Creating an optimized team based on the vision and their skills

Mislav Žokalj at UXDX Community: Visual Maps, Healthy Designing and Creating Optimized Teams. Video: https://youtu.be/VIZhTIQdBGc

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Where the skill map idea came from

[00:00:00] Hi everyone, hope you're okay and you're enjoying this nice afternoon, at least on my side. Today I would like to share with you a few insights and practices that we have started here, and which actually helped us quite a lot to get the benchmark on our whole design team department and see what works and what doesn't. So without further ado I'll dive straight into it.

[00:00:30] What we'll talk about today is how it all started, the inception of the idea that was in my head; how it was before we even started to think of implementing something like this; how we actually tackled the problem of the whole process of optimizing our design department and having some form of a skill map per each person; and finally I'll go over the next steps that are in our plans and something that I think is required to do once you have those foundations laid out.

[00:01:07] But before we jump into it, just so you know who you're listening to, my name is Mislav. I'm currently head of design at Cinnamon and I've been head of design for the past 14 months here. Previously I worked for six years as a product designer, and if I were to say my niche, my specialty in product design would be conducting UX research and setting foundations, which could be done through various workshops with clients, and research, market stuff like that.

[00:01:39] So where did the whole idea of a skill map start? Well, it started more than 15 years ago. I don't know if you recognize this image. Basically this is from Pro Evolution Soccer, a PlayStation 2 game, and I used to play it a lot with my older brother. He would always kick my butt in this, but all in all it was always fun. But something stayed with me. As you can see, the map in the top part of the screen shows a few things. It shows the most important skills or areas that a certain player is regarded in. It shows their strengths and weaknesses. But it also gives us a baseline to compare with other players.

[00:02:31] Why is it important? Because if you look at the soccer players, it's not that different from having your designers on the team. Everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses. Everyone's better at something while not that experienced in other areas. It helps us understand team competences. We can see where we are strong, but also it can help us identify weak spots in our team. But most importantly it can help us choose the best person for a job. So if you have a project that requires extensive research and then you have to do a spectacular UI in the end, you can combine a few people from your team to do the work instead of having just one person do everything by themselves.

How it was before

[00:03:18] So how was it before this whole initiative and the whole process started? To do that we have to go a bit back in time. I would go five years back, when I first joined Cinnamon. Back then there were five designers on the team, that amounted to 27% of the total company. We had zero team leads at that moment and we had one head of design.

[00:03:40] But a process, something that wasn't so visible from the outside, was that we had zero documentation. Nothing was written. We had scattered[?] documents. All the processes were kind of passed down, and we all knew how to do something, for example a user flow, but it was not a unified approach, it was not unified knowledge that was shared.

[00:04:07] And also we had zero seniority, so everyone was just a designer. This was a quote from our former HR manager, when I was getting to know her and I was just telling her about my work and the work that we do in the department. She asked, okay, do you have seniors, juniors? And I was like, yes and no, we don't have seniorities per se, but we play it by ear, we know who's more experienced and who's less experienced. That was an issue for us because it was not easy to create their professional development plan, to know where they can be, where they are at the moment and stuff like that.

[00:04:48] Now in 2023 we have 20 people in the department, which amounts to 20% of our company. We have three team leads and still one head of design. But in the background, what happened in the past five years is we created the handbook, which is kind of the holy grail of our department. We have everything written out in detail, and basically the whole handbook spans out and is extended to 35 plus documents that are linked within the handbook, that explain the whole design process in detail so everyone's on the same page, but also all the processes that happen internally such as mentorship, face-to-face check-ins, stuff like that. But also now we have a clear design ladder which showcases all the levels that we have within the department and what needs to be done to get to the next level.

[00:05:44] But we had almost everything and one detail was basically missing, and that was: how can we actually help people, how do we help designers go from one seniority level to another, and specifically how do we make it more personalized for them based on their current skills, based on where they want to be, what they want to work on, what they want to specialize in and stuff like that.

