Summary
Team happiness is an important and oft-mentioned DesignOps metric, but we need to reframe how we think about it. No human* can ""make"" their team happy, and it's folly to measure ourselves by that impossible standard. But what we _can_ do is create opportunities for our teams—opportunities to get weird, share freely, give feedback, encourage each other, and create their own team culture. And they get to choose whether and how they take advantage of those opportunities. *If you are a literal kitten, you may indeed be able to *make* people happy just by existing.
Key Insights
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Team happiness is often misunderstood and misrepresented by unrealistic societal expectations.
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The pressure to maintain a happy team can create anxiety for design ops professionals.
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True happiness at work is grounded in basic needs like fair salaries and adequate benefits.
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Superficial metrics and stock images do not accurately represent team happiness.
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Creating opportunities for growth and development is essential for team morale.
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Successfully measuring happiness involves asking simple, humanizing questions.
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Design ops professionals should not be burdened with making their teams happy; this is an unrealistic expectation.
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A supportive work environment allows individuals to pursue personal happiness.
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Work is one part of life and should not be considered the sole contributor to personal identity or happiness.
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Reimagining team culture should involve focusing on foundational support rather than superficial happiness.
Notable Quotes
"I'm here for more of an existential mind shift about team happiness."
"You can't make your team happy—no one can ever make anyone else happy."
"If you don't have the basics in place, anything else you do is just noise."
"There are a lot of things you can do to carve out the space for opportunities, but you can't force it."
"Work is kind of the last man standing out of a whole bouquet of things that used to give us meaning."
"Unless you're a literal kitten, there is nothing you can do to make 100% certain that people will be happy."
"Design ops folks sometimes end up playing nursemaid rather than doing the real work they're here to do."
"It’s time to reject unrealistic expectations about team happiness."
"The notion that a team’s happiness hinges on constant laughter and joy is misleading."
"We need to take care of the basics for our teams and create opportunities for them to thrive."
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