10 Colossal Screwups I Made While Building a Global Design Organization

The 10 Colossal Screwups I Made In Building a Global Design Organization A Cautionary Tale

STL UX Conference

03.14.14

Bill Bulman

Creative Director, Salesforce.com

10 Colossal Screwups: Who Am I?

UX & Design for 19 years

Last 10+ in Design Management Roles in

Consultancies and Agencies

Last 4 years @ Accenture/Avanade where I

grew a global Design/UX Practice

0 – 165 team members

20M in yearly revenue

15 countries

Now 8 months into doing the same at

Salesforce.com

10 Colossal Screwups: Note

NOTE: This is just a cautionary tale

about how to grow a global

consulting practice. I will not be

talking about tools or getting into

UX methods here.

10 Colossal Screwups: The 10 Screwups

THE 10 COLOSSAL SCREWUPS

I LET GROWTH OF THE PRACTICE GET OUT OF CONTROL WITHOUT A LONG TERM VISION

10 Colossal Screwups: Growth Out Of Control

What Do We Want To Be When We Grow Up When growth is fast, it is easy to get caught up in the tactical issues, like hiring quotas and such. You also have to keep the end goal in mind, which obviously isn't just growth. Develop a long term roadmap for the team with your direct reports and your management and review it bi-monthly as a team.





Take The Team Drinking When dealing with different cultures, your teams may not be forthright and open about challenges and concerns. It’s not you. It’s a cultural thing. It’s a language thing. Most countries aren't like America, where everyone complains about everything. Take them drinking and you'll get honest feedback



Hubs & Spokes It’s easy to start opening offices, but it's hard to do it systematically. Try to find regional hubs to grow out of, and then open country-level offices. If not, you have 1-3 people here and 1-3 people there and no collaboration or growth plans.

TRADITIONAL METRICS DIDN’T HIGHLIGHT OUR SUCCESS AND I DIDN’T EMBRACE THE NUMBERS THAT COULD TELL A BETTER STORY

10 Colossal Screwups: Embrace The Numbers



How Do I Even Open Excel? As designers, numbers are not our game. We traditionally focus on the other side of the brain. This puts us at a disadvantage in the corporate world, where revenue/utilization equals growth.



Create Fuzzy Math If you can’t use traditional ROI metrics to sell your case, find other ways to show your team’s value. If chargeability isn’t the story, show influence. If utilization is weak, show impact. It’s all about using math to tell a better story. Or just lie.



If Revenue is Low, Show Influence or Assisted Sales If your Revenue is pretty minuscule or non-existent, it is hard to show impact. During the startup phase of your team, you are most likely helping sell and win deals. So track the deals you help win, even if there is a small UX effort.

WHEN TOLD TO SCALE AS FAST AS POSSIBLE, YOU HIRE FAST, NOT SMART. SOME HIRES WERE AMAZING, SOME WERE NOT.

10 Colossal Screwups: Hire Fast, Not Smart



Hire Slow. Hire Right. If you are trying to scale fast, and hiring bodies equals fast, you are going to make mistakes. Developing ways to combat this are key. Develop scenarios to put perspective employees into a real work situation.



Hire not for today, but for tomorrow. When you are trying to build a sustainable practice, you need to find people that are looking to grow with you. You need to have a solid career path for them, and it should be somewhat consistent globally.


Find Superstars and Support Them. When building out a new location, take the time to hire the right leader. They wont be found overnight, but have patience. Once you find the right leader everything will fall into place.



Deep Engagement Doesn't Happen From 7,000 miles away Flying in from the other side of the world makes it difficult to be deeply engaged with the client. You have to hire the right people and trust them to do the right thing for the team.



Get Your Leaders Together As Often As Possible Conference calls, even video conferencing is great, but it doesn't really build trust and friendships within people. Get your leadership team together as often as you can. Fight for it, Blackmail for it. 3 days together discussing challenges, is worth 1000 conference calls.


I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND THE LIFE OF THE RECRUITER.

10 Colossal Screwups: The Life Of The Recruiter



Many recruiters lack of understanding of design and UX Most recruiting teams for large organizations are not used to recruiting for designers, researchers and ux architects. The education process in training recruiters to understand your needs is very time consuming.



Lack of local market understanding Even if you are an industry veteran and know where to find talent locally, including what companies to poach people from, what local events to go to, and how to find superstars is painfully difficult. Everything is new. Every expectation you have is most likely wrong. Finding local events and being part of the local design community is difficult if you are 7,000 miles away. Try and coordinate recruiting visits around local community events and conferences.


Is Your Company Sexy Enough To Attract Top Talent? In many cases, qualified potential candidates may not even know your company has a design team. Many designers look towards agencies or startups when looking for employment because it is a known entity to them. Convincing candidates to join a technical company or a consultancy can be a challenge.



Cultural Differences in Seniority and Levels Titles and seniority levels differ widely across the globe. In some countries, a person with a director title, will have had to go to the “right” schools and been with the “right” previous companies regardless of skillset and experience. In other countries, everything is based on skillset and experience. Neither choice is the correct solution to hiring, but knowing the landscape is a necessity.


BUILDING TEAMS IN 15 COUNTRIES SO QUICKLY, MEANS TRYING TO ENFORCE GLOBAL CONSISTENCY TO STREAMLINE PROCESSES.

10 Colossal Screwups: Enforce Global Consistency



Act global. Execute local. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking about everything being smooth from office to office, but the reality is market conditions through globally consistent offerings out the window immediately.



Consistency Is Overrated Give up on trying to have globally consistent deliverables. Its impossible. You have hired smart leaders, they will want to put their own personal stamp on their practice. Focus on the higher level experience. What do you want client who work with your different offices to feel about the experience?

