D(esign) Playbook - People

Org Structure & Leveling

Personal Statement: I’m very thankful to have had the good fortune to play a part in building teams in enterprise, consulting (agency), and consulting (embedded studio team) models. Below I share some tenets I have come to value universally across whatever model one might find themselves building teams.

Keys to Org Structure & Leveling:

Starting with the current need in mind and being willing to evolve the organizational structure while you grow the capacity/need - My favored publication towards this topic is Org Design for Design Orgs by Kristin Skinner and Peter Merholz. The text walks through likely evolutions of effective organizational structure as the team/capability grows (e.g. Step 2 Design Team -> Step 3 Design Org -> Step 4 -> Step 5 Distributed Leadership). But the most impactful message I would share here is that of “don’t ship the org chart” rather “design the organization”, meaning not to force a structure into a scenario for no other rationale than it is what you have had success with elsewhere. Flexibility is a key aspect of any professional practice, especially those where partnership and collaboration are key. In this case collecting feedback from stakeholders and making the best strategic decisions for growth and organization along the way is often most effective.

Horizontal vs. Vertical, avoiding discipline snobbery - There is a key choice to be made, usually somewhat early in the evolution of the design organization. The choice being whether to incorporate horizontal teams with specific discipline responsibility/ownership. I would emphasize again that there is no “best” is always preferable, in terms of whether or not to build using this horizontal formation, but one concern I would raise when considering the question is to check against potential horizontal/discipline aligned teams engaging in any form of “US” vs “THEM” thinking. To the point, I would argue that we in “capital D, Design” see our share intentional obfuscation in terms of role/discipline nomenclature. Mostly for the purpose of arguing that the this or that discipline or term is the “new hotness” and those that ascribe the term to their professional practice as clearly superior or more effective. $$$, ego, or power dynamics can all be incentives for engaging in this behavior, but should be avoided at all costs. To provide a direct example for understanding, if one were to develop a “service design” or “user research” horizontal, it would be important to communicate that “service designers” are not superior or more comprehensive, but that this discipline may utilize unique methods with accompanying unique outputs/artifacts. And that though you may have a “user research” team, this would not mean that product designers on a given product/effort should not still take part and understand the tenets of usability testing or optimization.

“Full stack design teams” - If deciding to building vertical teams including designers of all disciplines to align to specific business units or partner sets (which have tended to be my personal bias) my experience has been to start by seeking strong T-shaped generalists (“product designers”) with the strongest possible stakeholder management and communications skills. Each of these team members aligned to specific products/projects should have a thorough assessments of strengths to ensure that the sum of the team can cover most/all disciplines, while also allowing the opportunity to promote individuals to support their colleagues across the team where allocation provides.

Statement on “empowerment” and “promoting ownership” - Many groups pay lip service towards the concept of associate “empowerment”, loosely defined as, “I’ll get you what you need and get out of your way.” What I want to share about here is that trust is a key element of avoiding the need for micromanagement. And trust and autonomy must be developed through effective communication of expectations and cycles of establishing expectations, guiding and providing critique, and then as time passes opening up the autonomy and individual ownership of team members. This approach provides a healthier culture/work environment but has the additional benefit of promoting opportunities to examine team members growth and to remain responsive while maintaining positive work-life balance across all levels.

Leaders, leveling matters - An appeal here to leaders and managers. Having a thoughtful level plan is important. Actually executing and having a fair compensation strata is even more important. I understand the sentiment of many large firms to give a wide berth in terms of empowering their managers with the tools to “get the talent they need in a timely manner.” Meaning that few absolute rules about relative compensations may exist. Instead the standard may be to allow the flexibility to do what they choose and the lack of transparency with associates to potentially communicate the quality of the comparative reality. I understand the utility of this scenario, but I caution, and would suggest that the more we are able to base compensation on the actual work expectation and responsibility of roles vs prior compensation history or years of experience, the better framework we build to promote positive team cohesion and create positive incentivization towards growth and promotion. *Note I do believe there may be space for compensation multipliers based on education levels, certifications, etc but this should be carefully considered not to counteract or override the focus on responsibilities.

Below is an example of such a draft framework (values are not real or used by any firm currently):

Citations/Learn More:

Merholz, Peter, and Kristin Skinner. Org Design for Design Orgs. Van Duuren Media, 2016.

*Last updated 4/25/2020, please note this is for the purpose of allowing me to document and evolve my thoughts, experiences, and approach. I’d very much appreciate the opportunity to learn from you sharing yours. Reach out to me at jaydubois@gmail.com or @jaydubois