From Insights to Action: Driving Business Values through DesignOps
Summary
Business leaders now recognize the Business Value of Design, but how about the importance of Design in driving our Business Values? DesignOps plays an essential role in defining how individuals, teams, and organizations think and operate. Now comes the next chapter - operationalizing our values. As system designers who establish new processes, scale best practices, connect teams, and facilitate alignment, how might we utilize our DesignOps superpowers to unlock greater business value for our stakeholders, customers, and communities? Together, we’ll examine how Design Ops is leading the way to put business values like collaboration, equity, and innovation into practice.
Key Insights
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Business values serve as a critical North Star to guide organizations through crises and growth alike.
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At Salesforce, every employee creates a personal V2MOM plan aligning individual priorities with company values.
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Design Ops' horizontal perspective enables connecting siloed product teams to foster collaboration.
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Redefining meeting templates to require highlighting cross-product collaboration projects inspires new joint efforts.
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21 new design patterns integrated into the public Salesforce Lightning Design System deliver broad impact.
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Transforming standing team meetings by moving routine updates to asynchronous channels frees time for innovation.
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Creating dedicated innovation sprints involving cross-silo designers boosts engagement and informs product roadmaps.
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Partnerships like Salesforce's with AIGA enable mentorship and pipeline growth for emerging design talent.
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Embedding community service into regular agendas and large events increases volunteer participation significantly.
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Tracking collaborative hours unexpectedly enabled quantification of cost savings and reinforced value-based work.
Notable Quotes
"Business values are critical today now more than ever in these uncertain times."
"At Salesforce, everyone from our CEO Marc Benioff down writes a V2MOM to align with our values every year."
"Design Ops are dot connectors — we see common themes across silos that others don’t."
"A small change in the quarterly business review template led to surfacing eight new collaborative projects each quarter."
"One designer said collaborating across Salesforce has been the best experience they’ve had at the company after five years."
"We redesigned how we spend time together by moving announcements to asynchronous channels so meetings could focus on innovation."
"More design feedback now happens in real time on Slack instead of waiting a whole week."
"The partnership with AIGA has blossomed into a year-long virtual event series focused on relationship-building by design."
"We embedded community in every agenda, ensuring a dedicated time for volunteering at UX town halls and offsites."
"Tracking hours of collaboration wasn’t intended, but became a powerful secondary KPI showing cost savings."
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