Building a Design Organization from Scratch: A Journey of Hiring and Culture-Building

Original painting by Sudha Broslawsky

Creating a design organization from the ground up is both exciting and challenging. At Achieve, I built a high-performing design team from 3 to 30 in 8 months in a journey marked with hurdles and victories—with lessons throughout.

As Steve Jobs famously stated, "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." With this in mind, I set out to construct a world-class design organization—from its guiding principles to the inner workings needed to operate effectively—and highlight the pivotal role of design in driving business success.

Here are 10 components needed to build a design team from scratch:

1. Laying the groundwork

   Building a design organization goes beyond hiring the right people. It involves creating a team that harmoniously collaborates within itself and with other departments, driven by  clear values, mission, and vision. As my first steps when I started at Achieve, I had to define my vision and mission, testing and iterating with my colleagues, making sure that they aligned with the overall company’s. 

   A well-articulated vision and mission provides the team with a sense of purpose and direction that aligns with the company's overarching goals. Having this clearly defined before kicking off the hiring effort helped organizational planning and shaping the culture that would be embodied by the team. 

2. Get buy-in from the Business

   To get the resources needed to grow a design organization, business buy-in is crucial. Well-designed products or services are known to solve customer problems, help improve their lives, and increase retention. However, the positive impact of design may or may not be apparent to the C-suite and senior leadership at all companies. 

   It’s critical for a Design leader to define their strategy in their first few weeks, relate to business goals, and present it to the leadership team to get their support for building the team. Design leaders must prioritize evangelizing how investing in Design will add value to the business, and being ready to unpack and answer any questions from the senior leadership. They ultimately want to amplify the cost of not investing through showing the value in investing. Businesses that have a strong design organization generate 32% more revenue, as well as 56% more shareholder returns, on average (source: McKinsey). Good design reduces costs by avoiding unnecessary revisions, improves market standing, and increases revenue by improving customer experience. 

3. Championing diversity and inclusion

   In the spirit of designing products or services that cater to a diverse user base—in Achieve’s case 123 million people—we had to ensure that our team was just as diverse. A team comprising of varied perspectives leads to design solutions that are comprehensive, inclusive, and appealing to all users. 
   

   One of the integral principles in my team building plan was to tap into all aspects of diversity and inclusion, including but not limited to age, gender, mindsets, experience, and geography. I also wanted to focus on providing opportunities to women and other marginalized groups and bringing their perspectives and leadership to the forefront, cultivating a respectful, diverse, and innovative team culture. In the end, we ended up with a diverse, multi-generational team—bringing together a breadth of knowledge and experiences they can all benefit from. The team was composed of 70% women who spurred progress in all functions of design at Achieve and transformed the company culture and product solutions with empathy at the core.

4. Creating a winning hiring framework

   Building a design organization amid the intensely competitive job market in 2021-2022, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, was challenging. However, by leveraging industry best practices and personal experience, I created a robust framework for our design organization that included:
   

   • Assessing the company’s design maturity and defining a strategy based on that information. 

   • Designing a specialized hiring process tailored to the unique requirements of a design team, focusing on specific skills, functions, experiences, and personalities. This included a step-by-step process for interviewing, from sourcing to screening, to interviewing and offering, and all the documentation needed for all those involved: the TA team, interviewers, and the candidate.

   • Implementing robust sourcing and screening frameworks to ensure consistency and fairness in candidate evaluation through systematic sourcing and screening processes. 
     

5. Collaborating with the Talent Acquisition team

   Building strong relationships with the Talent Acquisition (TA) team involves closely collaborating and communicating with them to identify the right talent for the organization. Here’s how I worked with TA:
   

   • Meeting rituals: I had a daily morning ritual of meeting my TA partners to review the candidates in the pipeline, recruiting strategy, and day-to-day planning, and a nightly ritual of going through the list of candidates and leaving extensive notes and next steps. This consistent practice helped to build a strong partnership with the TA team and to hire top talent in one of the toughest job markets.

   • Leveraging real-time data to train the TA team: We equipped our TA team to better identify potential candidates by harnessing data from our hiring process.
     Everything was documented and analyzed to both refine recruiting for the design organization and identify which eligible candidate skills and traits we were looking for.

