As a design leader with over a decade of experience, I’ve had the privilege of guiding teams through transformative projects and fostering a culture of innovation and collaboration. Here are my top tips for leading successful teams, based on my approach to design culture, team rituals, and strategic vision.
Foster a culture of continuous improvement
I prioritize collaboration and continuous improvement through various rituals and initiatives that are consistently checked and iterated upon. I lead my teams in the same way we design our products with an abundance of feedback:
- 🔬 Design Labs: A bi-weekly call where we showcase, discuss, and refine our design ideas. This includes sharing projects, best practices, and new skills, and fostering a culture of continuous learning and collaboration. Design Labs replaced our previous design crits, which were poorly attended and unstructured.
- 🎶 Fave Music Friday: Every Friday, we share our favorite songs in the team chat and create a shared playlist. This simple ritual brings a fun and personal touch to our workweek, fostering camaraderie.
- 🪞 Reflection Points: During each weekly meeting, the team is invited to add notes to our "Memory Lane" Miro, which allows for a recent reflection of what they are proud of from the previous week. At the end of each month, we gather our monthly accomplishments and milestones across our life, team and for our customers, products & experiences. These accomplishments are shared with leadership and tracked on our team dashboards.
- 🕰️ Team Retrospectives: These are run quarterly by rotating members of the team, giving everyone a chance to use their voice and focus on iterative improvement. This practice encourages ownership and accountability. We don't just listen to each other; we act on what we collectively agree needs to change. Out of our team retros we have produced serious results such as changes to our journey-wide PI Planning, intake forms, reduction in meetings and so much more.
Empower with constructive feedback and kudos
Mentorship and feedback are crucial for developing high-performing teams. Our iterative culture, with regular retrospectives and feedback sessions, ensures constant growth and reflection. We celebrate achievements through our kudos system, creating an environment where everyone feels valued and motivated to excel.
Recognition is a powerful motivator. Our team's efforts have been recognized with prestigious awards, including Forrester’s 2024 Customer-Obsessed Enterprise Award and Gartner’s Cross-Functional Collaboration Excellence Award. These accolades underscore the impact of our customer-obsessed transformation and our ability to deliver business value through innovative design solutions.
Scale systems for long-term success
Scaling systems effectively has been one of my priorities as a design leader, helping streamline workflows, improve efficiency, and set my teams up for impactful work. Here’s how I approach it:
- Automate Processes: I implemented an intake system for research that includes email notifications, tracking with tools like Microsoft Lists, and automated creation of branded research readouts. These automations have ensured quality/consistency, saved time, reduced manual tasks, and allowed my team to focus on strategic and creative work.
- Create dashboards: Airtable has been a game-changer for organizing projects and tracking progress. I use it to link features and sprint work to customer experience metrics and OKRs, providing real-time updates that keep everyone aligned without disrupting existing workflows.
- Customize and adapt: By tailoring tools like Airtable with advanced filtering and shared forms, I ensure my team can access up-to-date information easily, keeping workflows flexible and efficient.
- Prepare for AI Implementation: Scaling these systems has also created a strong foundation for integrating AI technologies. With centralized and organized data, we’ve been able to leverage AI for deeper insights, enhanced analysis, and automation of complex tasks.
Align design initiatives with business goals
By empowering my team to align their work with business goals, we create an environment where design is collaborative, strategic, and deeply tied to the organization’s success. Here’s how I approach it:
- Understand objectives together: I help my team connect their work to broader business goals by clearly communicating strategic priorities and KPIs. Team discussions emphasize how their contributions align with company objectives.
- Collaborate across teams: I encourage my team to build relationships with stakeholders like product managers and marketing leads, fostering shared ownership and a unified vision for design initiatives. Participating in regular check-ins and reviews, ensures their work evolves with changing priorities and remains impactful.
- Leverage data as a team: Together, we use analytics and user feedback to guide decisions, ensuring designs are both user-centric and impactful. I empower team members to present data-driven insights directly to stakeholders to demonstrate the value of their work.
- Set shared metrics and showcase them: My team and I define OKRs for our initiatives, providing clarity on what success looks like and ensuring accountability at all levels. I make sure the contributions of individual team members are visible by involving them in reporting outcomes to stakeholders, highlighting their role in achieving business goals.
Leverage data-driven design
Data-driven design is essential for making informed decisions and achieving business objectives. We use data analytics, A/B testing, and user feedback to guide our design processes. This approach ensures that our designs are user-centric and aligned with business goals. For example, our design improvements have led to enhanced user engagement and satisfaction.
Conclusion
Leading a successful team requires strategic vision, collaboration, and a commitment to continuous improvement. I believe in the power of a clear vision, transparency, and open feedback from everyone. By fostering an environment where ideas are tried, tested, and refined, we drive innovation and achieve the best outcomes.
Empowering my team to align their work with business goals, while celebrating experimentation and learning, has positioned design as a strategic partner in our organization's success. This approach not only balances creativity with measurable impact but also ensures that we continuously evolve and thrive.