When I joined this company six years ago, I turned down a leadership role to work as a Product Designer on a team of four.
There was no clear expectation of what Design could do there. And that, as it turned out, was precisely what gave us room to build something worth having.
Today, I lead a team of roughly 45 designers distributed across six business units. Along the way, we navigated mergers, restructures, changes in leadership, and a global pandemic. What I learned through all of it is what I want to share here — not as a formula, but as a perspective for other design leaders facing the same challenges.
The beginning: low visibility, high freedom
We entered an environment where most teams had little understanding of what Design actually did. There was no structured demand. No defined expectation.
That could have been a problem. We chose to treat it as opportunity.
With each delivery, we demonstrated value in concrete terms: better-informed product decisions, reduced risk on launches, clarity around problems that hadn't previously been named. Teams that worked with us came back the following cycle asking for more.
Organisational trust in Design isn't built through portfolio presentations. It's built through consistent, repeatable results.
The context made the journey more difficult — a newly formed team, working remotely, inside a company that didn't yet know us. But there was something powerful in that position: when no one knows what to expect from you, you have the freedom to define what's possible.
Growing through constant change
Our company changes constantly. Internally, we often say that the only thing that stays the same is the fact that nothing does.
In that environment, multiple Design teams were scattered across different business units — isolated, unaligned, often unaware of each other's existence. Each unit had developed its own interpretation of what Design should be.
The first team merger was a turning point.
Up to that moment, we were operating with ambition but limited capacity to influence the organisation in any structured way. The merger brought what had been missing: leadership with strategic direction. From that point, we could organise demand, align expectations, and begin building methodology and governance with consistency.
Before strategic leadership, the team grew through individual effort. After, it grew through system. That distinction changes everything.
When structure became non-negotiable
Growth brought questions that didn't have easy answers.
Does a mid-level Designer carry the same responsibilities across all business units? How do you ensure consistency when each unit has built Design in its own way? Which tools are official? What does a strong delivery actually look like here?
These questions appear operational. In practice, they are deeply strategic.
The decision we made was a bold one: rather than imposing standards from the top down, we surfaced the contradictions. We put the conflicts on the table and built a shared model from them together. It was slower at the outset — but far more robust over time.
That process produced something no management handbook provides ready-made: a model that people respect because they helped shape it.
It was also during this period that we were able to make the internal case for Design's ROI — which opened the door to real investment and new hires.
Design Ops: from improvisation to intention
Growth-through-delivery has a ceiling. There comes a point at which quality struggles to keep pace with volume — not because of a lack of talent, but because of a lack of structure.
That was when we created Design Ops.
The premise was straightforward but powerful: focus exclusively on doing better what we were already doing well. We organised processes, established governance, improved operational efficiency, and systematised the reuse of solutions.
In parallel, the Design System — which had existed in embryonic form — took on a different status within the organisation.
At a time when the business was focused on efficiency and cost reduction, we already had an answer in development. The Design System shifted from being a technical tool to a strategic capability — it has already supported product restructuring across multiple business units, with more underway.
Design Ops, meanwhile, structured how we work with designers and external partners, how we document and share knowledge, and how we manage contracts and team operations.
The practical outcome: a move from a reactive model to one with genuine control over how we deliver and how we improve.
What holds a Design team together at scale
We are now around 45 designers, serving six business units. We are already preparing for our sixth team merger. Change really is our constant.
What we've built over this journey:
- A structured Design Ops function, operating across the full organisation
- A mature UX Research practice, embedded in the product process
- A corporate Design System — multi-brand and multi-platform
- A measurable operation, with real visibility over efficiency and quality
But more important than what has been built is the mindset that sustains it: we are not satisfied, and we won't be tomorrow either.
That productive dissatisfaction — paired with structure — is what distinguishes teams that genuinely grow from teams that simply get bigger.
The principles that shaped this journey
Scaling a Design team rarely happens in a straight line. But looking back, certain principles repeat themselves at every inflection point. These are the ones I'd pass on to other leaders:
- Deliver value before asking for a seat at the table. Organisational trust is built delivery by delivery. There is no shortcut.
- Use constraints as an early advantage. Low expectations mean greater freedom to define what Design represents within the business.
- Build structure before you scale. Growth must be accompanied by infrastructure — and the earlier that decision is made, the more solid the foundation.
- Surface the contradictions to build consistency. Models imposed from above are fragile. Models built collectively hold.
- Build capabilities, not just outputs. Design System, Design Ops, and UX Research are organisational capabilities. Treating them as such, early on, raises the ceiling of what's possible.
- Move from individual effort to operating system. A team built on individual talent has a limited ceiling. A team built on shared systems does not.
These principles are not the preserve of large organisations. They apply to any company that wants to build Design as a genuine competitive advantage — and to any leader who wants to grow with intention, not just with volume.
Desde 2010, tenho dedicado minha trajetória profissional à compreensão aprofundada da linguagem digital e, principalmente, dos comportamentos dos usuários. Em 2017, deparei-me com os meus primeiros desafios como líder e, hoje, tenho a honra de liderar a equipe de design em um dos maiores grupos educacionais do mundo. Essa jornada, que começou há mais de uma década, teve seu início na produção de materiais gráficos como impressor e Arte Finalista. Ao longo do tempo, avancei desde a posição de assistente até Diretor de Arte em agências de publicidade e mais adiante como Design Lead em times multidisciplinares, conectando produtos, negocio e tecnologia. Durante esse trajeto, não só liderei equipes, mas também organizei demandas administrei entregas e gerenciai recursos. Nesse cenário dinâmico, não apenas geri necessidades, prazos e processos de trabalho, mas também desenvolvi uma profunda paixão pelo papel transformador da liderança no design.
