Zero to One: Co-Creating Operating Models with your Team
Summary
Designers rarely work alone these days, and so the teams where we get our work done have an outsized impact on everything from how we feel day-to-day, to our ability to deliver our work, to our career trajectory. Rather than impose an operating model on my design team at [company], I borrowed heavily from the design process we use every day to co-create it in a way that solved real problems we were experiencing. Attendees will walk away with an understanding of how to lead teams that largely self govern, and the benefits of this model for team members, leaders, and the companies that employ them.
Key Insights
-
•
Designers should embrace design operations responsibilities to improve team workflows and outcomes.
-
•
Operational excellence is critical in large, complex organizations to overcome slow delivery and high interdependence.
-
•
Start with simple systems that work, evolving complexity over time (GA's law).
-
•
Autonomy in teams builds ownership, enabling co-creation and empowerment rather than top-down control.
-
•
Transparency about work and time usage reduces leader meeting overload and builds trust.
-
•
Regular one-on-ones focused on personal development drive meaningful leadership and team growth.
-
•
Pulse surveys taken consistently help detect changes in alignment and morale over time rather than aiming for perfect scores.
-
•
Retrospectives that encourage direct, kind communication cultivate a healthy friction that improves team culture.
-
•
Allowing the team to co-design processes, including standups and planning cadence, increases relevance and engagement.
-
•
Operational models must be resilient to real-life interruptions like PTO and team growth while maintaining upward progress.
Notable Quotes
"It took over a year and 10 teams just to ship four onboarding screens."
"What if all designers were design operators?"
"We have to go slow to go fast."
"Simplicity is the foundation of all complicated systems that work."
"When teams solve their own problems, they make high impact decisions on their own."
"One-on-ones aren’t just reflective of a point in time but are a journey you go on together."
"Retrospectives are a great place to have direct, kind conversations that come from caring."
"Sometimes organic culture pieces, like playing Wordle at the end of standup, shorten meetings and keep them tight."
"Process is the scaffolding that helps culture grow when done right."
"Create a feedback loop, keep it simple, empower designers to own their ways of working, and have patience for results."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"We created a decision tree to help junior staff decide which stakeholder requests to triage and which to respond to directly."
Catherine BlizzardUsing Integrated Insight to Drive Growth
March 10, 2022
"If you really want to build culture and see how people cross collaborate, try to make lunch with your entire team every single week."
Jennifer KanyamibwaCreating the Blueprint: Growing and Building Design Teams
November 8, 2018
"We set a goal to hit 50% women on the design team within three years and we did it."
Michelle MorrisonCulture Design
May 21, 2020
"Presenting the value proposition of your design ops work is key to getting visibility."
Jackie AjouxLeveling-Up: A Single-Player’s Guide to the DesignOps Team-of-One
January 8, 2024
"AI behaves like an alien intern because it’s not capable of making sense of some things easy for us."
Yulya Besplemennova[Demo] Stress-testing GenAI in user research synthesis
June 4, 2024
"The feedback culture in our company means there’s transparent discussion if conclusions aren’t clear or agreed upon."
Michelle Bejian Lotia Anne-Marie MorellRolling Out a Repository: How Zapier Centralizes Insights from Across their Organization
March 28, 2023
"Designers need data, but data also needs designers."
Helen ArmstrongAugment the Human. Interrogate the System.
June 7, 2023
"Design creates culture, culture shapes values, and those values in turn determine the future."
Meghan Hellstern Joanne DongThe Next 100 Years of Civic Design: How Might We Better Rise to Meet the Challenges of Today and Tomorrow?
December 10, 2021
"Latino parents framed classrooms as the teacher’s domain and home as theirs, avoiding engagement to respect authority."
Alba VillamilStereotyped by Design: Pitfalls in Cross-Cultural User Research
March 30, 2020
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
What core skills should UX researchers develop to thrive in the evolving AI-enhanced product environment?
How does corporate procurement complexity impact design leadership and tool adoption?
What are the challenges of demand charges in residential solar rate plans and how can they be managed automatically?