Culture Design is Experience Design
Think of a memorable time that you were with friends or family (the ones you like). What makes those moments so great? Most of the time the activity itself is boring on its own. This is because it’s not about the activity- it’s about the experience! What makes the experience? It’s the people. Think of mini-golfing with your mean aunt versus mini-golfing with your best friend. Same activity, vastly different experience! But done with the right people, the ordinary becomes a delightful and memorable experience. When I think about this, I feel extremely blessed to work with a team that makes me happy to go to work on Mondays.
The Sumo Logic product deals with scary, complex problems- stuff like continuous intelligence, operational efficiency, analytics for modern apps, etc. In order for the design team to keep our sanity, we keep it fun through ice cream, personality quizzes, wardrobe challenges, and Boomerangs. We also go off-site for design swarms on a monthly basis. We take our fun seriously. We’re constantly using ourselves as test subjects to see which activities foster bonding and teamwork. It’s simple things like a recent obsession with puzzle competitions. Who knew that a 500 piece puzzle of Disney’s Ariel can cause such a passionate competition? We learned this during one of our monthly UX Paloozas (3–5 day design swarms).
Tear Down the Wall!
We’re also fortunate to report to a great boss. Sandeep Khanna is seasoned VP of Engineering who puts up with our silly nonsense. He’s one of those executives that passively observes, and then enables and empowers. Despite his quiet nature, he will light a fire when necessary (lolz). Almost a year ago, Sandeep took the UX/UI team on a field trip to Costco to talk about how Costco provides the best experience. As an added bonus we had pizza, shopped a bit (coloring books, and pink coconut water), and then drank “pinky’s up” coffee. That’s when he dropped a bit of a bomb on us…
To set some context, the design team is part of the engineering organization. However, this was not reflected in our seating arrangements. The design team had a coveted corner spot with a lot of windows, and we were separated from engineering by a few conference rooms. It was enough space that the office setup felt like Design vs Engineering. Sandeep asked the designers if we could bring some of our energy to the other side. In other words… move! We spit coffee out of our mouths, then smiled and acted cool.
Our engineers do some serious s****, and they have a distinctly different work style than our design team. Most of the engineers love cranking work out with their headphones on, while the design team loves to swarm, chat and interact with each other. Our immediate reaction to Sandeep’s request was, “Does he know what he’s asking for?” Then we literally asked him that. We double and triple-checked: “You want us to disrupt the office?” His response was the same: “It’ll be good for the team, trust me.” But we had some serious doubts. Would it kill OUR team culture?
The Beginning of Culture Design
After some hugging, tears, and goodbyes, we thought about the actual individuals of the engineering team, instead of as a department. We agreed that we truly do love working with them, and hoped that MAYBE they liked us just as much. We were feeling a little vulnerable.
The Design team decided that we couldn’t think too much about the decision, and we literally moved the next Monday. The engineering team was very cool and allowed us to pick our spot. In fact, they encouraged us to be smack in the center of the floor. Do we annoy them, when we’re raving out loud about the best place to have hot wings? Maybe, but they’re very cool about it. It’s Hot Sauce and Panko, btw.
A nice bonus is that we are converting our old area into a “Project Playground,” an open area that encourages cross-functional collaboration but also nice private alone time.
Diversity
One thing that was mentioned as an additional motivation to move was that the design team would bring more female presence and encourage diversity as we hire more female engineers. Since then, I’m proud to say that Sumo Logic has made a serious effort in this area and have hired more female engineers. We’re not done! The design team is also involved in design thinking efforts around cultural improvements in this area. We don’t pretend to have all the answers but we know that if we want a culture that fosters diversity, we must start now.
Culture as a Service (CaaS)
Culture as a Service is not a thing. I just made that silly name up, because it feels like sometimes culture in a company needs to be addressed as seriously as a “service.” We “techies” sometimes don’t take some of the intangibles seriously enough until it’s too late. Culture is not a ping pong table. It’s not an off-site. You can’t order a team to have culture. It starts with the leaders and hiring like-minded individuals. For example, if you want a passionate team, then passion should play into the hiring process. Passion is not a line in a resume.
Culture is also about listening and service. Every voice counts. Invest in listening to the team and the individuals of the team. Our boss has a million things to do and it’s difficult to justify spending half a day at Costco eating pizza. But he made an effort to be part of the culture. Since then, team outings for ice cream has become a regular ritual. It’s the little big things that count. Thanks to that effort the culture at Sumo Logic keeps getting stronger and continues to get better. Not just because of us, the Design team, but also because of the effort of the leaders and our new Engineering neighbors. Take a UX approach, have empathy and envision the environment you would want to work in, then talk to everyone and make it happen, one change at a time.
