Your Design Team Is Your Product

How to build a successful design team

• Do great work.
• Advocate for your team’s value.
• Understand your clients.

One of these things has to do with quality, and the other two have to do with communication and persuasion, specifically with people outside of the team. Turns out these are the same things that are required to successfully produce and sell products.

Market your team

Nobody will do this for you, at least not at first. Designers, researchers, managers, directors — everyone must be tireless champions for the team, selling its benefits and demonstrating value. Marketing, in other words. Do this well and your clients will quickly become your partners, and they’ll help to do the marketing for you.

Educate your client

Clients don’t necessarily know how the design sausage is made. Sharing, revealing, and educating builds empathy and understanding. We’ve all had clients who constantly push back and just don’t get it. You want your clients on your side. Turn them into collaborators by educating them, unpacking your process, and sharing knowledge.

Demonstrate the benefits

Clients have their own crap to deal with, and aren’t always focused on how your design team benefits them. Show them. The benefits of design may be obvious to you, but clients need to be reminded.

Be a constant presence

Encourage everyone on your team to get out there and meet people. Take a client out for lunch. Include regular update meetings in project schedules. Check in by email once in a while. Make sure they know you’re thinking about them (within reason, not in a weird stalker way), and let them know you always have them front of mind.

Be enthusiastic

If you like your job — and hopefully you do, at least some of the time — show it! It’s infectious, and can help smooth over bumps in a project or relationship and help give a project the last push it needs to take it over the finish line.

Know your sh*t

The point at which the rubber meets the road. Your team must understand how to successfully produce what your client needs. Design can be contradictory — both subjective and objective; a point of view; pushing boundaries and sticking to conventions, and intuitively knowing why, when and how. Design is an art and a science, and your team must be masters of both.

Be honest

Sometimes your team makes a mistake. Sometimes the client thinks they’re right, and they’re not. Sometimes you just don’t have the skills or resources to do what your client asks. It takes courage to say no, or to say you screwed up, or to admit you don’t know how to do something. But being honest, doing it quickly, then moving on will serve you well in the long run.

Anticipate clients’ needs

What’s better than giving your client what they need? Giving it to them before they know they need it. Do this and you’ll seem like some kind of a magician. Really pay attention to your client’s business and try to predict how design can support it, then find opportunities to present those ideas to them.

Let your client participate

Nobody know your client’s business better than they do. They’re the experts in what they do, and when needed they should be right there participating in the design process.

Close the sale

You’ve done the work, all the pieces are in place, your client is on board because you’ve been communicating so well, and everything’s ready to go. There should be no doubts at this stage about moving forward. You’ve done great work, you’ve advocated for your team’s value, and you’ve understood your client. All that’s left is to confidently wrap the project up and ship it out the door.

Debrief

Double back and review your work and processes. What worked, what can you improve the next time? Teams and individuals will make mistakes, but if you’re not making mistakes you’re not learning.