Can design make work, work? | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

The post argues that people managers should redesign their work rather than accept today’s overloaded, meeting-heavy norms. By reclaiming time, making feedback visible earlier, and creating better asynchronous collaboration practices, managers can help teams work with more focus and flexibility. The central recommendation is to question existing routines and deliberately build a more effective future of work.

Reclaim Time by Reducing Meetings

• Shopify began 2023 by eliminating recurring meetings with more than three participants, later restoring only the most essential ones.
• The goal was to protect uninterrupted time for independent work, especially in a fully remote organization spanning multiple time zones.
• Asynchronous collaboration through tools such as Figma and FigJam allows people to contribute when they are available.
• Managers should examine how they actually spend their days and compare that with what leadership expects them to do.
• Collaboration tools, visual planning, and brainstorming can replace some meetings—or make remaining meetings more focused on relationships, shared values, and team culture.

Make Feedback Cycles More Manageable

• Sharing early drafts helps prevent late-stage “swoop and poop” feedback from stakeholders.
• Posting screenshots or work-in-progress material in FigJam lets colleagues annotate, add sticky notes, and react with emojis without interrupting the team’s workflow.
• Early visibility creates a manageable feedback loop rather than requiring the team to respond to every comment immediately.
• Visual brainstorming also documents decisions and makes collaboration easier to revisit.
• Teams benefit from repeatable processes, but they also need structured opportunities to identify what is not working.
• At Super, anonymous suggestions during monthly retrospectives led to operational improvements, including a new bug-reporting system and short weekly sessions for testing new features.

Managers can improve team performance by removing unnecessary meetings, shifting more work asynchronously, and inviting feedback early and continuously. The broader lesson is to treat management practices as redesignable systems rather than fixed workplace traditions.