Conjuring an aligned Design Leadership Team

The challenge

When we met SumUp, the financial start-up had grown and become a scale-up. As a result, the company needed to build internal structures to motivate people and align them toward a common goal. More human structures – like vision, culture and behaviours – would ensure the company could continue to behave and work in agile ways as it grew.

We worked with the Design Leadership team – a global team that needed to reconnect. It was necessary to ignite their sense of togetherness and purpose so that they could support each other, and thrive together. Finding their sense of identity, cultivating an aligned vision and finding ways of being together would unleash the team’s individual and collective magic!

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How the magic happened

In collaboration with SumUp, we created two bespoke virtual offsite half days. The main aims were to help the team connect and move forward together. To enable the team to have deeper connections, despite the distances between them, we designed a journey with four key stages:

1. Ignite a core leadership mindset in everyone.
2. Explore the team's current reality with different perspectives to bring greater awareness of vision and mission.
3. Unlock new rituals and behaviours.
4. Embed these rituals and behaviours to ensure the team continues implementing the agreed actions and insights.

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The outcomes

Together the team:

• Created their mission and vision
• Designed rituals and structures to amplify, and sustain their sense of unity.
• Identified personal actions for improved motivation and collaboration.
• Discovered how to use their own values to lead and make decisions.
• Understood each others’ blockers and how to work through them to fulfil the team’s potential.
• Clarified the types of leaders they want to be and how to make leadership decisions using their values, and integrity.

The culmination was a greater sense of identity, unity on ways of working together and rituals to be the team they want to be. By the end of the offsites, they had tapped into the essence of their team identity and its magic!