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
  • 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
  • For instance, the color “red” is forbidden
  • 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
  •  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?
  • Figure out the key components that make org flexible cover the long run
  • 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
  • Gambling changes abroad where causing impacting the gambling monopoly

 

—> Everyone from design organization contributed to a new vision statement
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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,
  • Products had become too complex, and people were reluctant to open Pandora’s box
  • Metrics were limited
  • Data was not shared/actively used

 

—> Major concerns also dealt with meetings that made people feel unproductive
  • People wanted to focus on big problems, not small ones
  • There was a lack of customer response time
  • 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
  • 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
  • We needed to know the org
  • We needed to build around paint points
  • We needed to communicate change was imminent

 

—> Scale design from business decision to produce delivery, through the AMAA product development matrix.
  • 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
  • We have tools, but the limiting factor was trust
    • Introducing trust is key for sustainable transparency

 

—> We needed to act as exemplars for how the company would work in the future
  • Used weekly stand-ups for open sharing
  • Design critiques were way for the client to improve their communication skills
—> Open sharing of work reduced the need for high-fidelity deliverables
  • Use of lo-fidelity prototypes proved to work

 

—> Each sprint ended in a demo, with product teams being led by a facilitator
  • We showcased user research, prototypes, and implemented software
—> Demo allowed people to speak who normally didn’t.
  • Also broad feedback built product team’s confidence

 

—> Despite many meetings at the design organization, actual work happened between the meetings
  • So each meeting required a pre-defined agenda, and clear established rationale
—> Discovered that remote tools and getting people to focus on workshop
  • 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
  • Toolkits would be flexible enough to meet any designer needs
  • Great for onboarding and introducing new methods
  • 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
  • For us, culture of continuous learning was cultivated
  • Issue was that we needed to understand why something didn’t work
—> Spreading new mindset started with new experiments, such as remote testing
  • Introduced additional methods beyond usability testing
  • Designers were then motivated to improve

 

—> Next, to survive uncertainty in crisis, every organization needs resilience

 

—> But where does resilience come from?
  • Resilience is outcome of successfully organized group of people
  • 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
  • Work: People have shared goals with those of the organization, that are reasonable
  • 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
  • Feedback shows strengths weaknesses and personal goals
  • 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
  • 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
  • NPS didn’t really work for gambling
  • We introduced customer tools to progressively prevent problematic gambling
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • We interpreted that model in a new way, and get everyone to contribute vision statements
  • Pushing responsibility to company strategy, influenced ethical design

 

—> Might be enterprise on top of design org, but change starts with you
  • 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
  • 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
  • Trust designers to go beyond immediate deliverables, which helps them build confidence
  • 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

 

  1. 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