Growing the team behind the operating model

The product operating model defines the work design must support. Assessing each area produces a capability plan rather than a collection of job requests. Permanent roles should be created when the need is strategically important, recurring, and substantial enough to justify sustained ownership.

Growth should be triggered by persistent conditions rather than a target team size. Adding people without changing ownership can create more coordination rather than more value. Team topology and decision rights should be reviewed whenever staffing changes materially.

A job description helps recruit someone. A role charter helps that person succeed. Role charters should distinguish accountability from participation: several people may contribute to a decision, but only one role should be accountable for making it. Management and individual-contributor paths should be treated as equally valuable. Promotion should not require a strong designer to become a people manager.

Performance should be judged through outcomes, quality, behaviour, and organizational contribution, not artifact volume or personal visibility. Not every individual can be credited directly with a business metric. Performance should account for the person's scope, opportunity, decisions, and contribution to the team result.

Hiring should begin with a capability need and evidence-based scorecard, not a recycled job description. All candidates should be evaluated using the same core criteria, and interviewers should record evidence before discussing their recommendations. Avoid assessing vague “culture fit.” Evaluate whether candidates demonstrate the behaviours, judgment, learning ability, and contribution the organization needs.

AI fluency should become part of the practice without replacing customer contact, design judgment, or craft. Strong performance includes knowing when AI is appropriate, how to assess its output, and when direct research or expert judgment is required. AI should also reduce administrative work for managers, but it should not make autonomous decisions about hiring, performance ratings, promotion, compensation, or workforce reduction.

Promotion should reflect sustained evidence of operating at the next level, not tenure, a single successful project, or proximity to leadership. No one should discover a significant performance concern for the first time during an annual review.

Establish clarity about work, capabilities, roles and baselines; build the people system; then operate it, align staffing with priority value streams, and remove practices that do not improve outcomes.