“Most teams aren’t teams, they are working groups with a Teams channel.”
When this post from Alejandro Malagón crossed my path this week, it encompassed something that’s been on my mind a lot lately.
In design and UX fields, we’ve often focused on building strong practice-based teams: product design teams, content design teams, UX research teams. We gather with this group for our offsites; we invest in team-building activities and group dinners.
None of that is a bad thing—practice-based teams are where we shore up our norms, learn from one another, set priorities, divvy up work. And there’s something really affirming about building relationships with people who truly get what you do.
But these discipline-based teams aren’t actually where most of my clients spend the bulk of their day-to-day working time. That’s actually a whole different set of people—some combination of project partners, cross-functional partners, product partners, and stakeholders.
I don’t see a lot of these kinds of teams getting together to bond over dinner. Hell, I don’t even see folks pausing to ask themselves what pressures those other people are under, or why they’re prioritizing different things than us.
In management, there’s a concept called the “first team” approach. The gist of it is this: as a leader, you actually need to prioritize working with your peers—i.e., other leaders—over time with your direct reports. This might sound like sacrilege, but it’s not because you don’t care about the people in your reporting line, or because you want to shirk the messy people parts of being a manager.
It’s because working closely and collaboratively with your peers will lead to clearer decisions, more accountability, and more alignment on what everyone is doing and why.
Doing this upstream work means that the projects your direct reports are focused on run more smoothly, with fewer downstream conflicts (which are often what wind up taking up so much of a manager’s time, anyway). The result is that your direct reports are more likely to thrive—not in spite of your focus on your peers, but because of it.
OK, so that’s for managers. But I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how this kind of thinking can apply to everyone else, too. Especially in this moment, where roles and disciplines seem blurrier than ever. While I have a whole ton of qualms about how AI is being pushed and deployed without any consideration for harm or consequences, the reality is that these tools are making profound changes to who can produce what, and how work is getting done.
The more we focus purely on our own disciplines, the more painful this shift becomes. We get defensive—thinking that product managers are stepping on our toes or taking away decisions that should be “ours.” We start using new tools—tools that, say, allow us to get closer to production code—without realizing that we’re making all sorts of cleanup work for our engineering partners. We’re prone to infighting. To competition. To complaining about THEM.
What would be different if we brought some of that “first team” approach into IC work, too? If we saw our cross-functional or project teams as teams? Not just a “working group with a Teams channel,” as Alejandro put it—but as people we sought to understand, to learn from, and to build relationships with?
What downstream project problems could we prevent? What rework and churn would disappear? What annoying, frustrating, ugh-why-are-they-doing-that behavior from our partners would suddenly… make a lot more sense?
I’d love to see more of us in UX and design roles find out. Not because we should abandon our values or our commitment to human-centered practices. But because all those “difficult” cross-functional partners and “frustrating” stakeholders who “just don’t get it” aren’t monsters. They’re just people. They’re not THEM. They’re our teammates.
Or at least, they could be. If we’re willing to see them—and ourselves—that way.
It’s no surprise team dynamics and effectiveness have been on my mind lately. I’ve been spending the past month or two in conversation with Pavel Samsonov, finalizing our curriculum for this in-person retreat.
It’s for experienced UXers of all flavors who want to stop being sidelined and start building leverage. Not by shouting louder about how important design is. Not by building another 10,000 decks to convince your stakeholders to invite you to the meeting. But by using realistic, practical, non-gaslighty tools for forging effective peer relationships—ones where design is respected, and everyone else is, too.
Let me be real for a moment: putting on an in-person event is a whole different kind of stress. We’ve got a gorgeous space locked down, and a curriculum I’m damn proud of. We’ve got folks coming in from as far as Portland, Oregon—and as close as a few blocks away.
Now I just need a few more people to come hang out with us. Maybe that’s you?
One day. Deep conversations. Practical frameworks. Only the best attendees. And BTW: If you live on the East Coast anywhere between DC and NYC and your prof dev funds are limited, Philly is totally doable as a day trip. You can probably be home before sunset.
Get yourself a ticket—or tell your boss to send a team (there’s a discount when you register 3+ people). If you have questions, hit me up—I’d love to answer them. And if you’d like to see us run this event again (remotely? on the West Coast?), reply and tell me that, too. I’d love to know what you need.