Managing Design & Research
Developing a team of 20 people
As part of a merger and acquisition the new business unit in Accenture Technology, called Next Gen Engineering inherited a design & research team of 20 people. As the Practice Lead it was my role to onboard and integrate the team into existing and developing business operations. This meant to align cultures, set role expectations, and articulate career development.
Client Accenture Internal
Role Design & Research Practice Lead
Team Team of 20, mixed capabilities
Time 18 months, 2022-2024
Key results
Successful design & research leadership in Accenture translated into key metrics, i.e.:
• 1% attrition rate in a transition time of a challenging merger & acquisition
• Staffing and billing rate at a near 100%
• Revenue of ~£200,000 across the team
Impact
The business saw the best attrition rate it ever had. Other disciplines asked for design to be present in scoping and biz-dev activities. Individual designers developed and grew professionally. The team saw promotion and acceptances to Master programmes despite hiring and professional development budget freezes. The overall team happiness had immensely improved and team spirit tangible.
Learnings
Developing career development framework and an articulation of what good looks like both at an institutional level as well as an individual contribution level are key to aligning people with purpose.
Approach
I started out getting to know the people, their backgrounds, their interests, passions, and professional aspirations. Next, I looked over the work and aligned with other business and design leaders on quality and what good looks like. Together with the business leadership we compared the market demand and industry trend to understand our business opportunities as to what types of competencies we needed to build out.
Design ops model
Together with business leadership we articulated a set of artefacts and engagement in how design needed to support the business, such as through staffing levels, lead generation and revenue targets.
This was then translated by the design leadership team into actions and outputs, such as our vision and north star, addressing how we worked together, what design quality looked like and our design principles.
We also defined cadences of rituals and ceremonies for town halls and spotlight success stories to develop our storytelling and demonstrate the impact of design.
Organisational capability building
Next we ran a gap analysis on who on the team had which skills, talents and passions and who was particularly good on which tools. Then we asked the team to do a self-assessment to gather their views on what worked and what needed improvement. We put together a high level development direction that each line manager and people lead could discuss and develop with their individual report.
Team building
We implemented a Design buddy scheme system that allowed mid-career and senior designers to start mentoring younger talent and develop experience in leadership and management.
We focussed on continuous improvement in our practice through the many facets of product design and development and practised a culture of continuous learning and learning from each other. Our weekly community calls developed as platform to share and hone skills in sessions, such as:
Design Jam sessions
Figma training sessions
Show & Tell
Guest speakers
Design critiques
Business pillar reports
We would also have regular socials and cross-company Town halls featuring the strong contributions of the design team.
Business as usual
During my leadership our designers were continuously staffed on projects with a rough attrition rate of less than 1%. Our billing rate, thanks to our passionate individuals and their dedication, was nearly 100%. Our average revenue stream for the design team amounted to ~£200,000 per month.