Evolving Culture

Evolving Culture at Zola

Sometimes, it’s sunny outside with blue skies, and things are great. Other times, not so much. How do you keep the ship moving forward during all those cloudy days, or even during a storm?

I believe culture is critical. It’s what we believe and value. It’s how we show up together and get things done. And it’s more. It impacts health, motivation, productivity, satisfaction, growth, resilience—I could go on. At Zola, evolving culture and process was a key part of my (horizontal) leadership role on our product design team, especially with expansions and reductions.

My top 10 contributions ✅

1. Setup a framework to assess and improve how we work
2. Implemented weekly warmups for connection and reflection
3. Organized and drove Guild Days (hackathons)
4. Built a prioritization system to evaluate effort, scope, and ROI
5. Created a calendar of special guest speakers
6. Facilitated regular design critiques and cross-functional jams
7. Generated templates for recruiting and onboarding
8. Revamped our design system documentation
9. Built several components to be shared across teams
10. Forced as many smiles out of teammates as possible

Note: The how and why for each of these might be self-evident, but I’d look forward to chatting more if you’re interested.

Weekly Warmups

My team was frustrated by too many meetings and wanted more flow time, but also wanted consistent opportunities to connect casually, especially since many of us worked from home and in different time zones. How might we find a way to balance these opposing desires?

I brainstormed some ideas drawing from my own past experiences and an excellent article by Noah Levin, VP at Figma. We experimented with a range of formats for different needs. One of the rituals that stuck was a weekly warmup. The flavor of this Monday kickoff meeting that we tried initially included two parts:

1. Connect: Answer a weekly prompt shared over Slack from the previous week. Come with a Zoom background relating to your response. The prompt creator is the first to respond and "popcorns" to the next person. The last person to go will choose the prompt for the next week. We take a group screenshot for nostalgia's sake.
2. Reflect: While on Zoom together, take 5 minutes to reflect on the previous week. In a Google doc, we'll compile our thoughts on what went well and what could be improved. Then, we'll read through each other's notes and voiceover anything we want to amplify.

The "Connect" part of the session ended up being a favorite amongst the full team, giving us the chance to learn more about each other and build stronger relationships. The "Reflect" portion ended up feeling awkward in this venue, yet beneficial in smaller settings.

Guild Days (aka Hackathons)

These were annual in-person events to explore ideas beyond the current roadmap, to be creative, have fun, and make progress.

Prior to my arrival, hackathons only happened in engineering. I introduced and ran 2 events for Product Design, focused on 2 tracks: something new for users or "do a good deed" (addressing design debt or other internal optimization).

I adapted frameworks and artifacts, and drove logistics planning, presentation, and follow-up. They were fruitful for team-building and individual growth and innovation.