Summary
As organizations scale, we risk over-engineering the way design teams work. This can mean creating brittle systems and discouraging true innovation. In this talk, we’ll explore learning-centered approaches as a way to embrace change and foster long-term success — and how we can find inspiration from our childhood roots.
Key Insights
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A learning culture matters more than simply delivering fixed outcomes in UX program management.
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Google’s founders Larry and Sergey were Montessori kids, influencing their problem-solving approach.
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Independence, order, and respecting different developmental stages are key Montessori principles applied to teams.
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Google’s 20% time embodies independence, allowing employees to innovate and build passion projects.
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OKRs are co-created at each level, bidirectional rather than top-down, empowering ownership and clarity.
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Psychological safety is the most important dynamic for effective teams, outperforming consensus or workload management.
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The double diamond model is great for divergent thinking but can falter without continuous user research.
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The squad model offers autonomy and innovation but requires strong culture and leadership alignment to avoid fragmentation.
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The research train model integrates frequent user feedback cycles but demands organizational shifts and budget support.
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Recognizing and adapting to team developmental stages, including a reorganizing phase, improves change management.
Notable Quotes
"It matters what you build, but it matters more if you learn."
"OKRs are a tool for each of us to tidy our house and focus on what’s important."
"The greatest sign of success for a teacher is just to be able to say the children are now working as if I did not exist."
"Psychological safety was far and away the key ingredient for teams being effective."
"If you get a perfect score on your OKRs, it means you didn’t set your sights high enough."
"Engineers can be our biggest allies in making really important process changes."
"If you forget the individual, you cut out psychological safety, and that’s the foundation of strong teams."
"The squad model flopped for us after six months but created culture triads that stuck around."
"Design your processes around learning, have blameless post mortems and celebrate failures especially."
"Growth and learning is your long term change management plan."
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