Summary
We’re on wave three of the great resignation. Job opportunities abound for designers of all stripes, and loyalty is at an all time low as we reassess our changing professional needs and ambitions in this new world. Liam Thurston leads a team of 55 designers and researchers at Loblaw Digital, building commerce, loyalty, and healthcare products for all Canadians. Thurston’s team weathered the great resignation with resilience and thrived in the face of change; it left them even stronger. In this talk, Thurston will teach you practical tools and processes for creating a Design Practice North Star, skills matrix, and an inclusive set of cultural rituals to build trust and create safety for your team, especially within a large organization. If you're looking to level up your leadership practice in order to acquire and retain incredible talent who generate outstanding outcomes, this talk is for you!
Key Insights
-
•
Retention in UX teams hinges on creating clear paths for mastery and career growth.
-
•
Soft skills like communication, courage, and influence are as critical as hard skills in career development.
-
•
Involving the entire team in co-creating purpose statements and skills matrices increases buy-in and relevance.
-
•
Operating a ‘North Star’ framework combining purpose, structure, and cultural rituals drives team alignment.
-
•
Aligning UX career frameworks with broader company mission and HR processes ensures consistency and scalability.
-
•
Testing and iterating skills frameworks with real team feedback prevents top-down imposition and increases adoption.
-
•
Tools like progression.fyi provide valuable industry frameworks that can be adapted locally.
-
•
Regular cultural rituals such as public recognition and rotating team showcases boost psychological safety and engagement.
-
•
Cross-functional relationships with product, engineering, and marketing are vital in measuring output and success.
-
•
Transparency around career progression and skill expectations reduces team uncertainty and turnover risk.
Notable Quotes
"Being incredibly intentional about how we spend our time is the purest manifestation of our values and our value."
"If your team sees a clear path of mastery in your organization, they’re much more likely to stay."
"Mastery is pretty achievable, whether you have 10,000 hours or not."
"The skills matrix became the center of gravity for our practice."
"Soft skills often act as a multiplier on your hard skills."
"We ran ambient workshops so people could participate on their own time without the friction of a long meeting."
"Cross-functional feedback is so important to align definitions of skills like critical thinking."
"Building cultural rituals and recognition routines is so much more than just handing out a skills matrix."
"When your team feels safe, secure, and sees their future on your team, they’ll stick around for a long time."
"Opening meetings with 15 minutes of props is my favorite time every two weeks."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Doctors hate using EHRs because it turns them into clerks, interacting more with machines than patients."
Standardizing Product Merits for Leaders, Designers, and Everyone
June 15, 2018
"There’s no such thing as one-size-fits-all methods; what works in one part of the map doesn’t work in another."
Simon WardleyMaps and Topographical Intelligence (Videoconference)
January 31, 2019
"Designing for the dominant default ignores people whose identities are marginalized or excluded."
Sandra CamachoCreating More Bias-Proof Designs
January 22, 2025
"Reviewing decision points creates a source of truth and makes it harder to forget or scrap earlier agreements."
Darian DavisLessons from a Toxic Work Relationship
January 8, 2024
"Timely engagement helps stakeholders make faster, more informed decisions that lead to better business and product outcomes."
Fisayo Osilaja[Demo] The AI edge: From researcher to strategist
June 4, 2024
"Creating tangible artifacts forces reaction and debate, helping break enterprise paralysis and drive decisions."
Uday GajendarThe Wicked Craft of Enterprise UX
May 13, 2015
"Service blueprints would have helped business units understand backend impacts and responsibilities."
Davis Neable Guy SegalHow to Drive a Design Project When you Don’t Have a Design Team
June 10, 2021
"Once cash prizes were gone, people stopped feeling ownership of the design system."
Eniola OluwoleLessons From the DesignOps Journey of the World's Largest Travel Site
October 24, 2019
"We believe tracking design metrics aligned to business goals is important to demonstrate design’s impact."
Aurobinda Pradhan Shashank DeshpandeIntroduction to Collaborative DesignOps using Cubyts
September 9, 2022
