One of the key performance axes for product designers at Meta is the "people axis" and "quality". Beyond execution work, you're expected to contribute to company culture and design quality. But how do you approach this effectively during turbulent times? In this article, I share the rituals and experiences my teams implemented to navigate these challenges and bring people closer together. A time that felt very much like snakes and ladders.

The more senior you become, the greater the emphasis on the people and quality axis—so it's crucial to develop these skills early. These abilities transcend design; they're transferrable soft skills that help you become an exceptional team member rather than just an individual contributor.

Bottoms up culture

One of my most effective managers took a hands-off approach, empowering reports to lead from the front. While you might assume cultivating culture is a manager's direct responsibility, true success requires team-driven, bottom-up leadership. Team members must identify gaps and implement rituals they deem necessary and valuable.

Over the past few years, I've developed a growing passion for building communities and creating safe, enjoyable workplaces. As I mentioned in a previous post, impact and relationships are what endure.

When I left my last team at Meta, colleagues expressed how much they enjoyed working with me and thanked me for my cultural contributions.

I hope those memories remain positive and lasting, that's something I deeply value. There's a strong chance you'll work with these people again or rely on them for guidance throughout your career.

Rituals to Bring the Team Together

To strengthen our culture, we developed several design rituals:

1. Bi-weekly Design Sessions (1 hour every 2 weeks)

A 1 hour meeting which consisted of the following rituals:

Icebreakers: FigJam boards with prompts like draw your "favourite travel destination" or "favourite meal," or it could be playing, VR games or Gen AI activities.

Guest Speaker Slots: Speakers from across the company outside your immediate team so people can learn something different and get inspired. From Gen AI design leads, Instagram leaders, prototypers, shared inspiration and insights.

Design Tooling Tips: Team members shared Figma tips, internal tools, or workflows to boost collective productivity.

Business Updates: Design managers provided company-wide updates to keep everyone informed.

Celebrations: Recognition for new joiners, work anniversaries, and shipped projects to celebrate team achievements.

This approach fostered personal connections. You might discover someone dreams of visiting Paris, loves lasagna, and runs marathons. People felt heard and appreciated while staying informed about company developments.

2. Redesigning Design Critiques

We implemented several improvements:

• A consistent, user-friendly FigJam template to structure feedback

• Clear guidelines for constructive criticism

• Encouragement to share unpolished work, creating a safe space for exploration

• Participation recognition through badges and acknowledgment

Initially, people hesitated to present scrappy or incomplete work post-layoff anxiety had shaken their confidence. To break this barrier, we led by example, presenting our own messy files to demonstrate it was acceptable. Gradually, others began participating.

3. Bi-monthly Design Bulletin

We created digestible roundups showcasing everyone's work in magazine, presentation, or video format. This increased team visibility, recognition, and collaboration opportunities.

4. Weekly Team Check-ins (30 minutes)

Using FigJam boards, team members shared:

• Screenshots of current work

• Research findings and learnings

• Weekend activities and personal updates

• Requests for help or collaboration opportunities

This lightweight practice encouraged cross-pollination of ideas, collaboration, and awareness of teammates' work.

Overall these rituals let to a big transform in team morale when it came to PULSE surveys and scores, and it wasn't an overnight change, it took time to build up and get there.

Navigating Survival Mode

Despite these efforts, the reality of survival mode couldn't be ignored. Layoffs led to departures, management changes, and stalled projects. The same work felt twice as difficult, and intrinsic motivation vanished. During hard and difficult times people can build even stronger relationships with each other as you navigate hardship, or it could easily go the other way.

When your manager says, "It's time to start looking for other teams internally," you know you're in trouble.

The Challenge of Building Culture During Layoffs

When a culture of fear takes root with layoffs constantly looming people enter survival mode. They question whether they've produced enough impact, making it nearly impossible to cultivate positive working culture. Faith in leadership erodes after repeated reorgs every few months.

Just when you think you've pivoted in the right direction, that direction proves wrong too. Time for another vision exercise and scrambling to find designs for engineers to execute while everyone figures out the next steps.

It's like snakes and ladders: you make progress, team members buy into rituals, then another redundancy announcement sends you back to square one. Repeat this cycle throughout the year, and people lose trust, energy, and belief, all perfectly valid responses. People remember how they're treated!

You're left picking up shattered pieces, sometimes lacking conviction yourself, questioning where to start. Instead of rolling 5s or 6s, you're rolling 1s, barely moving forward before the next announcement. Culture becomes fragile. People attend design rituals to check boxes, not to genuinely engage.

After the first round of layoffs, where everyone on our team survived—the environment was somewhat salvageable. It was everyone's first experience with this, and there was hope it would be a one-time event before moving forward. It primarily affected researchers and content designers on the product team.

But the reality became one of continuous layoffs throughout the year. Organizations received budget targets and autonomy to reduce headcount as they saw fit.

Lessons Learned

Looking back, I've developed emotional resilience and learned to navigate ambiguity at a new level. Key takeaways include:

• Lead with promotions early to expand opportunities so when you want to leave your team there's tons of options.

• Proactively network across teams so it's easy for you to find opportunities.

• Trust your instincts and leave when situations become unsustainable

A Broader Perspective

During this turbulent period, I travelled through Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Witnessing how others find joy and purpose with fewer resources was humbling. True fulfilment isn't tied to wealth but to faith, family, and meaningful work.

Conclusion

This experience taught me resilience and provided clarity about my next steps. As I transition to a new role, I'm excited to work in an environment built on trust and collaboration. Whatever comes next is part of my journey, and I'll meet it with gratitude and readiness.