[00:06:13] This was something that was drawn on a whiteboard as a desirable outcome. We were hoping to achieve increased retention, because as you show people that you invest your time and energy into their advancement and their progress, it actually will help them feel more valued and they will feel more inclined to stay for a longer time, because they can see the perspective and you can basically align your visions. Also it would help us hire more precisely, because we would shape the whole recruitment process based on the needs and wants of our department and based on the weak spots that we have. And of course create an individual professional plan for each and every designer that's in our department.

Step one: defining the stack

[00:07:04] So now the sweet part, how the whole process looked. Step one was basically defining the stack. The stack is a list of skills that we deemed important for each designer to have within our department. Something that you always tackle first is the technical skills, the hard skills as they say, but I would urge you and recommend to go beyond not just the technical skills, but look at, let's say, people skills, soft skills, something that helps them as people, not designers only.

[00:07:42] So this is how it looks. We had ability to plan, we had innovation, we had research, we had lean thinking, we had user focus, and then we had 30 plus more skills. I think in the end there were 40-ish skills, but on the slide I can only fit I think 13 or something like that. And that was too much. It's not easy to define all of these skills, and also define all the levels of those skills, but also it's almost impossible to rate someone on all of these skills.

[00:08:16] So the next logical step in this whole process was to make a selection of the most important skills, of the skills that we want to create the foundation with. And also, as you select those skills, as you hash them out, you will see certain patterns, certain groups being formed. So from this we went to this, and from this we went to this.

[00:08:48] What happened is basically that you get three coherent groups of skills, the first one being technical, second one being supplementary and the third one being culture. What is important here is that technical skills are strictly focused around the work they do as designers. Supplemental skills are something that can be applied across the board, something that can be applied in a sales team or marketing or development, anything that helps them do their job but is not tied to the skills they need to perform as a designer. So for supplementary skills you would have mentoring, development knowledge, ability to learn quickly, having a business sense, communication and time management.

[00:09:35] And the last pillar, the last group, is culture, which was devised from our core values that we set two years ago, I think, at the design department, where we know what type of people we want to attract, we know what type of people we want to hire to be part of our department. So this is something that will help us identify those skills, those traits in someone.

Fine-tuning the groups

[00:10:03] So as we now have those three groups, something needs to be fine-tuned a bit. Here I had an issue with discovery, I had issues with research, prototyping and interaction. Discovery was not, I would say, precise enough. It didn't give a sense of what it includes. Research was too broad a subject, as you know, you have quantitative research, qualitative research, and those are quite different paths someone can take, so we had to see what we can do about it. While on the other hand, prototyping and interaction, for the work that we do, seemed too small items to be standalone.

[00:10:47] So in the end we got to product discovery. We had quantitative and qualitative research as separate items, but then we merged interaction and prototyping into one. Supplemental skills stayed as they were originally formed, while to culture we added "clearly communicates ideas". Now if you notice, in the second column the second to last item is communication, while we have here "clearly communicates ideas".

[00:11:22] Basically what we wanted to do with such a difference is because the ability to communicate well with those around you, with sensitivity to timeliness, medium, clarity and tone, especially when it comes to wild concepts that designers have in their head, something where you want to explain to a client, to your colleague, but it's very specifically tied to a design problem at hand. So we want to divide that as something that is ingrained in our culture, to basically be able to always speak about your design ideas, your concepts, your thoughts around the issue at hand. So now we have all three groups, in total we had 20 skills.

Step three: evaluation

[00:12:14] Number three, how we can approach it once we have defined the stack, once you have divided them into coherent groups, is basically do evaluation, and in the end synthesize the results of your findings, of implementing that process into your team.

[00:12:36] Evaluation was done on a few levels. The first one was self-evaluation, where we had like a 30 minute call with each designer where we had them evaluate themselves based on the skills. Each skill had four levels, from novice to advanced, and each level was explained in the same way, so we didn't have to create 80 explanations, we had to create 20 explanations for the skills. So one explanation for a skill, and to add to that, four explanations for each level. So we wanted to unify that, to not do the extra legwork, but also to make it more simple and more concise and more optimized to be implemented in other departments within the company.