   • Getting to know the design team: I also consistently invited the TA team to observe the design team meetings and scheduled informational interviews for the TA team with existing design team members. This helped to uplevel the understanding of the TA team with what to look for in new team members.

6. Focus on the candidates

   In the hiring process, we’re not just interviewing candidates—they’re interviewing us to get a feel for company culture, potential career growth, and fit. I put the focus on the candidates by:
   

   • Defining clear career ladders and professional development opportunities: I established clear career paths and continuous learning opportunities for all functions of design (Product & Service Design, Research, and Content design) to attract and retain top talent. Career ladders became an essential artifact while talking to candidates to exactly pinpoint where they would fit in when they joined the company and what their career growth would look like. I had many candidates get excited when career ladders were shown to them, and this established early trust in conversations and the interview process as a whole.

   • Promoting transparency in communication: We emphasized clarity and transparency in our values and expectations from the initial conversation, fostering meaningful conversations with candidates and determining mutual fit. This involved a succinct summary of the state of the company & business, the leadership team, culture, state of the design team, strengths and challenges in cross-functional collaboration & communication, and opportunities for growth. After all, we want to attract the right candidates and it was important that their potential role was communicated transparently to build trust from the get-go.
     

7. Optimizing the interview panel

   The quality of your hiring decisions is intrinsically tied to your overall interview process and the makeup and readiness of your interview panel. For a well-rounded candidate evaluation, it's imperative to curate a panel that represents a spectrum of roles and hierarchies within the company. This approach not only provides a holistic insight into the candidate from different perspectives—it also facilitates interactions between and introduces the candidate to potential interdisciplinary team members and collaborators. A few strategies to build a strong interviewer pool:

   • Engage cross-functionally: Attend team meetings across different departments from which you can build your interviewer pool. Discuss the symbiotic relationship between design and overall business success, emphasizing how they can play a critical role in shaping a competent and collaborative team that serves both business objectives and user needs.

   • Educate and collaborate: Treat these teams as essential stakeholders. Educate them about the design functions, the nuances of the hiring process for these roles, and interview expectations. It's also a fitting occasion to dive into the design organization's career progression, interview preparation tools, and related resources like question banks.

   • Structured panel selection: Establish and update a sign-up document for potential interviewers. This becomes a pivotal tool to thoughtfully assemble interview panels, ensuring a harmonious mix of roles and points of view for each candidate's assessment.
     

8. Managing resources and retaining talent

   Building a design organization also involves prudent resource management. This includes budgeting for compensation, learning, team building, design tools, training, and other resources. Retaining talent is just as crucial as hiring talent, which we strived to achieve by providing a positive work environment, a healthy work-life balance, timely feedback, growth opportunities, fair rewards and recognition, and competitive compensation and benefits.

9. Integrating technology for efficiency and productivity

   Creating a design system—a collection of reusable components guided by clear standards—was a crucial part of building a design organization. A design system enabled our team to have a strong “accessibility first” component library to prototype designs efficiently for testing and iteration. Similarly, development teams across 10 products were able to leverage a single source of truth for components, patterns, and guidelines to quickly deliver consistent and scalable products and experiences. Also, integrating the most efficient tools for research, writing, and design into our workflow allowed us to innovate and stay competitive.

10. Measuring success on all fronts

    Finally, a great design team helps nurture business growth in a clear and measurable way by defining and tracking success metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs). 

    Understanding business strategy and goals allows in identifying the skills and expertise needed in prospective hires. By correlating design metrics, such as usability, satisfaction, and engagement, with business metrics like revenue, customer retention, and lifetime value, we underscore the value of design within the organization. This alignment makes it easier to communicate the importance of design roles to stakeholders and helps in attracting candidates who can drive both design and business success. In essence, a well-measured design strategy, embedded from the hiring stage, not only fosters an enhanced user experience but also ensures we are building a team that contributes significantly to key business outcomes.

The process of building a design team from scratch is undeniably intricate. However, with the right strategies, a collaborative spirit, and a commitment to fostering a diverse and inclusive environment, it can be a rewarding journey. As we craft our teams, we are not merely assembling individuals; we're building a thriving design culture that amplifies our business. A great team and the meaningful work they do has the power to not only impact the business—but also the lives of the people helped along the way.