Changying (Z) Zheng

Episode 169
Brave UX

Connecting Teams Through Ops

In this brand new episode of Brave UX, Changying (Z) Zheng brings clarity and calm to the sometimes-chaotic world of DesignOps 🔧 — revealing how service design thinking, strategic storytelling, and ruthless prioritisation help design teams thrive 🚀.

Highlights include:

Why Designers Lose Their Seat at the Table
Lessons from Running a Food Business
Saying “No” Kindly and Office Hours Tactics
Building Connective Tissue Across Orgs
Z’s Two-by-Two Career Framework

September 17, 202501:14:30

Listen on:

Who is Changying (Z) Zheng?

Changying (Z) Zheng is a Director of Product Operations at Cloudflare, where she’s helped scale the operational foundations of one of the internet’s most recognisable infrastructure companies 🌍.

Starting as a team of one, Z has built out design and research operations while championing people, processes, and platforms as the connective tissue of a thriving design org.

Before Cloudflare, Z worked across agencies, taught UX in higher education, and contributed to product design at Akamai, VMware, and Nasdaq. She also founded her own retail business, adding entrepreneurial insights to her strategic approach to DesignOps.

Her talks at conferences like The DevOps Conference and the DesignOps Summit have helped shape the way people understand the evolving role of DesignOps — especially in highly technical environments 🚀.

