When I look back at my journey of growing and leading teams, I see a story of transformation—of people and processes, to deliver innovative products through collaboration. It isn’t just about increasing headcount or restructuring; it is about building a culture where design and product teams work seamlessly across functions, share a unified vision, and deliver outcomes that improves end-users life and leads business growth.

This is how I did it.

Forming the Right Team

We all know, fragmented teams and siloed functions hinder progress. So I bring people together—not just physically but intellectually and culturally.

• I start by identifying the right talent mix—ensuring we had the necessary expertise in UX, analytics, product, and engineering.

• I create a strategic hiring roadmap, focusing on gaps, and both skill and cultural fit. The goal is to bring in people who not only excelled at their craft but also thrive in a collaborative environment.

• I emphasize integration, bringing existing team members into the fold, ensuring they see the value in working together as a unit.

One of my favorites is setting up in-person and virtual team-building activities. In a distributed team, regular touch-points matter. We host team off-sites, where we could step away from the day-to-day and align on big-picture goals. These sessions became instrumental in building relationships, sparking new ideas, and breaking down barriers between teams.

Instilling a Culture of Collaboration and Continuous Learning

Scaling isn’t just about numbers—it’s about culture. I want a team where knowledge-sharing, innovation, and problem-solving were embedded into the daily workflow.

To do this, I introduced several key rituals:

• Cross-functional reviews: Weekly sessions where design, data, and product teams discuss ongoing projects and gather feedback.

• Show & Tell Fridays: A platform for the team to share wins, experiments, and learnings.

• UX Workshops: Bi-weekly sessions where team members up-skill each other on new tools and methodologies.

• New-hire Onboarding Playbook: I design a detailed onboarding plan for new hires to ensure they ramp up quickly and feel connected from day one.

These initiatives do more than just improve our work—they strengthened our relationships, encouraged collaboration, and built a sense of shared purpose.

Goal Setting: The Impact Framework

With a strong team in place, the next challenge is ensuring consistency in how we measure success. In a global and remote set-up, different regions and teams tend to measure outcomes and performances differently, making it difficult to compare results and optimize improvement plans.

That’s when I align stakeholders across teams to align with organizational Value Creation Plan (VCP)— corporate mission, vision and goals with clear definition of success criteria and expected outcomes that can goes across regions and teams.

• We define clear metrics based on VCP goals—whether it was user engagement scores, conversion, adoption rates or demo success rates.

• We ensured that both across regions design team follow the same structure, allowing leadership to get a unified view of our performance against each VCP.

• We work with Operations team to automate reporting, ensuring that executives and key-stakeholders have access to real-time insights on progress and delivery of priority projects and key initiatives.

This framework streamlined how we measure design impact and made reporting more transparent and actionable.

Navigating Challenges: Merging Cultures and Managing Expectations

Scaling a global team wasn’t without its hurdles.

• Cultural differences: North America and EMEA had different ways of working, and I had to bridge the gap. I took the time to understand regional nuances and customized processes without losing consistency.

• The pace of change: Leadership wanted rapid execution, but true transformation takes time. I managed expectations while ensuring we delivered incremental wins along the way.

• Design maturity: To increase design maturity at any organization require, integrating design thinking into all aspects of the business, not just the design team, and fostering a culture of user-centricity.

Through persistent communication, stakeholder alignment, and incremental process improvements, we overcame these challenges and set a foundation for long-term success.

Taking Ownership: Project Management & Governance

One of the most critical projects I took charge of was the Pendo Analytics implementation. The goal was to transition from Microsoft Azure Analytics to Pendo Analytics, but the initiative in my previous organization was falling behind for over 2 years.

• Product Managers have failed to deliver insights on product usage for new features, loosing key-insights required for prioritizing product roadmap items.

• Leadership needed a strong leader to step in and drive execution.

I took ownership, stepping in as the interim Pendo lead, invited Pendo Support to train key-partners, and ensured the project is focussed on up-skilling and delivery for long term success. I coordinated stakeholders, set clear timelines, and removed roadblocks.

By establishing structure and accountability, we got the project back on track and ensured a successful rollout.

Scaling the Team & Setting Up for Future Success

As teams continue to grow, I focus on long-term scalability:

• Governance models: Standardizing processes and decision-making frameworks.

• Automation initiatives: Reducing manual work and improving efficiency.

• Cross-team alignment: Ensuring that design, research, product and development teams operate in sync.

My teams are stronger, more collaborative, and better equipped to tackle tough challenges. But more importantly, this helps built a culture of shared ownership, innovation, and delivering value for all the stakeholders.

Final Thoughts

Scaling a team isn’t just about increasing numbers. It’s about building a vision, collaboration, and creating a space where people can do their best work.

Looking back, I’m proud of how we went from fragmented teams to a cohesive unit delivering value against organizational goals, from disconnected strategies to a unified impact framework, and from stalled projects to successful execution.

The best teams are always evolving, always improving, and always learning. And I’m excited for what’s next.