[00:13:30] Then we had a team lead evaluation, where I had to sit down with their team lead to talk about their progress: were they able to objectively assess themselves, or were they overconfident or underconfident about their skill set and stuff like that. And then basically do the same thing in six to 12 months. Even though it says six to 12 months here, I would suggest doing it in 12 months, because six months might not be enough time for someone to basically work that intensively on their skills.

What a skill map looks like

[00:14:09] So once you have all of that mapped up, once you have your stack, your categories, and you've done your evaluation, this is what you get. You get a skill map. So this is a technical skills map at the moment, where you can see how different people have different shapes. As you know, the saying is people come in all shapes and sizes. Well, that is true.

[00:14:34] Something for us is that it's not important for us to have everyone being a full circle, because that's not attainable, but also it puts a lot of pressure on people to actually be able to cover a lot of ground. And you can see that some people excel at one area while having less experience or skill set in the other area, which is totally fine. But, as I said in my first slide, you can easily identify strengths and weaknesses within your team.

[00:15:08] When it comes to supplemental skills, this is also something that you'll get as part of this process: you'll be able to see who's good, who people rally around, who's a good mentor, who has a good business sense, understands the core business of the products easily and can help them on the business side, as not only doing the design work.

[00:15:34] And finally you have the culture skills, let's call them. This is something that we actually expect to be at least three out of four or four out of four, because that's exactly the type of people that you wanted to have in your team in the first place. So once you have the whole selection process of hiring, once you understand that and see that someone might not fit in this map, let's call it like that, you might think more about hiring them, because how could they fit in your team? Will they fit in your team? If they don't fit that much, can you still work with them, and if so, what do you need to do to be able to work with them as you would work with others that are currently within your team?

Synthesizing across the department

[00:16:24] So once you do the evaluation, now you have to synthesize the whole process and all the findings that you had. You get a cross-section of the whole department. As we mentioned earlier, you get all the areas that you excel at as a department, as a team, but also you can see easily weaknesses of your team. Identifying weaknesses can help you achieve a better hiring plan, but also it can help you create a revised hiring plan. You can easily then go back to the drawing board and go over all the questions that you have in your technical interview, even perhaps, maybe if you have a design task, that you can adjust to find that specific skill in your candidates that are currently in the pipeline.

[00:17:16] In the end you get this, so this is the whole cross-section per pillar, basically, where you can easily see in the first map that interaction and prototyping is something that we have, let's say in this example, one person excels at while the other two are not that experienced in it. So maybe it can help us bring those people to a three or to a two out of four.

[00:17:44] But also, something interesting is that we integrated mentoring as a supplementary skill. By pairing two people, to give them a chance to transfer their knowledge and experience in one skill where a mentor excels, they automatically increase their mentoring skills further. So it's not only about technical skills, but they also advance in their soft skills, their supplemental skills, as we highlighted here. So it's both in communication, it's both in mentoring skills, so something that helps us increase skills across multiple dimensions.

Next steps and takeaways

[00:18:27] And once you have all of that, this is something that could be on your agenda for next steps, at least it was for us. Basically you track individual progress across 12 months. You ask them, where do they want to be in 12 months, what kind of shape do they want to have in 12 months, and it can help you give them a more personalized development plan. It can help you have a retrospective on the hiring process: are all the hires that we have had in the past four months, were they good hires? If not, what should we change, how should we change it and stuff. Basically a lot of things around the whole skill map process.

[00:19:09] And as we mentioned in my previous slide, basically create mentoring pairs, which is something that we have implemented in the past six months, where regardless of someone's years of experience, so let's say someone has two years of experience as a product designer, they still excel at a certain skill and they can still transfer their knowledge of that skill and experience to people who are maybe, generally speaking, more experienced than them but did not have a chance, they weren't exposed to that skill to be able to learn it that quickly. So you can create mentorship pairs where people regardless of their experience can learn from each other and basically increase their knowledge in technical skills. They can increase their experience with supplementary skills such as communication, mentorship, also time management, because if you're a mentor you need to manage your time properly and stuff like that.

