Case Study 05 · Design Operations & Organizational Infrastructure
Before an organization can build great things, it needs to know how to function. That work is invisible when it's done well — and catastrophic when it isn't.
Overview — For Skimmers
When I joined Fannie Mae's Customer Experience Design team, my first assignment was to manage financial ops for a $12 million budget design team running nearly 30% over plan in the previous year. Underneath the budget problem was a people and systems problem: an 80-person design organization operating without the operational backbone it needed to function at enterprise scale. I built that backbone and for three years in a row, we managed the organization to within 1% of plan. Beyond that, the operational infrastructure I developed were enabling capacity based planning at scale and the people programs I designed had been adopted company-wide. The systems outlasted me in the role. That's the standard.
The Situation
When I joined Fannie Mae's Customer Experience Design team, I inherited a $12 million annual budget that had been running nearly 30% over plan — consistently, year over year. The design organization was out of the "wild-west" anything goes stage and starting to build its operational infrastructure to enable its ambitions — deliver best-in-class design throughout the organization. Capacity planning was informal. Resource allocation was reactive. The financial picture was a recurring source of stress for leadership.
Underneath the budget problem was a people and systems problem. A 80-person design organization looked structured on an org-chart, but lacked the operational backbone needed for success at scale.
The Approach
I built that backbone. Starting with the financial picture, because sustainable systems start and end with the bottom line, I developed internal tools that gave leadership real visibility into capacity, resource allocation, program status, performance, and budget trajectory. The goal wasn't just to stop the bleeding. It was to build something durable enough that future leaders wouldn't inherit the same problem.
In parallel, I built the operational infrastructure the organization needed to function: portfolio prioritization processes, people and culture programming, and management development standards that gave leaders the support they'd been missing. When the Covid-19 pandemic forced a major organizational restructuring, I got to work again — integrating the design team into the broader marketing division while maintaining operational continuity under significant uncertainty.
Partnering with the Design Leadership, I cofounded a Human-Centered Design training program that reached hundreds of employees across multiple divisions, democratizing design and building bridges across functional areas. It became one of the most in-demand programs in the company.
The Outcome
Within the first year, we got the budget under control and within 1% of target, exceeding the mandate to be within 5%. The systems helped it stay there for three consecutive years until structural changes came post Covid-19. The operational infrastructure I built became the foundation for how a 80-person design organization functioned at scale. The manager development programs I created were eventually adopted beyond design and embedded into company-wide HR practices.
The number I'm proudest of isn't the budget variance. It's that the systems I built outlasted me in the role. That's the standard I hold myself to.
Operational excellence isn't glamorous. It's the thing that makes everything else possible — and the thing everyone notices only when it's gone.