Design Team Strategy #1
The strategy house: how to define a design team’s mission
TL;DR: This article focuses on an introduction to the “Strategy House Model”—a visual representation of a team’s strategy, with the mission as the roof, the pillars as the most important topics, and the values as the foundation. It goes into detail on how our digital product design team at BestSecret Group developed their team mission by brainstorming “stories of value,” extracting actors, actions, and outcomes, and finally compiling the overall mission statement from those.
This is the first in a series of articles dealing with the development of a comprehensive strategy for a design team:
- ☞ The strategy house: how to define a design team’s mission
- Pillars, objectives, and OGSMs: how to define a design team’s most important topics
- Team values: the foundation of any strategy
- Designing together: the importance of shared principles for design teams
As the leader of the digital product design team in BestSecret’s e-commerce department, I know how important it is for our team to have a clear strategy in place. Just like any business, our team needs a plan to achieve our goals and objectives within the context of the larger organization. Businesses and design teams need strategies (Porter, 1996) as they provide a roadmap for achieving their goals and ensure that everyone is working towards a common objective. Having a strategy helps to align resources, prioritize actions and make informed decisions to reach desired outcomes.
One tool that has proven particularly helpful for us is the Strategy House model. The Strategy House is a visual representation of a company’s or team’s strategy, with the mission as the roof, the pillars as the most important topics, and the values as the foundation (StratNavApp, n.d.). In a series of articles, we will explore the different parts of the Strategy House model in more detail and share the process our team went through to develop our mission, vision, topics, objectives, values, and design principles.
The Strategy House
The Strategy House model is composed of three parts: the mission, the pillars, and the values. The mission is the roof of the Strategy House and represents the overall purpose of the team. The pillars are the most important topics (or themes) that the team needs to focus on to achieve its mission. The values are the foundation of the Strategy House and represent the principles that guide the team’s actions. We found that visualizing our strategy in this way made it easy for the whole team to understand and buy into our plan.
The focus of this first article in the series is how our team developed its mission. A team mission is a statement that describes the overall purpose and goals of the team. It should be clear, concise, and easy to understand. According to Olsen (2021), “[a] mission needs to boldly state why you exist, and why you do what you do. The best mission statements express your core purpose and why you exist with clarity.” At the same time, a mission statement should be “short” and “powerful” (MindTools®, n.d.). We found that having a clear mission helped us stay focused and aligned on our goals.
Differences between Mission and Vision
Before we started our mission development process, however, we wanted to make sure we understood the difference between a team mission and a team vision. A team mission is a statement that describes the overall purpose and goals of the team, while a team vision is a statement that describes the team’s aspirations for the future. We found it helpful to think of our mission as what we are doing now to achieve our goals, and of our vision as what we want to achieve in the future. Skrabanek (2022) explains that “[a] mission statement focuses on today and what an organization does to achieve it. A vision statement focuses on tomorrow and what an organization wants to ultimately become.” In later articles in this series, we will also share our process for developing a vision for our team.
Stories of Value
To develop the mission, the first exercise we did as a team was brainstorming “stories of value.” We were heavily inspired by an article by Nielsen Norman Group, which describes a story of value as “a clear yet concise narrative that describes specific incidents when the team felt its value was realized” (Nielsen Norman Group, 2015). By sharing our stories of value, we were able to identify the specific actions and outcomes that have contributed to our team’s success. Stories of value should not be confused with “value stories” in the context of product or service development, which, according to Alvarez (2022), “[help] provide intent and vision in the process of building or developing products and services.” Then again, a digital design team can be seen to provide an invaluable service to the rest of the organization.
Distilling Actors, Actions, and Outcomes
From the stories of value we brainstormed, we then extracted actors, actions, and outcomes (Nielsen Norman Group, 2015). Actors are the people or groups we supported, actions are the actions we took to provide that support, and outcomes are the changes and results that happened because of our actions. By identifying actors, actions, and outcomes, we were able to develop a clear understanding of the value our team provides in different contexts. Fittingly, we applied a well-known concept from interaction design to our design team itself since user scenarios as well describe the actions performed by actors and interactive systems, and the associated outcomes (Interaction Design Foundation, n.d.).
Compiling the Mission Statement
Finally, based on the identified actors, actions, and outcomes, we compiled our overall mission statement. First, everyone in the team wrote a statement on their own (constraint: max. 2 sentences, as crisp as possible). We then nominated a “compiler” whose job it was to take the best parts from all individual statements and compile it into one. After some more rounds of asynchronous discussions and adjustments, we were done. The outcome is a clear, concise, and easy-to-understand statement that describes our team’s overall purpose and goals and the value we provide.
In conclusion, developing a team mission was an important first step in creating a successful team strategy for us. By following the steps outlined in this article, we were able to develop a clear, concise, and easy-to-understand mission statement that also—as far as we think—boldly describes our overall purpose and goals. We found that having a clear mission helped us stay focused and aligned on our goals and also helped in communicating them to others.
Stay tuned for our next articles in this series, where we will share our process for developing design principles and a vision for our team, among other things.
Hi! 👋🏻
I’m Max, a Design Director with a Ph.D. in Computer Science. I write mostly about design, UX, leadership, and strategy, drawing from my experience in start-ups, academia, and corporate settings.
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Acknowledgments
A big shout-out to everyone who contributed to this team mission: Bianca Mueller de Barroca, Karolina Truong, Krzysztof Glistak, Sebastian Sohl-Dang, Guido Baena Wehrmann, & Sebastian Zorn. What a fantastic team. 🎉
References
- Alvarez, A. (2022). “What are Value Stories?” Retrieved from https://netmind.net/en/value-stories/
- Interaction Design Foundation (n.d.). “User Scenarios.” Retrieved from https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/user-scenarios
- MindTools® (n.d.). “Mission Statements and Vision Statements.” Retreived from https://www.mindtools.com/aqzfi79/mission-statements-and-vision-statements
- Nielsen Norman Group (2015). “UX Team Mission Statement.” Retrieved from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-team-mission-statement/
- Olsen, Erica (2021). “Mission Statements.” Retrieved from https://onstrategyhq.com/resources/mission-statements/
- Porter, Michael E. (1996). “What Is Strategy?” Harvard Business Review, vol. 74, no. 6, pp. 61–78.
- Skrabanek, B. (2022). “Difference Between Mission and Vision Statements: 25 Examples.” Retrieved from https://resources.clearvoice.com/blog/difference-between-mission-vision-statement-examples/
- StratNavApp (n.d.). “The ‘Strategy House.’” Retrieved from https://www.stratnavapp.com/Articles/strategy-house
Copyright © 2023 by Maximilian Speicher ● Originally published by The UX Collective
