Building a connected team before bringing your disparate products together can help create a lasting culture of compromise and collaboration that accelerates innovation post-convergence.
Companies that scale rapidly typically create ripples that inch their products and the teams that build them further away from one another. These companies might acquire other companies to gain features and functionality aligned with their business goals, but then allow those teams to continue building with a loose tether to established tech stacks or design systems. Alternatively, they might “acqui-hire” large numbers of new talent to help accelerate roadmaps, but without providing them with a broader ecosystem view, they may open the floodgates for tech debt and systems that don’t integrate well. They’ll move fast and break a few things, often resulting in the look, feel, and function across their ecosystem becoming less familial and less performant as disconnected product fiefdoms.
In time, these disparate products and disconnected teams might be asked to create a path of convergence.
In time, these disparate products and disconnected teams might be asked to create a path of convergence.
As leaders, when the time comes to bring things together, we should start by helping our merging teams build rapport, trust, and shared ways of working (i.e., frameworks, systems, processes) between one another. This is the bridge on which future innovations will ride, and the more durable and predictable it’s built, the faster your commercialization process can run across it.
Tactics, such as game plans and roadmaps for collaboration that align with your convergence strategy, come later. And frankly, it comes more easily when you have once-siloed teams speaking a shared language with mutual respect.
For Design organizations, getting your teams there might include the following:
Tactics, such as game plans and roadmaps for collaboration that align with your convergence strategy, come later. And frankly, it comes more easily when you have once-siloed teams speaking a shared language with mutual respect.
For Design organizations, getting your teams there might include the following:
→ Shared design critiques: By inviting non-team members to your team critiques, you’re opening a door to a better understanding of how your team operates and providing a glimpse into how your culture feels to those currently outside of it.
→ Lunch and Learns: Knowledge transfer around skill and product areas with a recurring ritual that sheds light on the people and product areas you know will be valuable to converge.
→ Operating manuals: One-pagers that help those around your team better understand each individual on a more human level, and the team at large, from their stated vision, values, and success measures, serve as a practical handshake experience ahead of workshop sessions.
→ Shared workspaces: Slack channels or Loom spaces where people across these teams can openly share project updates or voice-over walkthroughs of WIP decks, Figma files, or roadmaps. A clear “State of the State” across disconnected teams creates a shared understanding of where gaps exist and where steady progress requires support.
→ Ritual mapping exercise: Use a tool like Figma’s FigJam to help disconnected teams start listing their existing rituals and operational mechanisms (meetings). Highlight the commonalities and start merging where it makes the most sense to share ideas and make decisions together