Designing a High-Performing Team of Teams

Culture & Leadership

How do you combine four independant teams into a cohesive powerhouse?

As leaders, we invested heavily into building connection within teams. These are some of the many initiatives we undertook to unite our team of teams.

Designing a High-Performing Team of Teams

Culture & Leadership

How do you combine four independant teams into a cohesive powerhouse?

As leaders, we invested heavily into building connection within teams. These are some of the many initiatives we undertook to unite our team of teams.

Designing a High-Performing Team of Teams

Culture & Leadership

How do you combine four independant teams into a cohesive powerhouse?

As leaders, we invested heavily into building connection within teams. These are some of the many initiatives we undertook to unite our team of teams.

The Friction

Reckitt's Digital Centre of Excellence was four powerful silos: Media, Experience Design, Content, and Publishing. Autonomy had become our enemy; we were fragmented, invisible to our own stakeholders, and operating as four distinct entities instead of one powerhouse.

The Friction

The Pivot

We set a vision for "One Digital Factory." One entry point, one team, four capabilities. We stopped acting like a collection of departments and started building a team of teams, using deliberate rituals to drive collaboration.

The Pivot

The Impact

Outperformed global benchmarks in culture pulse satifaction surveys, reduced churn and increased productivity

The Impact

Outperformed global benchmarks in culture pulse satifaction surveys, reduced churn and increased productivity

Contribution

UX Director as part of the Digital Factory Leadership Team (Purpose-led Transformation, Team Charter Design & Human Interaction Design)

Contribution

UX Director as part of the Digital Factory Leadership Team (Purpose-led Transformation, Team Charter Design & Human Interaction Design)

Transforming from Outputs to Outcomes

A shared purpose is empowering. Team interviews revealed that people confused their daily tasks (e.g. buying media, UX research) with our purpose. We used Simon Sinek’s Golden Circles to shift the focus from our differing tasks (outputs) to our combined impact (outcome).

Why

We make a difference by digitally connecting people with the trusted brands, information and experiences that enable healthier lives and happier homes.

How

We partner with market and brand teams, combining their local knowledge with our global digital expertise to create meaningful, scalable digital connections that maximise business and consumer impact.

What

We develop digital strategy, plan and activate media, build and optimise digital experiences, and continuously improve performance across Reckitt's global portfolio.

Empowering through Strengths

A team is stronger combined than the sum of its parts. We used CliftonStrengths to move beyond 'what we do' and identify 'who we are,' turning self-awareness into our greatest operational asset.

Knowledge is Power

Individual assessments highlighted strengths across Influencing, Strategic Thinking, Executing & Relationship Building to better understand what comes naturally and what requires more effort.

Leveraging the Team

We mapped these talents to visualise the team landscape. If we were light on strategy, we didn't force an execution-expert to pivot; we leveraged a teammate who thrived in strategy.

Maximising Impact

We fostered a culture of natural upskilling. By identifying where colleagues thrived, we built a team that moved as one, where individual weaknesses were covered by collective strength.

Designing for Connection

We engineered rituals to bridge the gaps between teams that had operated in silos, ensuring that everyone felt part of one cohesive unit, regardless of their daily focus.

Strengthening Bonds

We built dedicated off-site connection days into our annual calendar. Activities were a mix of work-related and social interaction, creating working groups of team members that did not generally work together day to day, to create new relationships and strengthen bonds.

Strengthening Bonds

Celebrating Success

We treated appreciation as a core KPI. Weekly "Shout-outs" openly thanked people for their outstanding collaboration, creating a continuous loop of recognition that culminated in our annual team awards.

Celebrating Success

Sharing Knowledge

We encouraged the sharing of 5 minute lightning talks in all regular team meetings. This democratized authority, allowing anyone to share knowledge across the team. Those hooked by the compact presentation were free to follow up.