DesignOps 2020: Getting in Flow with Your Team (Session Notes)

Speaker: Ruzanna Rozman, Senior Designer at Proctor and Gamble in Digital Product Innovation

A brief biography: Ruzanna is Senior designer at Proctor & Gamble in Digital Product Innovation group, and she would like to use Design Thinking to solve all kinds of problems.

She is also a pet parent and an advocate for AIG Cincinnati.

The goal of today’s talk is to help you figure out how to get into a “flow” state with your team.

— Ruzanna is an average person in a product designer role, and  is doing  her best to get meaningful products.
— She works with a team to get her work done, and is usually working with one design partner or is only designer on team.
  • Especially on cross-functional team it is hard to get the information you need to make design decisions
  • The overall goal of this is to be effective

— Ruzanna really likes frameworks, as a good framework has ways to demystify design, and get non-designers involved in the design process.
— However, though frameworks  sometimes work, they can also fail.
  • For example, you don’t get outcome listed at the end of the article/book you read that described the framework.
  • Failures like these could be due to solving wrong problem or problems is too much to handle for tea
  • These kinds of failures can be re-assessed and the team can then move forward

— But having seen frameworks fail, it’s often the people who make framework succeed or fail

  • People make the frameworks work

— Frameworks are a team sport, and it helps to come to innovative solution with strengths you have. Frameworks highlight expertise that goes into product development, and helps bring that forward.

— Based off how different people work, you get sense of what person can bring to the table.

A Story

— Ruzanna was in cross-functional team and after a productive day of working on the project, she and a co-worker were laughing and giggling.
  • Laughter was an odd feeling to have at end of work-day
  • The co-worker said it “felt too easy to be our jobs”

— The phrase stuck with Ruzanna, as she wondered what it meant to experience this feeling.

A Definition

—The state Ruzanna was in while working could be described as “flow”. “Flow” could be described as the feeling of “being in the zone”, an enjoyable space where you enjoy the challenge you are facing.

— The psychologist who defined the idea of the “flow” state, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described the state as requiring a balance between challenge and skill.

— From the concept of individual flow Ruzanna goes into the concept of team flow.

— When there’s a sense of team flow, people feed off each other’s energy when performing a task together.

  • For example, when a group of surgeons perform a surgery, there is a sense they are the same organism with same performance, and that each surgeon is in harmony with each other

— The factors required for individual flow states are also required for team flow states.

— For flow,  you and your team need to understand why you working towards something, you need to know how much effort is needed for the product to succeed, and you need to know your team in order to understand the feedback you are receiving.

— To achieve purpose on her project, Ruzanna and her team began with a series of frameworks, to figure out why they were doing this specific project, as opposed to a different kind of project. The more people involved in this effort, and the earlier it happened, the better.

—The team began with a brand sprint, identified pain points, and tied people into empathy maps, established persona, and an overall experience map.
  • Doing it together was important to capture her personal flow, and rest of team’s personal flow
  • Getting people what they need to deliver their best work

— For developing the product, all concepts and ideas came in to help the team build the product they needed to build.

  • The steps listed in the slide came from various framework Ruzanna had exposure to

— The concept was good, and the product was ready to launch. But then the team had to pivot.

  • In retrospect, it was a good idea that the pivot happened, but initially Ruzanna’s team was blindsided by the change
  • A new product manager was brought onto Ruzanna’s design team.

— Ruzanna felt anxious about new product manager being introduced and fear of dynamic being impacted
  • Creating open communication from get-go, got the new product designer and Ruzanna’s initial people onto the same page
  • The same strategy was used when a new developer joined the team

— The new additions entered their own state of flow, and the team was in a mode where everything was super seamless, and it was easy to get into team flows.

  • The new team had a new sense of purpose for product, which they could apply learnings from previous project to, and were able to leverage the things they learned to maximum effect

— To round it off, you need a balance between goals and feedback for individual-level flow.
— For team flow, needed respect, trust, alignment (were most important)
  • Helped team keep open communication and keep people on same page and on the line
  • Feel empowered in space and being self in space
  • Knew things were getting done, and people felt they could communicate and that they could move seamlessly

— Though they don’t work together before, Ruzanna knew that each member brought skills and respect for each other person in the new team, including Guy Fieri meme skills.

— Ruzanna thanks everyone for attending her presentation.

Recommended Resources

Questions

  1. Have you identified conditions for team flow?
Thinking about achieving safety with people, and position at same company, and having safety in different emotional states.
For individual flow there is a skill/challenge balance. You need a similar balance with team members.
Really different for different people and team of three and four.
  • Didn’t know about team and how to make it work
  • Focus on making sure you are trusted, and that people know what you are doing
Feedback system of how people felt and what you advocated for. Learning if in communication with person, and focus on adjusting style based on person.
  1. Do you find that over-time replicating flow is less successful?
Ruzanna’s experience in 2018 and 2019 was  her best example of being in state of flow. She has a good team now, but haven’t gotten to level that she had with previous team.
Trying to see if flow can organically happen, and take advantage
Coincidence of right team member to come up with
  • May need to know someone at certain level to get into the team flow
Position she was in was being assigned to different team in every year and not enough time
Working people with different experience and perspectives, and need to be loose and relaxed about it, and developing a relationship
Science and method to it, but also a gut feeling
  • For athletes there is a sense of instinct and as you practice more get more instinctive, and use instinct to move forward