Transcript

Changying (Z) Zheng:
A lot of time. We say business need to prioritise design, need to value design. When we get there, we haven't been able to really show our value. We have a lot of strategic approaches to everything. We say, oh, we were not given the opportunity, but a lot of time we also haven't done justice to the design industry. We were there and we didn't provide the same equal amount of value to the business, and that's why eventually we lose our chair.
Brendan Jarvis:
Hello and welcome to another episode of Brave ux. I'm Brendan Jarvis, managing founder of the Space in Between the behavior-based UX research partner for enterprise leaders who want an independent perspective to align hearts and minds. You can find out more about me and what we do at the space in between.co.nz here on Brave ux. Though it's my job to help you to keep on top of the latest thinking and important issues affecting our field of design. I do that by unpacking the stories, learnings, and expert advice of a diverse range of world-class leaders. My guest today is Ching Jung, though you might also know her as ZZ is the design ops lead at CloudFlare, where she's been scaling the operational foundations of one of the Internet's most well-known and recognisable infrastructure companies. Starting as a team of one, she's helped grow and mature the organization's design and research capabilities, all while championing people process and platform as the connective tissue of a high performing design org.
Z's journey into design ops has been anything but linear trained as a graphic designer. She's worked across agencies, taught user experience in higher education, run her own very successful retail business and contributed to product design at companies like Akamai, VMware, and nasdaq. But it was through her growing interest in enabling others that she found her way into ops. Whether it's onboarding tooling, scaling design systems, or increasing research maturity, Z brings a thoughtful strategic lens to the often invisible work of making design teams thrive. Her talks like those at the DevOps conference and the design ops summit have helped shape how people understand the evolving role of design ops, especially in highly technical environments. And now she's here with me for this conversation on brave UX Z. A very warm welcome to the show.
Changying (Z) Zheng:
Thank you for having me here,
Brendan Jarvis:
Z, it's a real pleasure to have you here. And I was curious to start by asking you, how did you come to use your mono Z? How did that come about? Did you just get sick of people not being able to pronounce your name correctly?
Changying (Z) Zheng:
That is actually what happened, but it's a very controversial topic actually between me and my husband because it's because people can't pronounce my last name and then it start to short by Z. And this has been over 30 years I've been using Z, but my husband, who is actually not Chinese, always felt strongly about not using my Chinese name because people cannot pronounce my real last name. And then, but I say, look at it this way. This is helping people to pronounce my name. Also, it became a brand when I'm doing all UX related.
Brendan Jarvis:
I mentioned in your introduction Z that you have had a bit of a twisty turny road to design ops through your career as a designer and an entrepreneur. You have also, as I mentioned, an intro taught user experience, so business and design very well. And now you're in this quite pivotal role in design ops leadership at CloudFlare. When you think back about the arc of your career, what's the common thread, if any, that you can see in these experiences?
Changying (Z) Zheng:
For all of the things I do, it really led me to what I do today. So people always say, oh, if I learn this, do this without progress my career. So people would think about career progression, I would think about that. But for me, everything you learn, everything you do will make you who you are and then even will lead you to where you are. And it's the right thing for today, whatever you're doing. And so if it's no longer a fit for your personal growth, then you look for the next thing. So there's never a wrong way to go about certain things. And I think typically people tend to think of a very straight career trajectory. They're definitely that path for a lot of people. But for me it turns out to be a very different path and it worked out perfectly for me. So everything I do, I always gravitate towards how things work, how do I help people, whether that's agency, work, designer work, entrepreneur is always thinking about how do I make things work, solve that problem. So eventually led me to operation, which is all about helping people out, solving people problems.
Brendan Jarvis:
So that is the context in terms of helping people out and solving their problems. That's the common context across these different things that you've done. But you mentioned that there's the sense that you have of whatever you're doing in the moment is the right thing to be doing in that moment. And to me that sounds like a very calming way of thinking about where you're at at the present moment in your life life. Are there any underlying philosophies or philosophers or influential people in your life that have helped you to shape or adopt that point of view that you hold?
Changying (Z) Zheng:
I can't think of someone on top of my mind immediately, but what I think it really influenced greatly for my perspective about this is actually during my entrepreneur time and running a retail business, it's actually food business, which is very, very risky compared to doing standard UX because people could have died if you put in the wrong elements or every the ingredients or people could be allergic and they were a time that people will cause and say, oh, I had something that had to go to hospital. I didn't think of the peanut allergy or something like, right. So now I look at things, what I do is like, is it super urgent? Is it life or death situation? It's not. And then could this be a mistake? Yes, probably it could be a mistake, but I'm making the decision with the information that I have at this given moment, so it is the right decision.
Brendan Jarvis:
So from that very much high stake situation, I think you were doing it was dairy free food, right?
Changying (Z) Zheng:
Exactly. Dairy free frozen dessert, that's what is essentially, it's the dairy free ice cream. It's a little bit early before the time of a dairy, dairy-free ice cream, but you cannot call it ice cream.
Brendan Jarvis:
Got it. And I can imagine getting those calls from people that are saying that's something that they've eaten of yours is taking them to the hospital. That's sort of a next level of intensity in terms of the day-to-day operations. And I think you're a COO in this company that you co-founded, right?