[00:20:09] As a small takeaway from this presentation: identify strengths and weaknesses. It can give you a bird's eye view of where you are and help give you perspective on where you want to be. Because if you know your current situation and you know where you want to be in 12 months as a team, you can easily identify those weak spots and work on them and fill in the holes and help you achieve a more optimized team that you are leading.

[00:20:40] It will lead to more precise hiring, because you would create a customized hiring plan based on the skill and the need that you're trying to find. It will increase retention rate, because you will be able to create a personalized development plan for each and everyone based on the skill set they currently possess, combined with the skill set they want to have, and combined finally with a vision of where you want your team or your department to be in the next, let's say, 12 to 24 months.

[00:21:13] And finally I would say give more purpose and have a clearer vision. Once you give a purpose to your team, they will be more comfortable coming to work, they'll be more comfortable being part of the team, being next to their teammates, and feel like they belong where they are right now. And in the end, once you do know where your people want to be in 12 months, you will actually know where your whole department will be in 12 months. And that's about it for me today. I hope it was interesting. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out, place a comment on Slack or here, and I'll answer it as soon as I can. That's it, thanks everyone.

Q&A

[00:22:05] Host: Excellent, thank you very much, Mislav, that was really interesting. I find it quite interesting how detailed you've managed to go, into like 20, or how many did you say in the end, skills?

[00:22:21] Mislav: Yeah, now we have 20 skills. Eight of them are technical, six supplementary and six culture skills.

[00:22:28] Host: Excellent, so there's quite a bit of detail, and that actually leads us into the first question that Emerson has asked. Do you think this level breakdown HR usually try to apply is detrimental to the development of some professionals?

[00:22:41] Mislav: This is something that, once I started doing that, I wasn't sure how to approach it in regards to collaboration with our HR team, because I didn't want to make it feel like it was a corporate thing. I didn't want to make it feel like it was something that the board or anyone wanted to impose on them. It was something that I wanted to showcase as our initiative within the department, to create something that can help people upgrade their skills.

[00:23:12] If you look at it on a high level as a process itself, which can be implemented through HR professionals, this is something that, if you do it, optimize the whole process to make it more universal, to apply it across multiple departments, multiple teams, so you don't have to do all the legwork again and again and again. And this is something that, as we have implemented it in design, other departments kind of started to catch up on it, and so far I've no idea at the moment how far along they came with it, but they know that they can always contact me if they need any help with it, if they need any support from my end. That's about it. I honestly hope I was able to answer the question, I didn't see the question in writing.

[00:24:06] Host: Yeah, I think the assumption in the question, the way I read it, is that HR was the driving factor.

[00:24:14] Mislav: No, no, this is purely our own initiative that happened within the department, something we want to show other people within the company, what can be done if you have such a group of people that you lead where they really want to work constantly on upgrading their skills. And it's not something that, as I said, was imposed by HR or board members or anyone else. It was purely our own initiative to do it.

[00:24:45] Host: Great. And I guess, does that tie in with promotions and levels? Do you have a kind of a thing that you have to be at a minimum here or something like that? And isn't there always going to be an area where one or two people are just naturally not...

[00:25:02] Mislav: This wasn't that much tied to a level of seniority per se, because that can be done much more easily if you're a product firm. So you know that everyone you're looking for in a product firm, let's say you have a design department, you have a research department, then you know that you have a dedicated kind of skill set per department, where you have diverse people. Working in an agency environment, it's not easy to tie certain skills to a level, because as I've said, you would have people who excel at one area but lack in the other area.

[00:25:38] And I don't want to be the person to say you have to learn this if you want to get promoted, because that person is much more valuable to me as they are right now, if they keep increasing and working on the skills they want to work on and upgrading their experience in the skills that they currently have. So it's not something that I want to put them in a strict form, to have it as a mandatory thing to get promoted. Promotion happens strictly based on their performance and how they do their job. That's it.