Design at Scale 2021- Adaptable Org Design for Resilient Times (Niko Laitinen)
—> Good day from Helsinki and thank you for having me
—> Today I will share journey of changing enterprise facing a crisis, teaching him five lessons of how a company can survive
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How to make design org adaptive and resilient to drastic changes
—> Began working with a consultancy called Nitor, whose work has focused on developing design practices and organization
—> Our client was the Finnish state monopoly on gambling, which was struggling to quickly respond to customer needs
—> For context, gambling in Finland is operated under a government monopoly, which runs everything
—> All gambling is under strict regulations, and profits are distributed to various social programs
—> Regulations were strict for the state monopoly
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For instance, the color “red” is forbidden
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Cross-links between products were restricted
—> Regulations are slow to change, so the design organization there needed to adapt
—> The gambling monopoly was a traditional enterprise with extensive hierarchy
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Departments was only managed as an afterthought, and we found that people wanted to change the structure of the company itself
—> But how to realign org’s direction to shared vision?
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Figure out the key components that make org flexible cover the long run
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Discuss where resilience comes from
—> We’ll discuss our outcomes from the case, and the five big lessons we got from the experience
—> The company vision had become dated and didn’t reflect what was going on in the industry
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Gambling changes abroad where causing impacting the gambling monopoly
—> Everyone from design organization contributed to a new vision statement
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Customers were loyal, but unsure of how responsible the gambling company was
—> We worked to better align company value for the customers, and producing gambling experiences for the customers
—> Things went well, but then the gambling company profit’s distribution became a heated political discussion, and there was pressure to renew the company’s strategy
—> Then pandemic hit, forcing organization to a adapt in short time
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Moreover, no one could work in the old physical office
—> We had to adapt!
—> The gambling company’s design was stable, but it was operating between two fires of business and development
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Started building design maturity through group discussions
—> We wanted to move to outcome-driven, and building the right thing
—> The organizational refresh was first a change mindset,
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Products had become too complex, and people were reluctant to open Pandora’s box
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Metrics were limited
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Data was not shared/actively used
—> Major concerns also dealt with meetings that made people feel unproductive
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People wanted to focus on big problems, not small ones
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There was a lack of customer response time
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There was an inability to innovate new ideas
—> A full-scale org transformation could also cause more problems, as people were not given chance to adapt, and had no idea what to expect
—> The focus therefore, was on providing a natural transition as much as possible
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The goal was to keep as many familiar faces as possible
—> Instead of overwhelming chaos, the transition would need to feel like a gradual refresh
—> To set proper rhythm
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We needed to know the org
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We needed to build around paint points
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We needed to communicate change was imminent
—> Scale design from business decision to produce delivery, through the AMAA product development matrix.
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Essential concept of design was about simplifying, and needed to be applied for development organizations
—> So we started our design org refresh from the ground-up
—> Refreshed how design org operated and changed the impact of design in the process
—> The size and complexity of org, was preventing people from action
—> Needed to get clarity of vision/culture to build confidence to figure out what needed to happen, and where resources were needed
—> Biggest core phenomenon is transparency, where people are allowed and encouraged to share info about the company
—> People tend to collaborate between issues and departments
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We have tools, but the limiting factor was trust
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Introducing trust is key for sustainable transparency
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—> We needed to act as exemplars for how the company would work in the future
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Used weekly stand-ups for open sharing
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Design critiques were way for the client to improve their communication skills
—> Open sharing of work reduced the need for high-fidelity deliverables
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Use of lo-fidelity prototypes proved to work
—> Each sprint ended in a demo, with product teams being led by a facilitator
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We showcased user research, prototypes, and implemented software
—> Demo allowed people to speak who normally didn’t.
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Also broad feedback built product team’s confidence
—> Despite many meetings at the design organization, actual work happened between the meetings
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So each meeting required a pre-defined agenda, and clear established rationale
—> Discovered that remote tools and getting people to focus on workshop
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A clear time-boxed agenda drove a progressive discussion
—> We embraced Agile methods for just the right amount of design, improved efficiency, through improving design objectives during a project
—> Example was through co-design or working and parole
—> We also used toolkits, which are methods to allow designers to adjust to any situation
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Toolkits would be flexible enough to meet any designer needs
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Great for onboarding and introducing new methods
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Also allow quick contributions
—> Low threshold makes toolkits easy to introduce the rest of the company, and allows the company to keep track of changes and updates
—> Toolkits were good at identifying remote actions, and seeing what could be done remotely
—> Continuous learning is key survival strategy
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For us, culture of continuous learning was cultivated
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Issue was that we needed to understand why something didn’t work
—> Spreading new mindset started with new experiments, such as remote testing
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Introduced additional methods beyond usability testing
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Designers were then motivated to improve
—> Next, to survive uncertainty in crisis, every organization needs resilience
—> But where does resilience come from?
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Resilience is outcome of successfully organized group of people
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So how do we get people to perform—meet their psychological needs?
—> Self-determination deals with needs that drive needs, and design org should focus on fulfilling the needs, and giving people space to make things work
—> Three main drivers of self-determination are autonomy, competence, and relatedness
—> Autonomy: People can impact their life and have confidence that their voices better
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Work: People have shared goals with those of the organization, that are reasonable
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Designers ask, can I move to where the shared goals are? And do I know the goals?
—> Competence: Clear direction that person is follow, and receives feedback to make progress visible
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Feedback shows strengths weaknesses and personal goals
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Competence shows being able to learn and grow professionally
—> Managers should add just right amount of difficulty for each person
—> Relatedness: Do people care for each other
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Chemistry is more important than the number of people, and building a sense of community around the design decision
—> So what were the outcomes from all these efforts?
—> Regular customer dialogue got people in the company to listen, and shifted the company’s strategy overall
—> User studies aligned the design work to what was important
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NPS didn’t really work for gambling
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We introduced customer tools to progressively prevent problematic gambling
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We got close to customer as source of change made up more adaptable
—> People were now collaborating across the company, and sharing resources and insights
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Used cloud-tools to facilitate workshops throughout other departments and content team from the design process
—> More opportunities were discovered with data that was available
—> We were able to exceed old metrics, even though other things were prioritized
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Customer-centricity was kept
—> Shift to flexible budgeting allowed adaptability in operations
—> Our main takeaways from this experience were as follows
—> Many obstacles were result of the business model
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We interpreted that model in a new way, and get everyone to contribute vision statements
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Pushing responsibility to company strategy, influenced ethical design
—> Might be enterprise on top of design org, but change starts with you
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Transparency builds psychological safety and growing confidence and motivation
—> Identify what’s important and how to articulate that across the org
—> Can bring clarity to complex org and wicked problems
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Automation helped simplify delivery of design assets
—> When done early in the process, people are allowed to push the envelope
—> Allow and enable experiments to offer flexible methods and continuous improvement
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Trust designers to go beyond immediate deliverables, which helps them build confidence
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People are eager to share growth with design org, if able to
—> We cultivated a culture of continuous learning, and harnessed the power of the design organization, and found there is nothing more valuable for a company than that
—> We suggest creating a rewards system to make this continuous learning more sustainable
Q&A
- When you described the client organization, you mentioned “ambidexterity was only considered as an afterthought” did I hear that correct? What does that mean in this context?
—> Company was so stable in its business model, it didn’t want to change and create something new, and optimize current way of working and new technologies to optimize status quo