Changying (Z) Zheng:
Yeah. Raining all about operation.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah. I mean, funny how the thread, you can see that thread come through to where you're at now. So it seems that you've borrowed that way of handling those situations and brought it forward into your work now where it's not life or death or it doesn't have that same potential risk in the work that you're doing. How has that mindset influenced how you've led your people in your design ops organisation?
Changying (Z) Zheng:
Yeah, people always think I have a very calm way approach things and there's never drama, but in reality, any work, there's always drama, but it's how you handle the drama, how you actually face the drama. So same thing as I lead people, team or people and everything, I try to bring that perspective into everyday work as well. So is this perfect and maybe not can walk away, think about it, sleeps through tonight and come back because it's not a life and death situation. So far after my dairy free business, I haven't really come across. So if this button is in the wrong place, if this person said something, it's not life and death, let's think about how to handle it. So I bring that calmness into the overall day-to-day craziness into business and everything. I think that's helpful. And then when I'm calm, people I work with will be calmer and the people report to me will be calmer. And then when you are calm, you don't react to things and you don't say things you regret later.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yes, that's a hundred percent correct. Yeah, it's interesting that being calm is actually quite infectious. It's interesting to think about the context of the work that most of us who are listening to this, including myself do, we're talking about the stakes aren't as high as we perhaps can be led to belief, but nevertheless, we seem to acclimatise to the drama of the day and things can feel very much critical. And yes, some things are, but I'm curious to know if you've identified any common anxiety inducing situations in your role as a leader that people perhaps listening today we could reflect on in the moment now and see them for what they are when they next come out. Are there any sort of common patterns and behaviour that you've observed that would benefit from a bit of that?
Changying (Z) Zheng:
Yeah, that anxiety is real, right? Everyone, you will feel that anxiety. And then a lot of times what I think is that we will see things our own perspective, just by default. We only see things, how I see things, but for me, I always go back to my entrepreneur time because that's totally a different type of work. And I was actually entrenched doing scooping ice cream sometimes. So in that level and I got to meet a lot of people who I normally stay in my design firms and everything I would not come across. So I start to hear their story, got to understand their perspective. The most important thing is to help me to understand there's always, always a different perspective and most likely I'm not seeing that. So step back, calm down, think about it, think about it a little bit from other people's perspective, helped me to address things, to approach people.
And I definitely trying very hard to bring that perspective into my everyday work as well. So sometimes I could be purposely contradictive, maybe I don't believe it, but I'm going to say anyway just to get people to think about a different perspective. And I'm trying to show that to people I work with as well. I tell people I will always challenge your perspective, even I don't agree or I do agree. So I think that helps us to start to see different ways of seeing things. And I definitely sometimes go out, I said something someone will tell me, so oh gosh, I never thought that's how people are actually taking it. And also another thing, I think during COVID time there's a lot of change in the way we work, in the way we handle people dealing with people. We did lose some of the social skills because of that.
But the challenge is also we don't see this sometimes we're just on camera. We don't see a lot of a subtle body gestures, the facial expressions and everything. So we would say something, the receiving end totally took it differently. And then I would love it if they tell me, Hey, do you mean this? Do you mean that? And it heard because you said this, I said, oh gosh, I don't mean it. A lot of times people say things a little bit hurtful, but then it turns out I don't mean it. I just didn't know that's how you took it.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, we placed that value judgement on what's coming in almost reflexively. It's funny you mentioned also the change to working more remotely. When COVID came in, I had one of my previous guests, Amy Santi, as she'd seen a recording of me delivering a talk on a real stage. And then she realised that I wasn't just someone that existed from the shoulders up on this podcast on these recordings. I'm actually someone with hands and legs and this real person, which doesn't, of course doesn't translate in this context as well. You can't see the whole person physically. But I think what you're touching on there is you also can't intuit or receive the full emotional signal that's coming from that other person. When we're multiple boxes on a screen in a meeting, it's we're not well adapted to the current context.
Changying (Z) Zheng:
Exactly. We learn. We had to learn to adapt that.
Brendan Jarvis:
And I like to think that we're all getting better at it. And you've certainly been doing some great things at CloudFlare building this practise. And I wanted just to touch on design ops now in terms of how you've framed it before. And that is, and I think I mentioned this in your intro as well as service design for design teams. And the goal I understand from having listened to some of the things that you've previously talked about and now I'm paraphrasing you, is to create an environment where designers can excel. And when you think about the environment that you have created for designers at CloudFlare through the work you've been doing in ops, what has that environment where they can excel, what does it look like?
Changying (Z) Zheng:
So you mentioned that I think design ops is service design to the design team. And it came from, I was a designer, that's my route. I was a designer for a long time and I take that skill into the operation perspective as well. So if you think about designers, you think about double diamonds, you think about all the design practises. So I actually applies really perfectly into the operation world as a service designer. So I'm certainly hope, this is definitely my hope as well to support the design team, to build a culture that designers and the design leaders can thrive and people first, and also I'm hoping designers and design leaders can also start to think about the different perspectives is the business perspective as well. Essentially designers, since I was an entrepreneur before as well, we essentially serve the customers or our, we say users, customers, definitely's important, but also we serve the business who hired us, paid us to do the job as well. We need to be able to see these different perspectives to be better designers and hoping that come across the team I support as well, bringing in different perspectives into the team, help them to see differently. But definitely I want to make sure that our team is people first and everything after.
Brendan Jarvis:
Well, let's talk about that perspective in particular, the perspective of the business. What practical steps did you take? Perhaps it was early on or perhaps it's something you've done recently, but what practical steps have you taken that you feel have led you to be able to build a more productive relationship with those stakeholders?
Changying (Z) Zheng:
Again, from a designer's perspective, so we always being taught, or at least that's our belief, that you think about this three leg stool and the working collaboratively with the cross-functional team, with engineers and the PMs and design. So we would think design always represent the customer user, and that is true in certain extent. And then the designer, I said that before as well say, designers need to represent the users everything. But on the other hand we need to understand the business perspective. PMs bring in the engineers bring in their practical skills as well. So in practise, building a design team want to help the designers to be able to storytelling. And then so if you talk about designer designers, we are very accustomed to talk about this is what I did, this is this, this is this, and this is the final result. And then even you think about interview portfolio review, and this tend to be this processes.
So we talk about this process, but I'm trying to help our team to think about storytelling, tell the end first tell the story, the end, the end result first because that's what my PM cares about and that's where my stakeholder cares about. And then go back, you can talk about explain why you did what you did. And then, so this goes to all the levels from entry level designers to presentations to support my vp. And then when I help say my VP to prepare presentations, I was trying to think about what's the connection, what's the tell the end story, what we're trying to tell. And I'm hoping that through all these kind of pushing storytelling, which designers understand actually have people start to think about the business perspective of design,
Brendan Jarvis:
Starting with what's in it for them first rather than
Changying (Z) Zheng:
Why do they care? Yeah,
Brendan Jarvis:
Why should you care about, what's the words coming out of my mouth? I sense that there's an element within, and it wouldn't be just designers, but that's the microcosm that we live in, that this need or this want to be understood, which is why process seems to get elevated. All of the what should be in the appendix gets put into the body because we want people to see and understand and appreciate all the work that went into the outcome. And what you're saying is that we need to lead with the outcome and then we'll get the opportunity if they're interested to be validated in the ways that perhaps our ego seeks some of that. Now of course, I'm wildly generalising here, but it seems to be a common pattern in designers that we don't always get what you are talking about.
Changying (Z) Zheng:
I think so way. I know for years we are talking about we want a seat at the table, so we always looking hours, we need a seat, we need a seed then. But the thing is that, so you finally got a seed, even you bring your little suit there, you finally got a seed, so why you are here? So you got to be able to actually sit there, talk the same talk with the rest of the people. And I think this could be very controversial in a way. So a lot of time we say design business need to prioritise design, need to value design. And so when we get there, we haven't been able to really show our value. We have a lot of strategic approaches to everything. We say, oh, we were not given the opportunity, but a lot of time we also haven't done justice to the design industry.
We were there and we didn't provide the same equal amount of value to the business. And that's why eventually we lose our chair there. I think it is both way. I think a lot of time from a designer's perspective, we talk a lot, we need a seat at the table. But when you have that, so what that also go back to my entrepreneur time because I was a designer and I was the founder, co-founder, everything. So I have that seat, I understand the business so I can make that decision and bring in the design practise what I do. And I think design founders are great because they can see the business value. And I think to keep our seat at the table, we actually absolutely, absolutely have to be able to elevate our speak storytelling to that level, not just about process. This is what we did, this is what I hear from our customer, from a user. That's why we have to, yes, that's all true but cannot lead just from that lead, but this is what we'll do for business and because this is the right thing for the business and this is the right thing for the customer.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yes, it brings you much closer to achieving a broader view of the reality facing that business if you can embrace it that way. And I was wondering, because you've both been a practising designer, you've been a design leader in terms of you've had VP and other senior directorial type roles in design where you would've been leading other designers and now you are in design ops leadership. My curiosity here is design ops is design related, very closely tied to design, but it's not design. Is it easier for you to be taken more seriously and to have more business-minded with your stakeholders in your role in design operations than it was for you to have when you were in design? Strict design leadership?
Changying (Z) Zheng:
I wasn't sure if easier is the word, but on the other hand it's helpful for me to be in that role because I can understand designers, designers have a very different way of doing things, have a very disciplined practise outside design field. Might not understand, might not know. So if you think about engineers, they have their practise, but then there's the tickets. Then why design tickets take so long? Why does design have 500 different steps before we can ship the thing to anywhere, right? So they're saying, so I understand designers, but on the other hand, I also understand the business that the urgency of the business, I have contract commit, I have to meet this because if we don't meet this deadline, all the research is great or everything is the right thing, but I lost this contract and then that's how I pay you all to do the work you do.
