Summary
What's today's theme all about, and what does it mean for DesignOps professionals? Theme leader Alana Washington will provide you the background you'll need for how today's sessions came to be and what they'll cover. She'll also gently provoke you with questions to consider throughout the day.
Key Insights
-
•
Resilience in design ops extends beyond bouncing back to fostering real-time, positive transformation for individuals and organizations.
-
•
Physical health is foundational to creative and organizational health within design teams.
-
•
Design ops acts as the connective tissue that holds design organizations together, especially during challenging times.
-
•
The concept of resilience is particularly relevant to solo design ops practitioners or small teams of one.
-
•
Burnout prevention and sustainable energy management are critical for a resilient design ops team of one.
-
•
Psychological safety and creativity begin at the individual level before scaling outward to teams and organizations.
-
•
Creating and leveraging a personal network for help is important for solo design ops professionals.
-
•
Understanding one’s strengths can reveal both advantages and potential blind spots in professional growth.
-
•
Reflective practices and provocative questions encourage personal and organizational growth in design ops resilience.
-
•
Maturing a design ops practice requires intentional effort to embed resilience across the organization.
Notable Quotes
"Design ops is the heart, the connective tissue of our design organizations."
"Many definitions of resilience focus on bouncing back quickly, but we need to push that further."
"Without physical health, we cannot have creative health or organizational health."
"The resilient design ops team of one lands this concept of resilience at the atomic part of our teams—our individual selves."
"How do we organize, scale, and avoid burnout as a team of one?"
"Psychological safety and creativity begin with the individual and scale outwards to teams and organizations."
"When you need help, who do you go to in your network?"
"What are the small steps teams can take to sustain their energy and wellbeing over time?"
"What are your assumed greatest strengths, and how might they prevent you from stepping into new spaces?"
"If you had a magic wand, what would you do to create more safety for yourself?"
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Telling your team’s story explains the culture of your team and how someone could fit into it."
Jennifer KanyamibwaCreating the Blueprint: Growing and Building Design Teams
November 8, 2018
"In large organizations, research teams usually pay for the repo but the value is delivered across the whole company."
Brigette Metzler Dana ChrisfieldResearch Repositories: A global project by the ResearchOps Community (Videoconference)
August 27, 2020
"A cross-functional project in name only means people report back to their management silos, not to the project team."
Carl TurnerYou Can Do This: Understand and Solve Organizational Problems to Jumpstart a Dead Project
March 28, 2023
"Connecting dots goes beyond just linking user experience; it’s about engagement with the organizational system."
John Mortimer Milan Guenther Lucy Ellis Patrick QuattlebaumPanel Discussion
December 3, 2024
"My superpower is to connect the dots between people, places, ideas, and opportunities."
Dante GuintuHow to Crush the Talent Crunch
September 8, 2022
"The new marketing is about preparing users or customers for the new kinds of products that will emerge as time moves forward."
Richard BuchananCreativity and Principles in the Flourishing Enterprise
June 15, 2018
"Every speaker before me had these pristine backgrounds. I’m a slob and feeling really self-conscious about it."
Dan WillisTheme 3: Intro
January 8, 2024
"Failure is when effort did not produce the desired result, not an identity."
Dan WardFailure Friday #1 with Dan Ward
February 7, 2025
"Let’s shake s*** up."
Chris GeisonTheme Two Intro
March 28, 2023