My Approach
Aligning Teams
Through Design
Design is a powerful tool for aligning teams across an organization, fostering unity, and driving collective success.
Here some examples of how I use design to achieve alignment:
1. Establish a Unified Vision
Creating a Shared Design Language: Design can articulate the company’s vision and values in a way that’s easily understood and embraced by all teams. By developing a consistent design language that reflects the company’s goals, everyone—from marketing to product development—can align their efforts toward a common purpose.
2. Promote Cross-Department Collaboration
Design as a Bridge: Use design to facilitate collaboration between different departments. Through collaborative design workshops, shared style guides, and cross-functional design reviews, teams can work together more effectively, ensuring that all perspectives are considered and that the final product meets the needs of the entire organization.
3. Enhance Communication Clarity
Simplifying Complex Ideas: Design excels at turning complex concepts into clear, visual representations. By using infographics, visual summaries, and well-designed presentations, you can ensure that key messages are communicated clearly across the organization, reducing misunderstandings and aligning everyone on the same path forward.
4. Foster a Culture of Innovation
Encouraging Creative Problem-Solving: Empower teams to think creatively by incorporating design thinking into problem-solving processes. Encourage experimentation and iterative design processes, where teams can test ideas, learn from failures, and iterate quickly. This not only drives innovation but also unifies teams around a shared culture of continuous improvement.
5. Celebrate Achievements Visually
Highlighting Successes: Use design to showcase the company’s successes and milestones in a visually engaging way. Whether it’s through digital dashboards, office displays, or newsletters, visually celebrating achievements helps reinforce team spirit and aligns everyone with the company’s ongoing journey toward its goals.
6. Integrate Design into Strategic Decision-Making
Visualizing Strategy: Incorporate design into the strategic planning process by creating visual roadmaps, timelines, and scenario planning tools. This approach ensures that everyone can see the strategic direction and understand their role within it, aligning all teams with the company’s long-term objectives.
The Role of Design as a Visual Problem Solver
At its core, design is about visual problem solving. It takes complex challenges and distills them into clear, actionable solutions that can be communicated visually. This unique capability makes design especially effective in aligning teams across an organization. By translating abstract concepts into tangible visuals, design helps unify different departments and disciplines around a shared understanding and goal. It bridges gaps in communication, ensures everyone is on the same page, and provides a common language that drives collaboration and cohesion. In this way, design is not just a creative tool, but a strategic asset that aligns and empowers teams throughout the entire organization.
Jay Selway
Creative Director at Accenture Federal Services
“Travis is one of the single most creative and hardest working designers I've had the pleasure of working with. Travis was constantly pushing me to make my own work better, and always was an inspiration to the creative team that surrounded him.”