I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES.

10 Colossal Screwups: Understanding Cultural Differences



Beer Drinking vs. Wine Drinking Early on it will be hard to support every country, so pick your battles. Did you know London can be a great base to support all the beer drinking countries in Europe? Same for Paris or Milan for the wine drinking ones. They have similar design sensibilities.

Work 12 Months. Get Paid For 13. When opening a new office in a new county, learn the employment laws and practices. It is different all over the world and understand them will help set expectations, and help you scale locally.



10 Colossal Screwups: You Need To Communicate

WHEN GROWTH IS EXPLOSIVE YOU NEED TO COMMUNICATE TO THE TEAM OR IT LOOKS LIKE YOU’RE JUST MAKING SHIT UP.



Share. Share Often. Things are moving fast. Its hard to keep up. How do you expect your teams in remote locations to know what’s going on? Find ways to communicate the team’s direction as well as solicit feedback. Monthly team emails and team meetings are a good way to do this.



Evangelism Is Key If you are trying to grow a team in a highly matrixed organization, you have to constantly explain the value of UX and fight for your team. It’s even harder when you are dealing with regional differences in priorities. Find what will make regional leaders met their goals and help them be successful and everyone wins.



Build a Community of Experts Experts within your team will rise. Find ways to celebrate the expertise, and allow the experts to share their expertise, both locally and globally online. Brownbags, Webinars are great ways to share within the team.

I EXPECTED EVERYTHING TO HAPPEN FAST, AND DIDN’T HAVE THE PATIENCE WHEN THINGS DIDN’T.

10 Colossal Screwups: Didn’t Have The Patience

I EXPECTED EVERYTHING TO HAPPEN FAST, AND DIDN’T HAVE THE PATIENCE WHEN THINGS DIDN’T.

10 Colossal Screwups: Didn’t Have The Patience

Don’t Freak Out When Things Don't Work Out Nothing is going to work out as expected. Having a plan B, C, and even D, and being able to turn on a dime, is critical.

I WASN’T PRESENT.

10 Colossal Screwups: I Wasn’t Present

I WASN’T PRESENT.


Running Out Of Space In Your Passport You need to visit these outposts and often. It is impossible to manage or even understand local needs and challenges if you are not there. Make sure you have travel budget and management buy-in on visits.


Realize you can't be everywhere and lead everything As you start to scale, you will have to delegate more and more and you will stop actually doing work and will be more coordinating work. This can be somewhat demoralizing, but it is the reality of becoming a leader.

I WASN’T PRESENT.


Success for the team is success for you… Remember that you are the facilitator for this growth. The team's successes are yours and vice versa. Its easy to get lost in that, but you job is to make your team the best it can be, not the other way around.

I WASN’T PRESENT.

I DIDN’T FIND WAYS TO BUILD TRUST BETWEEN MY TEAMS.

10 Colossal Screwups: Build Trust


Working With Offshore Doesn’t Have To Be Difficult Everyone complains working with offshore is painful. If you can get your teams together and meet in the physical world, and they get to socialize, the teams will work better together.



Offshore Doesn’t Mean Crappy Work Everyone believes offshore means cheap and sometimes crappy work. If you offshore the right things to the right places, you can make it work. Find locations where there is a more creative culture - Argentina, Costa Rica, China, Morocco, etc.


DON’T GET TOO STRESSED OUT ABOUT EVERYTHING, THIS SHOULD BE FUN.

10 Colossal Screwups: Too Stressed Out

DON’T GET TOO STRESSED OUT ABOUT EVERYTHING, THIS SHOULD BE FUN.

10 Colossal Screwups: Too Stressed Out

This All Means Long Hours - #embracethesuck If you are building and managing a global team it means you will be on calls in the early morning and late into the night. You have to stay in touch, but if you lose the work/life balance you will burn out. I did.

IT’S EASY TO STOP BEING A LEADER AND END UP JUST BEING A MANAGER.

10 Colossal Screwups: Be A Leader. Not A Manager.


Shiny Object Syndrome Leading a large team means putting out fires constantly. You can easily forget to focus on the high level strategy and instead deal with the simple tactical things.



You Will Have To Deal With Burnout Within Your Leadership Team You put a lot of responsibility on your country and regional leaders. They are selling the team, they are building relationships, they are mentoring and building the team. It is an impossible job. They will burn out. Some will leave. Building succession plans keeps things from falling apart.


10 Colossal Screwups: Summary

DON’T LET THINGS GET OUT OF CONTROL. HAVE A PLAN.

LEARN TO EMBRACE THE NUMBERS

HIRE SLOW. HIRE SMART.

LEARN TO LOVE YOUR RECRUITER.

GIVE UP ON ENFORCING GLOBAL CONSISTENCY

LEARN PATIENCE.

COMMUNICATE. COMMUNICATE. COMMUNICATE.

BE PRESENT.

DON’T GET TOO STRESSED OUT.

BE A LEADER, NOT JUST A MANAGER

10 Colossal Screwups: Useful Books

Taking Your Team To The Top Ted Sundquist/Justin Spizman

Turn The Ship Around David Marquet

When Teams Collide Richard D. Lewis

When Cultures Collide Richard D. Lewis

Being Global Angel Cabrera/Gregory Unruh

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team Patrick M. Lencioni

Silos, Politics and Turf Wars Patrick M. Lencioni

Designing For Growth Jeanne Liedtka/Tim Ogilvie

Managing The Professional Service Firm David H. Maister

How To Lie With Statistics Darrell Huff

THANK YOU.

QUESTIONS: [email protected] useabilly.com

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10 Colossal Screwups I Made While Building a Global Design Organization

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