When our founders asked for a blog post on a Design Ops, how-to, I felt inspired to take a different direction. Instead of diving into our processes, I took a step back to look at the bigger picture. This gave me a chance to highlight the real foundation of our success: building strong teams and fostering meaningful partnerships. It’s clear that what really drives us isn’t just the workflows—it’s the amazing people behind them.
Here’s the thing: there’s a lot of talk about “Design Ops.” It might sound like a new concept in the design world, but at its core, it’s really about what every team, department, or organization needs to run smoothly. Creating systems, communication plans, and workflows is essential, but that’s only part of the picture. The real foundation is building a highly effective team, and prioritizing people and partnerships. It’s about fostering strong relationships within our team, with our label partners, clients, and even their stakeholders. If we only focus on workflows, we risk missing what truly drives success.
Start with your goals
The first step is always to figure out what your goals are. What are we trying to achieve as a team? Your process should be tailored to those specific goals, not just copying what some big agency or corporate client is doing. Whenever I share my experience from different places, it’s not to say we should replicate what they did; it’s to spark ideas about best practices and standardization. It’s about finding what works for us.
The Fundamentals of Success
Creating a highly effective team goes beyond scaling design processes and systems and implementing workflows. It’s about people and getting the basics right. Every time this comes up, we go back to these five fundamentals:
Psychological Safety
Psychological Safety is the foundation of any strong team. It’s all about making sure everyone feels safe sharing ideas and taking risks without fear of backlash. In our small team, this has been critical. If people don’t feel psychologically safe, they won’t speak up, and we’ll miss out on some great ideas.
“While in a challenging season, I reached out to let them know that some personal circumstances might impact my ability to meet the client’s scope and values for a looming project. My concern was received with generous care and genuine support. I was valued as a human rather than a remote hired hand.”
John Chandler, TLC Development Partner
Dependability
In any team—especially when the team is the entire company—dependability is critical. You need to be able to count on each other to get things done right and on time. When someone drops the ball, it doesn’t just affect one area—it can throw the whole operation off course. Building a culture of trust and accountability is key to ensuring everyone can rely on one another to keep things running smoothly.
Structure & Clarity
Clear roles and responsibilities are important. We’ve worked hard to ensure everyone knows what they’re responsible for and how their work fits into the bigger picture. This avoids confusion and helps us work more smoothly.
Meaning of Work
Everyone wants to feel like what they’re doing matters. We make a point to talk about the ‘why’ behind our projects so everyone feels connected to the purpose of their work. Meaning keeps us motivated and engaged.
Impact of Work
We need to see the impact of their efforts. When you can see the results of your work and how it benefits the company, it boosts commitment and fosters a sense of ownership.
The Underlying Thread: Relationships
When it comes down to it, the real key to our success is relationships. We’ve talked about the five fundamentals—psychological safety, dependability, structure and clarity, meaning of work, and impact of work—but it’s the relationships we build that really tie everything together. Our team’s strength doesn’t just come from having the right processes in place; it’s about the connections we foster with each other, our clients, partners, and stakeholders. Those relationships are what bring our systems to life.
At The Label Collective, we prioritize building and nurturing these bonds. We do this through quarterly lunches, Slack channels for kudos, feedback, and collaboration, and a “water cooler” channel where we celebrate personal milestones and share updates.
Strong relationships create trust and make it easier for people to share ideas and take risks. They help clarify roles through open communication, add more meaning to our work, and make our successes even more impactful. Without solid connections, even a well-structured team can struggle with trust, feedback, and motivation. Focusing on relationships ensures our team stays high-performing, resilient, and engaged.
The #tlc-watercooler channel is where we share our stories.
Building a Process That Works for Us
How do we apply this to scaling a design ops model? We don’t just copy what bigger companies do. Instead, we build processes that support these five fundamentals within our team, emphasizing the power of relationships. We experiment, test new ideas, and adjust based on what works and what doesn’t, always keeping the dynamics of team relationships in mind. Best practices are a starting point, but we tweak them to fit our unique needs. We aim to create a culture prioritizing these fundamentals, making us an efficient, scalable, high-performing, resilient, and closely-knit group.
Conclusion
In the end, scaling a design ops model isn’t just about communication plans, systems, and workflows; it’s about fostering relationships that bring those processes to life. By focusing on psychological safety, dependability, clarity, meaning, and impact—while nurturing strong connections—we’ve built a functional, high-performing, and resilient team.
If you’re ready to explore how we can elevate your brand strategy, we’d love to chat. Book a discovery today!