Zero to One: Co-Creating Operating Models with your Team
Summary
Designers rarely work alone these days, and so the teams where we get our work done have an outsized impact on everything from how we feel day-to-day, to our ability to deliver our work, to our career trajectory. Rather than impose an operating model on my design team at [company], I borrowed heavily from the design process we use every day to co-create it in a way that solved real problems we were experiencing. Attendees will walk away with an understanding of how to lead teams that largely self govern, and the benefits of this model for team members, leaders, and the companies that employ them.
Key Insights
-
•
Designers should embrace design operations responsibilities to improve team workflows and outcomes.
-
•
Operational excellence is critical in large, complex organizations to overcome slow delivery and high interdependence.
-
•
Start with simple systems that work, evolving complexity over time (GA's law).
-
•
Autonomy in teams builds ownership, enabling co-creation and empowerment rather than top-down control.
-
•
Transparency about work and time usage reduces leader meeting overload and builds trust.
-
•
Regular one-on-ones focused on personal development drive meaningful leadership and team growth.
-
•
Pulse surveys taken consistently help detect changes in alignment and morale over time rather than aiming for perfect scores.
-
•
Retrospectives that encourage direct, kind communication cultivate a healthy friction that improves team culture.
-
•
Allowing the team to co-design processes, including standups and planning cadence, increases relevance and engagement.
-
•
Operational models must be resilient to real-life interruptions like PTO and team growth while maintaining upward progress.
Notable Quotes
"It took over a year and 10 teams just to ship four onboarding screens."
"What if all designers were design operators?"
"We have to go slow to go fast."
"Simplicity is the foundation of all complicated systems that work."
"When teams solve their own problems, they make high impact decisions on their own."
"One-on-ones aren’t just reflective of a point in time but are a journey you go on together."
"Retrospectives are a great place to have direct, kind conversations that come from caring."
"Sometimes organic culture pieces, like playing Wordle at the end of standup, shorten meetings and keep them tight."
"Process is the scaffolding that helps culture grow when done right."
"Create a feedback loop, keep it simple, empower designers to own their ways of working, and have patience for results."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Sharing insights is like creating a learning space where stakeholders can use the information in their own way."
Jerome “Axle” BrownHow to Use Self-Directed Learning to Ensure Your Research Insights are Heard and Acted Upon
March 11, 2021
"We could create a sustainable culture of design and use it as our leading edge weapon of transformation."
Phil GilbertA Consistent Culture of Design
May 14, 2015
"No matter what your contract says, once your data is in the cloud connected to an LLM, you have to accept the risk it could be exposed."
Kate Towsey Basel Fakhoury Oren Friedman Graham GardnerParticipant Recruitment and Management Tools
March 12, 2026
"There hasn’t been a better time to be a user researcher, especially in machine learning enabled experiences."
Sohit KarolDesigning Delightful Listening Experiences: Mixed Methods Research in the Age of Machine Learning
March 31, 2020
"Seeing the dots connected so clearly reminded me why I was doing what I was doing."
Christopher Taylor Edwards Valerie RoskeDesign as a Team Practice, A Practical Guide to Cross-functional Collaboration
September 30, 2021
"Systems thinking can help us design more explicitly for resilience, as seen in distributed manufacturing of PPE during the pandemic."
Sheryl CababaExpanding Your Design Lens with Systems Thinking
February 23, 2023
"You need to come up with your own definition of design maturity based on your team’s understanding and context."
Francesca Barrientos, PhDYou Need Your Own Definition of Design Maturity
June 8, 2022
"If your purpose is just getting through 2020, that’s okay — survival can be the goal right now."
Allison SandersOperating with Purpose
January 8, 2024
"Words are how we express our values, our philosophies, why we do what we do as designers and researchers."
Saara Kamppari-Miller"Prototype" vs "Prototype"--Breaking Down and Rebuilding Our Understanding of What We Do
October 24, 2019
