I believe people do their best work when they’re supported and respected, and they understand how their work contributes to user success and business goals.

Organizational leadership

  • Work-life balance was at 0% for content design in our Pulse survey at Meta

  • People across functions were working long hours, constantly switching from project to project

  • The org had doubled in size in 1 year; the leads group wasn’t cohesive and most decisions were made by PM and engineering

  • Audited the teams and projects supported by content design and reduced or eliminated support for multiple teams and projects. Work-life balance scores increased by 30% in 6 months.

  • Planned and hosted a seller leads and sub-pillar leads offsite, where we drafted a new mission, vision and values for the org and created a new operating model and spheres of responsibility to improve representation of all functions

  • Launched a “Culture Taskforce” to tackle the biggest challenges in the org, including work-life balance, sense of community, DEI and customer empathy. 54% of the org rated the taskforce very or extremely impactful to their experience in the org.

Opportunity

Results

Seller Commerce at Meta

Content Design at Pinterest

Opportunity

  • The team had been working across so many teams and projects that they were often only able to churn out strings

  • There was no goals process or prioritization in effect and requests came in ad-hoc so content designers always felt like they were underwater and stressed out

  • The team’s backgrounds were varied and some content designers weren’t clear on how to work more strategically

  • Content designers weren’t clear on how their work laddered up to business goals or expectations so promotions felt ambiguous

Solution

  • Worked with cross-functional leaders to identify the highest priority projects

  • Established a goals template and process across all of content design, which required content designers to link their work to business goals and level expectations

  • As part of the goals process, content designers prioritized work to focus on projects with the highest impact. All other work was sent to newly formed office hours to be addressed as time allowed.

  • Goals were incorporated into the review process to make it clearer how their work contributed to their performance outcomes