How I Established a New Design Team & Culture

Overview

In January 2023, the CVS design organization went through a re-org, where all managers and team members were assigned new projects
I was the manager of a new team of designers and shared services (content, accessibility, research) overseeing our Notifications and Visit Manager product
I collaborated with Jordan Williams, the Senior Design Lead of our new team, to establish new team processes, agreements, and culture

Skills

Design Team Management, Team Norms, Team Creation, Workload Management & Planning, Education, Delivering Feedback

Time Frame

January 2023

Role

Senior Design Manager: I planned and facilitated workshops to establish and document new design team processes, norms, agreements, and culture

Outcome

I successfully formed a strong team of collaborative designers:

Increase in team happiness and engagement (see survey results)
More ideas, questions, and participation during team brainstorm calls due to increased trust & safety
Clearer roles and responsibilities that significantly reduced "stepping on toes" between disciplines
Faster, higher-quality design delivery due to a clear process, roles, and communication

Happiness survey feedback:

Team happiness survey with high results of happiness

Problem

Re-org resulted in little structure for new teams... that's where I came in!

The re-org changed our design org from focusing on products to focused on specific parts of the customer journey.

This re-org happened quickly without much direction, which resulted in:

Team members moved from their original teams to work with people they haven't met before
Undefined roles & responsibilities for each team member
Onboarding to new projects in a short timeframe
No structured processes, team norms, or culture

On top of that, we only had a month to transition the team members from their former roles onto our new team and ramp up onto the new projects.

Jordan Williams (our newly formed team's Senior Design Lead) and I collaborated equally to help establish the new team.

We drafted out a timeline and tasks we needed to complete to help shape the team

Timeline of team activities over 6 weeks

Luckily, we heard the news of the re-org a couple weeks before it happened, so we were able to plan a timeline, which included:

Team introductions
Team norms workshop
Working agreement between design team
Roles & responsibilities workshop
Gathering links to design projects
Setting up virtual communication (Teams channels, meetings, and 1:1s)
Planning for knowledge transfer
Mapping out our work for the next quarter

Team Values & Collaboration Agreement

Team member introductions

While team building activities may not seem like the highest priority with the short timeframe we had, I believe that depending on the type of activity, it can bring team members together, help make connections outside of work to help everyone see each other as humans, and add some fun to the team dynamic.

Since the New Year had just passed, I had team members add a picture from the previous year, a resolution, and something that makes them smile. It helped everyone learn about each other for the first time.

Team members sharing new years resolution

Workshop to help the team establish how we would like to work together

After the team introduction, I facilitated a new workshop focused on team values:

Think of the best team you've been on. What made the experience positive?
Think of the most difficult team you've been on (don't name names). What made the experience negative?
What do we agree to do to make our "prepare for visit" team a success?

The following images show what the team put together for each of the three prompts.

Team activity: Team members wrote sticky notes on what made a positive team culture

Team activity: Team members wrote sticky notes on what made a negative team culture and what they learned from it

Team activity: Team members wrote sticky notes on what our team values were

I helped identify the top team values by taking the most voted-on sticky notes and putting them in sections while asking the team questions to elaborate on their sticky notes.

I created a team confluence space, and used the workshop insights to write a Team Values & Collaboration Agreement.

I asked the team to review it, ask any questions, and then I made some improvements before publishing it to our space.

Roles & Responsibilities Workshop

Defining who is responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed for each part of our process

With the re-org, some team members kept their former role, while new roles were introduced to the design org. The roles included:

Senior Design Manager (me)
Senior Design Lead (Jordan)
Experience Designers
Content Strategists
Inclusive/Accessibility Designer
UX Researcher
Interaction Design Lead (new role, undefined)
Visual Design Lead (new role, undefined)

The new roles had basic descriptions from the design org, but they were meant to be flexible for each team's needs. With that, I wanted to make sure everyone knew what tasks they were responsible for.

Jordan and I ran a workshop where:

Each team member wrote their ideas for responsibilities and deliverables within their role column
Each team member then visited the other role columns and added one thing they needed from that role
We reviewed each role and marked any gaps or questions that came up

Zoomed-in view of designer roles and responsibilities

Second Zoomed-in view of designer roles and responsibilities

Based on the workshop, I created a RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed) diagram with Jordan, and reviewed with designers, shared service members (content, accessibility, research), design leadership, and Product team members.

Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed document

I then added the RACI diagram to our team confluence workspace after reviews to officially document it.

Understanding Communication Styles

"User Manuals" activity: What is each person's working style, values, and communication preferences?

After establishing the overall team's values and our individual responsibilities, it was time to help everyone understand how they'd like to communicate with each other.

Jordan and I found an activity called a "User Manual" which allows team members to share their:

Working style
Values
What they don't have patience for
How to best communicate with them
How to help them
What people may misunderstand about them

We facilitated the activity, had each team member fill out their "User Manuals," share them, and summarized the common themes for the whole team. This helped everyone see what they had in common in terms of communication, while recognizing their unique needs.

It really helped everyone to learn right from the start how to best communicate with each other.

Themes from user manual activity: Team needs time to think, values others' opinions, and needs good communication

Team Meetings

Design feedback sessions, sprint planning, and daily stand-ups

As a team, we got together to brainstorm what kinds of meetings we needed, based on our previous roles and teams. Together, we decided which meetings were most important by voting on them, and then I scheduled them.

Design Feedback & Brainstorm (anyone on the design team can share work in progress for feedback or get help with brainstorming)
Sprint Planning (once every two weeks we would get together and I would facilitate walking through and adjusting upcoming work)
Daily Stand-up (a chance for each team member to bring up blockers if they needed support)
Design Presentation to Leadership (each week we would have the team share projects with upper leadership for feedback)
Design Team Time (non-work time to catch up as a team)
Design Team Monthly (a chance for me to go over any company announcements, education workshops, and strategy with the team)
Sprint Retrospective (reflecting on the past sprint to learn how we could improve for the next sprint)

The screenshot above shows an example of our Design Feedback & Brainstorm. Our team would get together for an hour to review work in progress. In this example, Tayef shared 3 design proposals and the team added questions during the meeting on the side, and voted.

Shout-outs of team members and the great work they did

The screenshots above show slides from the Design Team Monthly that I ran each month. We celebrated small wins from the team, and I would add quotes from our Sprint Retrospective as well. I would also do educational workshops with the team, one being on AI in Healthcare (second slide shows what I talked about with ChatGPT).

Retrospective on our meetings

After the first quarter, we asked the team to reflect on our meetings, mark which ones were most helpful, and which ones were least helpful. I then created a calendar view for our sprint with some learnings:

I changed our Daily Stand-up meetings to an async update in Slack each day
I extended our Design Feedback & Brainstorm to 90 minutes to allow for deeper discussions
Jordan and I set up weekly Office Hours to reserve time for anyone to chat with us (our schedules were very packed the first quarter, so this allowed for more dedicated time with the team
We canceled our "Optimizations" meeting where we reviewed analytics as it was taking too much time and didn't provide enough value
We reserved the mornings for heads-down time

Updated meeting schedule that saved 2.5 hours each week

Reminders to the team on upcoming deadlines, meetings, and presentations

Jordan had the idea to send a weekly newsletter to our team and leadership so everyone is aligned on:

Design deadlines
Important meetings
Upcoming presentations (and who has to prepare)
Learning & development opportunities
Shout-outs for the team

Jordan and I would get together every Friday to create the newsletter and plan for the next week. The feedback from our team and from Product leadership was very positive as it kept everyone informed and set expectations for the upcoming week.

Always Improving

Sprint Retros (Bi-Weekly)

On the last day of a sprint, I facilitate a "Rose, Thorn, Bud" activity where the team calls out what's been working, what hasn't been working, and any opportunities/ideas for improvement.

After everyone shares their sticky notes aloud, I move on to the "Top Action Items" section where I hold myself accountable on last sprint's action items, and then as a team we come up with actions we can take to improve this sprint's pain points.

These sprint retros:

Create a safe space for team members to share anything on their mind
Increase confidence that I will take action based on their concerns (as they can see the progress we make each sprint)
Empower designers to share ideas for improving how we work
Increase team collaboration in coming up with solutions together

Surveying our team on happiness, workload, and ways to improve

I created a survey and reviewed with Jordan on measuring the team's happiness. The only way we'd keep improving is by hearing from the team on what issues they were having outside of the work.

The survey allows us to act on the team's needs, but it's worth calling out when we're doing a great job! The team's happiness continues to average as happy.

Team happiness survey results of high happiness

We will continue to survey the team's happiness and needs so that we can continue to make improvements to our team's processes, meetings, and culture!