outer Space: The First UX Design System for Our Nation’s Satellites
January 8, 2024
