Back in December 2022, I was invited to speak at a Design Talks event hosted by AutoTrader in Manchester. The theme of the night was the culture of design teams - here are my thoughts.
(Did anyone else insert the ‘Du-dum’ from Law and Order after that last line? No - just me? I need to get out more, clearly).
(Did anyone else insert the ‘Du-dum’ from Law and Order after that last line? No - just me? I need to get out more, clearly).
My Experience of Cultivating Culture
I’ve managed a number of teams across my career, the most recent being (at the time of writing) the Design and Research Team at On the Beach. Which I proudly did for 3 years; faced with challenges such as global travel restrictions, a swift transition from in-office to remote and then to hybrid working and supporting colleagues’ mental health and well-being, while we all juggled life amidst the craziness of 2020 and 2021.
Before I joined On the Beach in 2020, our designers were somewhat fragmented across the business – Digital Designers aligned to Marketing and UX Designers and Research sat within the Tech and Product function. There had never been a ‘Head of’ role in the Design Org before - in fact, there wasn’t much of a Design Org at all.
So, one of my main priorities was about unifying the team through building our team culture, in order to establish best practice ways of working so that we (as a team) were then able to not only embrace an experimental mindset and do our best work but so that we could share across the business how design is a process and how that process can be applied in many situations and scenarios.
The Art of the Design Process
I’m of course biased to believe that the role of design is an important one, however, it’s often overlooked - with stakeholders (especially) seeing design purely for its output. But as designers, we all know, it isn’t an output – it’s a process. It can be messy and even though we’re data-driven, there might be times when we’re unsure – overwhelmed by a complex issue and we need to work on breaking things down into smaller, more manageable parts.
This process is applicable to other areas – in and outside of work; we deal with problems and issues that might leave us knowing unsure of where to start, but the designer has an extensive and relatable toolkit allowing us to wear many hats; from explorers, charting the unknown, to mediators balancing the needs of the business, our customers and our Engineering teams, and we’re facilitators and collaborators. We help others, and we help our users ultimately, but we, through our design process, help bring our teams together. So, we need a culture which supports and builds confidence for us to be fluid enough to move between those roles.
Emotions are also important to create the optimum flow state for people and teams to perform well and efficiently. At the time I gave the talk at AutoTrader, I had been discussing the notion that you can’t design while you're angry. We need to be able to see, feel and bring the fun to what we do to allow for creative, lateral thinking and to cut through the noise of complexity we’re often faced with.
And it’s for all these reasons that design culture is important – it can (and should) impact more than just the design team.
People are just houseplants with more complicated emotions
While reflecting on building design culture, I found myself considering themes that would be true if we were discussing how best to grow house plants. So hopefully, by metaphor and analogy, some of what I’ve got to share on this might be memorable and semi-entertaining. Although – no promises on the latter.
Basically, I believe that an environment where people feel seen, and have encouragement, support and space – are all important factors in helping cultivate design culture.
The Importance of Sunlight
This isn’t about people seeking out the limelight as for some that’s not how they do their best work. Instead, this is about the team, as individuals first and foremost, feeling seen and heard by their peer group and by their team leadership.
From a manager's perspective, this could be realised by ensuring that 1:1s happen and that you are in a position to hold space (to listen without judgement and really hear what’s being said) for those who report to you. It’s about those people individually feeling recognised and nurtured so that when the team come together, that trickles down into how they work together.
In a similar way, it’s important to have team rituals, too. Our Designers and Researchers worked across delivery teams on different parts of the customer experience at On the Beach. So it was important for us to get together at least a couple of times a week and share our work and research insights, as well as discuss ways of working and trends so we stay connected as a team by shining light on what we’re all working on.
The Power of Encouragement
This isn’t about blind praise, this is about creating a safe environment for open conversations. Meaning that, to enable this, there’s a real need for the team to connect on a level that’s more than just the work. So, while we have open and realistic conversations about development, we do this from a space of positivity and encouragement.
When a team’s foundation is strong, it allows for deeper conversation – allowing people to share what they are going through and what matters to them. So that people can feel like they bring as much of their full selves to work as they feel comfortable with. And when the team are connected in this way, you’ve created a net of cheerleaders, ready to catch you when there’s a creative wobble or a conversation with a stakeholder that didn’t quite go to plan. To boost you, help you see issues from other perspectives and re-energise each other, ready to face the next challenge.
One of my favourite mantras (or my ‘Bottomley Bingo’ phrases as they became known to the team) is that we’re always learning and one of the skills I think that’s hardest to do in this space of encouragement is hearing what’s NOT said. We can be quick to help fix things for others, but encouraging others to find answers for themselves – exploring the problem space, asking questions – all the things we do in a discovery workshop, for example, is far more empowering for the individuals in our teams, leaving them feeling capable and in control.
Another thing to encourage is a shift of perspective. Another favourite quote, albeit from an unexpected source, is “The problem, isn’t the problem, it’s your attitude about the problem” from Johnny Depp as Capt. Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean. So how can we encourage distance between a person and the problem they are dealing with? Again, this is a practice we might engage with when designing, and when it’s applied in another context such as self-development, or resolving ways of working - even personal - issues, for example, we’re living and breathing ‘design’ practices and by extension, developing a design culture.
Having Support and Direction
I believe giving people structure is also helpful in creating design culture – this can help people know what’s expected of them, so that know the direction of travel we’re going as a team or wider business and how they can contribute to that. But, I also think that knowing this structure also helps people spot opportunities for when the rules can be flexed so that we can ‘colour outside the lines’.
In practical terms, these can be competency frameworks, OKRs, asset libraries, and design systems. As these structures support us, being more cohesive and efficient – but they shouldn’t restrict us and we should, through sunshine and encouragement, have the confidence to know when this structure needs to change or adapt. This might be adapting how we work as a team through to pivoting direction due to changes in environmental factors.
And we’re not making change for change's sake – these are often small course corrections, or pruning – to make sure we’re aligned with our overall ambitions – at individual, team or organisation levels.
Overall, this helps a team see how they form part of something bigger. Vital for any culture to thrive.
Room to Grow
My last point. An essential part of the design process is having the time and space to just think. With wider implications in today’s go-go-go ‘always connected' society where something is always vying for your attention – we all need space, room to think, breathe, connect, feel and understand.
While we might feel pressured to deliver in our Agile and Lean work-life, we need to carve out even a micro version of this practice of stopping and thinking. It’s then these little but often practices that then contribute to habit forming.
Design can often have ego as a driver, we discussed this as a team previously and saw this as one of the ‘darker’ attributes of design. For me, ‘Room to grow’ encourages us to detach from the ego and feeds a culture of always learning, instead. shifting perspective to see mistakes, failed tests etc as learning opportunities and encouraging ‘failing fast’ with an appetite for experimentation. Approaching things with a beginner's mindset – remembering that in the beginner's mind, there are many opportunities, while in the experts there are few – or DKNY (designers know nothing - yet) – also helps encourage this, too.
To summarise, my thoughts on cultivating design culture are around:
- Creating the environment by providing warm energy, like the sun, for people to feel seen, heard and recognised
- Encouraging people, but not blindly positive, to open up honest conversations and give people the tools to explore possibilities
- Providing structure and support, and allowing regular pruning to ensure healthy growth together as a team
- And, the all-important space – for growth, contemplation and experimentation.
As always, thanks for reading! Why not share your own thoughts with me over on LinkedIn or Twitter?