7 Questions to help you build a winning design & innovation team
Part 1: Creative Leadership Series.
This might sound obvious, but having talented individuals does not necessarily make a team. The benefit of working in a team is that you can have a group of people who have totally different views, beliefs, experiences and expertise from your own and from others. But like with anything in life, positives can have negative side effects. In this context, that is cohesion. If you don’t have a team that gels or thrives in the environment they are in, it is likely they won’t be a winning team. Differences and diversity are great, in fact, they are essential for innovation, but it is still important to have a cohesive view on how the team and function operate to foster a creative culture.
Creating a winning team means finding ways to treat each person as an individual while also creating a fair playing ground. The best way to do this is by ensuring everyone is on the same playing field, playing the same game and playing by the same rules. But of course, it is important to remember that the game being played is a team sport. Below I’ve listed some questions to answer as a leader or as a team.
These should help set the tone for how the team should operate to achieve the goals it was created to achieve.
The best way I believe this is done is to answer the questions below.
Question 1: What is the role and goal of your design/innovation team?
This might seem like an obvious question but my guess is that lots of designers and innovation professionals out there might not know the answer, or might answer the question differently to their colleagues. To be a winning team, you all have to work towards a common goal and understand what your role as a team and individual is. Here are some follow-up questions to help you answer this question:
Is it your job as a team to champion the benefits of design and innovation throughout the business? Or is it your job to be a design factory, pumping out whatever the business requests? Or a combination of these?
Is your job as a team to provide strategic direction or receive strategic direction? Or do you do both? If so, when and how do you know when to give or take direction?
Does your team have its own KPIs? Or are your goals cascaded from other parts of the business, for example, from Product Owners?
Question 2: How do we best achieve our goal as a team?
Based on your goal, how should the team be set up? Should subteams be assembled to be allocated to a business unit, digital touchpoint or should they be assigned a problem? If you work for an agency it might be that you are assigned to a client, or you might be assigned to a business function if you are an internal design team.
Question 3: What are our vision and values?
This question helps everyone understand the ethos of the team environment. The terms ‘visions’ and ‘values’ can sometimes get a bad name as they are over-said and under-used a lot of the time. But they are important. Your company might have their own set of values but it is good to have them at a team level.
Here are some questions to help you shape your values as a design and innovation team:
Do you value the ability to navigate through ambiguity or follow directions from others?
Do you value taking risks or playing it safe?
Do you compete with your colleagues or do you help each other succeed?
Do you value prototyping to test, or do you aim for perfection to ship?
Do the team value transparency and critique from all members of the team? Or is feedback only given by the manager 1-2 times a year?
Are you a team that values failing fast in the spirit of learning? Or are mistakes not acceptable?
Question 4: How do we work?
This question helps everyone understand what is expected of them. Teams come together having worked in other teams before with a whole different raft of other expectations, behaviours and rules. Some prompts:
Is the innovation team responsible for coming up with innovations? Or do they support others within the business to develop innovations?
Do you work iteratively with prototypes or sequentially with high fidelity design?
Do you design alone? Or do you design with others?
Do you accept random requests? Or is all work filtered through the manager?
Do you use a design system to create outputs? Or are designs and concepts created ad hoc?
If you work at a consultancy, do you expect designers to do business development work? Or are there others in the team or business who are responsible for that?
Question 5: How do we foster creativity?
Innovation or innovative design is impossible to achieve if you keep doing things the way you have always done them. To have a winning team that creates innovative solutions, you need to be deliberate about seeking inspiration.
I will write a separate post about this topic but some initial ideas to help include going to conferences and events (even if they are online these days), looking at what competitors are doing or those in adjacent industries or have meetings entirely dedicated to sharing interesting designs or innovations you have seen.
Question 6: How are people rewarded and grow in their role?
Hopefully, you have found a group of people who are motivated and ambitious. To avoid things getting competitive, it is good to lay the ground rules and expectations so everyone has a fair and equal chance to receive the rewards and recognition they deserve.
What are the behaviours that people will be rewarded for? The number of designs or concepts they produce? Helping others? Achieving certain financial targets? There is no right or wrong answer, every team is different, but everyone should know the answers to these questions.
Is there a clear framework for designers and innovators to understand what they need to do to get a promotion? If one doesn’t exist, does it need to be created? (I will also write a separate post on this too).
Or do you give people different rewards depending on what motivates them? For example, some people value a new job title over a pay rise or public recognition over a bonus.
Question 7: Who makes the final design decisions?
For those working in agencies, this one might be a bit easier, as the client typically has the final say. But if you’re working in-house this one can be less straightforward, which is why it's so important to make it clear from the outset. Why? Because if you hire a talented designer who accepts the job based on being able to make decisions but then finds themselves in a situation where they have no ownership, they will become disengaged and frustrated very quickly.
Again, there is no right or wrong answer here. Think about if you want design and innovation to be democratic or not. Who makes the decisions? Is it the Product Owner, the Head of Design, the Lead Designers, the Innovation Manager or the CEO? Knowing the answer to this question will save a lot of time and from my experience, a lot of heartache and frustration too.
So, how do you go about actually answering these questions in a meaningful way? Here are my suggestions:
Have everyone answer the questions individually and then share, this will highlight where there is misalignment and work to be done as well as where the team is syncing
Start from scratch and agree on what the answers should be together as a team, or
Have the design or innovation team lead answer the questions and then share them with the team
Personally, I prefer the first approach. It works best if you have introverts or people from a wide range of cultural backgrounds so everyone has the opportunity to share even if they aren’t forthcoming with their point of view.
These questions are also really useful if you’re looking for a job and want to know if your potential future employer and team are a good fit for you.
It is also worth noting that these are simplified, typically there is a lot of thought involved in creating these for your business, but this should at least help you make a start.
Thanks for reading, let me know if you have any questions or if there are any key questions that you think I am missing.
Photo by Pascal Swier on Unsplash