Leading Through Transition: Building Resilient Design Teams

TL;DR

When our Head of Design stepped away mid-reorg, the team faced mounting uncertainty: unclear roles, cross-brand confusion, and emotional fatigue. I stepped in as acting co-lead, created an interim structure, mentored junior managers, and rebuilt the team’s operating model. The result: 100% retention, 137% boost in role clarity, and measurable gains in delivery, collaboration, and team confidence.

Window and sources: quarter-long window, pulse surveys, HR retention data, delivery dashboards. Scope: multi-brand team across time zones during an active reorg.

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The Calm in the Storm: Why Transitional Leadership Matters

During a company-wide reorganization, our Head of Design departed. At the same time, the design team was split across multiple brands and time zones. Ownership was unclear. Priorities were clashing. And team morale was under pressure due to regional stressors.

The biggest risk wasn’t delivery delay - it was attrition and burnout.

Constraints: split brands, mixed time zones, and no headcount increase during the transition.

Taking the Wheel: Defining Interim Leadership

We implemented a stable, short-term leadership structure:

• Mapped ownership zones by stream (UX, visual, motion, brand)

• Held weekly department syncs for visibility and alignment

• Ran 1:1 mentoring sessions with junior managers to support decisions and leadership growth

• Took ownership of hiring and onboarding to maintain team momentum

This gave the team confidence and clarity, without relying on top-down micromanagement.

Decision note: we centralized scheduling and ownership for stability, guardrail: weekly syncs kept autonomy and avoided top-down micromanagement.

Rebuilding the Operating Model

With day-to-day stability in place, I led a department-wide redesign of how we worked:

• Defined roles and responsibilities across every stream

• Balanced brand-specific execution with shared cross-brand initiatives

• Used visual diagrams and documentation to align teams on ownership and decision-making

• Aligned design work with product and marketing to reduce redundancy and improve throughput

The structure gave managers autonomy while reducing friction across teams.

Operating stack: clarified roles, cross-brand planning, visual ownership maps, and alignment with product and marketing to cut friction.

Making It Stick: Communication & Consistency

We embedded the changes into daily workflows to avoid slipping back into ambiguity:

• Created and rolled out updated job scopes with HR and team leads

• Embedded all new documentation into Confluence and updated onboarding materials

• Aligned career pathing and hiring plans with the updated structure

• Kept ICs informed through department-wide updates and async documentation
  

Governance: DRIs per stream keep scopes current, HR updates scopes quarterly, Confluence remains the single source of truth.

What Changed: Success Metrics

Window and sources: quarter-long window, pulse surveys, HR retention data, delivery dashboards.

Definitions: role clarity = “I know what I own” survey item; collaboration rating = cross-discipline survey index.

• Team role clarity: 40% → 95% (+137%), less confusion, faster execution.

• Manager confidence in resourcing & scope: 45% → 88%, junior managers grew into leadership.

• Employee satisfaction (eNPS): +30%, stability and structure improved morale.

• Team retention: 100% maintained during a high-risk transition.

• Cross-discipline collaboration rating: +43%, clearer ownership reduced back-and-forth.
  

Attribution: interim structure and ownership maps drove clarity; operating model and comms cadence lifted collaboration and eNPS; stability protected retention.