Flex Your Super Powers: When a Design Ops Team Scales to Power CX
Summary
Join the Verizon CX Design Ops team for an interactive session about uncovering your super powers, recognizing your kryptonite and flexing your skills to power a growing, global team.
Key Insights
-
•
Verizon CX Ops transformed from a design ops team to a global CX operations team powering 300+ roles across the enterprise.
-
•
Super speed represents rapid onboarding and resource planning to match the right designers to priority projects quickly.
-
•
Telepathy is a metaphor for proactive and consistent communication, resource capacity planning, and recruitment process improvements.
-
•
Super gadgets include operational tools like Jira, Airtable, and dynamic reporting, critical for scaling CX operations.
-
•
Flight symbolizes adopting multiple frameworks (predictive, agile, hybrid) and flexible working at global scale.
-
•
Super intelligence is embodied by CX Ops acting as a knowledge hub, oversharing communications to avoid gaps.
-
•
Super strength is demonstrated by strong cross-team partnerships and repeatable scalable processes that enhance customer experience quality.
-
•
Capacity planning in uncertain environments relies heavily on design systems, iterative planning, and quarterly forecasts with business partners.
-
•
Defining and tracking anti-patterns helps identify inefficiencies, such as ineffective meetings or communication breakdowns, enabling quick corrective action.
-
•
Crypto nights like burnout, silos, and too many priorities are actively managed through transparency, communication, and team support.
Notable Quotes
"We are super ops — powering 300 plus designers, researchers, and strategists globally."
"One of our superpowers is super speed: moving at the speed of light almost in onboarding and resource planning."
"Telepathy means mind-reading—proactive solutions through expanded resource capacity planning and recruitment."
"Super gadgets are our operational tools that we get really geeky about, like Jira and Airtable."
"Flight means adopting multiple models—predictive, agile, hybrid—to empower design at global scale."
"As the keepers and gatherers of knowledge, we empower others by sharing and sometimes over-sharing communications."
"Our super strength comes from partnerships and scalable, repeatable processes."
"We have crypto nights like people pleasing, perfectionism, silos, and burnout—which we watch out for carefully."
"Capacity planning is always through ever-changing uncertainty, requiring quarterly resource planning and business partnership."
"Defining anti-patterns helps us quickly identify and remedy issues like ineffective meetings or misaligned priorities."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Empathy in design has been too focused on people and often on standardized personas rather than true diversity and marginalized voices."
Christian BasonExpand—Rethinking Design for Public Challenges
September 14, 2022
"This is a journey with no end, and it’s amazing that we can continue the conversation beyond this session."
Husani OakleyTheme Two Intro
June 6, 2023
"The Red Queen effect means you have no choice but to adapt as others evolve faster."
Simon WardleyMaps and Topographical Intelligence
January 31, 2019
"Design procurement itself can be designed to get the best responses through inclusive processes."
Ariel KennanTheme 2 Intro
December 9, 2021
"The mandala metaphor reminds us not to be emotionally attached to deliverables; sometimes you build to throw away."
Ben Reason Aline Horta Majid Iqbal Fabiano LeoniMaking the system visible: The fastest path to better decisions
November 20, 2025
"We don't want authoritarian institutions; we want authoritative ones that educate and build loyalty."
Margot BloomsteinFostering Trust in Your Brand and Beyond
March 12, 2020
"Renaming project folders felt like changing someone's baby's name, but it was essential to get clarity and consistency."
Saskia LiebenbergStart Small for Big Impact
May 15, 2019
"Traveling to a research lab can take longer than the research session itself for people with physical disabilities due to specialty transit."
Sam ProulxSUS: A System Unusable for Twenty Percent of the Population
September 29, 2021
"If you create a separate team to work on the future, make sure they stay focused on the future, or you’ll never get out of the trap."
Ted Booth Sam Ladner Fredrik Matheson Russ UngerDiscussion
June 8, 2016
