Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Scale Your Organization and Grow Your Designers

Gold
Thursday, September 8, 2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Share the love for this talk
Scale Your Organization and Grow Your Designers
Speakers: Courtney Maya George
Link:

Summary

Scaling a design organization can introduce changes that may increase feelings of instability if not done thoughtfully. And when attrition and burnout levels are at a high, it is especially important to focus those changes on processes and structures that provide stability and growth for designers. Based on her experiences building teams at Amplitude and Adobe, Courtney’s talk will give you tools to scale your team while investing in individual designer’s career growth. Even if DesignOps is not your full-time job, this talk will show how small changes can make a big difference in the designer experience. Hear Courtney interviewed on the Rosenfeld Review Podcast: The Rosenfeld Review Podcast (Rosenfeld Media) · Scale Your Org and Grow Your Designers

Key Insights

  • Design organizations scale best when focusing on designer growth and emotional well-being, not just output.

  • Psychological safety, defined by Amy Edmondson as speaking up without fear, is critical for design teams due to subjective critique.

  • In hybrid meetings, enforcing video use increases inclusion, visibility, and participation for remote team members.

  • Low-effort rituals like icebreakers and retrospectives build trust and uncover process improvements.

  • A team skills workshop using strength assessments can bolster self-awareness, camaraderie, and complementary hiring decisions.

  • Creating individual and team charters provides hope and clarity, reducing churn especially during periods of uncertainty.

  • Aligning career ladders with shared operational principles helps designers own their career growth and managers have structured development conversations.

  • Introducing tools like Jira for design work, separate from engineering, enhances transparency but requires consistent usage and training.

  • Quarterly planning spreadsheets support realistic workload commitments and aid in prioritization without overburdening designers.

  • Compassionate leadership acknowledging human hardships is essential to successfully navigate scaling amidst rapid change and external crises.

Notable Quotes

"Scaling a design org can be exciting but also fraught with uncertainty, churn, and change management."

"Humans experience life 30% rationally and 70% emotionally, which means emotions dominate how we engage at work."

"Your people are not just resources or pawns in an organizational chess game—they are humans with fears and hopes."

"You can’t innovate or evolve as designers if you don’t learn, and learning requires psychological safety."

"Everyone putting their video on in hybrid design crits creates better engagement and makes remote folks feel included."

"Creating a career ladder is high effort but critical to help designers own their career journey and growth."

"A team charter provides a rallying point and purpose, especially important during times like the pandemic."

"Implementing Jira requires thoughtfulness, buy-in, and consistency more than the choice of tool itself."

"Having visible work through Jira or spreadsheets helps designers set boundaries and ask for support objectively."

"Our most important role as leaders is to grow people and help them develop resiliency to endure change."

Ask the Rosenbot
Dianne Que
Real Talk: Proving Value through a Scrappy Playbook
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Jen Briselli
Learning is the north star: service design for adaptive capacity
2025 • Advancing Service Design 2025
Gold
Gabrielle Verderber
Documentation Your Team Will Actually Use
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Alla Weinberg
How to Build and Scale Team Safety
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Lada Gorlenko
Theme 1: Intro
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Daniel Gloyd
Designing Warmth
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Sofía Delsordo
Public Policy for Jalisco's Designers to Make Design Matter
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Ariel Kennan
Theme 2 Intro
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Uday Gajendar
Day 2 Welcome
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Chloe Amos-Edkins
A Cultural Approach: Research in the Context of Glocalisation
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Lena Shenkarenko
Collaborative Wireframing for Creating Team Alignment and Shipping Better Products
2020 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Ted Booth
Discussion
2016 • Enterprise UX 2016
Gold
Robert Fabricant
Industry junctures: Paths forwards for UXR and the critical decisions that get us there [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
2024 • Advancing Research Community
Etienne Fang
The Power of Care: From Human-Centered Research to Humanity-Centered Leadership
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Roberta Dombrowski
5 Reasons to Bring your Recruiting in House
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Dorelle Rabinowitz
The Magic Word is Trust
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold

More Videos

John Cutler

"Sometimes leaders focus so much on scanning the river they’re not observing the surroundings—the banks tell you if the river is deep or shallow."

John Cutler

Oxbows, Rivers, and Estuaries: How to navigate the currents of change (without burning out)

December 3, 2024

Darian Davis

"I felt on edge and physically depleted after our interactions."

Darian Davis

Lessons from a Toxic Work Relationship

January 8, 2024

Dave Gray

"Tools are a blessing and a curse; they’re not people and they can’t replace the relationships you need to get the work right."

Dave Gray

Group Activity: Making Sense of DesignOps

November 7, 2017

John Cutler

"The subtle art of taking care of yourself and giving a f in ways that generally encourage coherent behaviors."

John Cutler

The Alignment Trap

November 29, 2023

Abby Covert

"The key to good diagrams is accessibly rendered, content driven, and visually supported."

Abby Covert

Stuck? Diagrams Help

October 27, 2022

Mark Interrante

"You can see our organization through the homepage of our site — we each owned a rectangle."

Mark Interrante

Collaboration Flows in Product Development

June 9, 2017

Devon Powers

"Trend forecasting is a culture industry—it produces culture as much as it predicts it."

Devon Powers

Imagining Better Futures

March 9, 2022

Prayag Narula

"Unbiased qualitative research does not exist. The best we can do is acknowledge and minimize biases."

Prayag Narula

How to Empower Your Designers to Do Good Research – And Why You Want To

June 10, 2022

Peter Van Dijck

"Skills are like onboarding material for the model; you write them as simple markdown files that describe workflows or tools."

Peter Van Dijck

Hands on AI #3: Claude Code for UX people

October 22, 2025