So I think it is helpful for me to bring these all the perspective together to help people to balance it, to prioritise things. I think in an operation perspective, able to prioritise things, ruthlessly prioritise things is helpful. When I started ops here, design team tend to just, at the time we were a lot of smaller as well. We're just taking orders, EOA, taking tickets and doing it, ship it, and then designers felt like a really burned out. So I was able to start to say, hey, can we start to say no and say more? No. But focus on prioritise the more strategic work, more impactful work, and then balance with some quick wins as well. And then to be able to demonstrate value as well. And so I think it's easier for me to do my ops job, but I wouldn't say exactly just easier. I put a lot of efforts to make it easier as well.
Brendan Jarvis:
Absolutely. It sounds like you are working on the same problem but from a different angle and you can use perhaps slightly different language and tools than you otherwise might've if you're in the strict design role. Let's talk about when you first started at CloudFlare, because you mentioned there that the team was a little overwhelmed and I seem to recall seeing somewhere some ratio that was quite a big ratio between I think it was designers and engineers. Tell me what was the state of that ratio when you first arrived and how are things looking now?
Changying (Z) Zheng:
So at the time when I started, the design team is extremely small, but then a lot of tech companies that it's very common. It's not a surprise when I start a team. And so at the time, not only designed to engineer ratio, it's really out of proportion. Designed to PM ratio is also very auto proportion. And I know that in the design field we prefer one designer to ideally 1:00 PM but maybe even if it's a little bit larger org, maybe one designers at least no more than supporting couple PMs because that's how you can actually work and then contact switching and everything. But we definitely, even in the org, we still not ideal, but it's like one designers to potentially certain areas, five to seven PMs and it is really hard for designers to contact switching and then actually make it work. So right now we're still not ideal.
We're still consistently talking about ratio and everything and we are maybe like a one to three in certain area, one to maybe still five in certain areas, that's for sure. But now we're focusing more on with the people we have and we have to draw that line and draw the heart line. These are the things we can support and certain things we can prioritise. Headcount is always tricky issue in a way. So it's like we're always talking about ratio. There are certain companies has better ratios, but so we don't have the best ratio, so what do we do? And that's prioritisation. So it's a balance now. And so I still think we could do much better and then you'll still hear our design leaders and our ratio is really not ideal and it's still very true because company grow so fast. Our team when I started is about 12 or 15 people. Now the design side we have about near 40 including managers. And then we also included content to our team. So the entire product experience team now is about 60. It's actually a little over 60 people.
Brendan Jarvis:
So has the ratio improving overall
Changying (Z) Zheng:
A little bit, but very small improvement in a way that's just a reality still. But the work improved a little bit because the prioritisation.
Brendan Jarvis:
Okay, and maybe prioritisation is a big part if not the entire part of the answer to this next question, which is around something that I heard you describe in your DevOps conference talk, which was how you transitioned the model at CloudFlare from the design organisation being very reactive in terms of a ticket taking type mentality to being more proactive. And I was curious, I mean obviously you've spoken about the importance of prioritisation a couple of times now maybe we need to go further into that, but what were the practical steps that you took to enable that shift? To go from reactive to more proactive
Changying (Z) Zheng:
Designers believe that to prove our value, we want to be helpful. So when the tickets or the requests come to our way, we want to say yes, we want to be helpful and then we believe we should be involved in everything. So we have that tendency. But the other side of it is that we become ticket taker and that we get really busy and that we get overwhelmed and then we don't have time to think about strategic work because we're just doing the work in day to day. So I think the most important thing is really to start to say no. And at the very early stage and I start to push the design team to think about what we can do support, fully support, but for the things we start to implement what we call office hours, those are kind of like a consultation time.
So we can support you, but we want to be helpful, so come we can give you some ideas, give you some guidance, and then you go to do your own ideal. No, definitely not ideal, but in a way that we were able to, we're not just saying we're not going to do it, saying no, but we're saying, but let me help you out the best I could. So people don't feel like, oh, designers are always bottleneck. They're always saying, no, they're jerks or anything like that, but it's more we want to be helpful, this is the best we could do and let me help you out this way. And so we implemented office hours and now that our team got bigger, so the blanket version of office hour doesn't work anymore. So what we actually transitioned with my design leaders that talk about it and we have more managers as well, so the managers can help triage as well now.
And then we implement more domain specific office hours and then we have our design lead running office hours as well. So we have more office hours but more focus. So it's not just anyone have a problem in bring in, but it's more focused. So we are continuously iterating. But I think all these kind of, the approach is fully embedded to support the most important work, but office hours or consultation time to do our best to help people. But that also cut down our burden in a way for the designers because we make it very clear you can come to the office hour, say it's an hour, so we have to talk about the things within this hour. There's no homework. It's not like you come in, I take another ticket back to do or anything. This is the hour, let's see what we can do, get it done in an hour. But obviously there are time things really big, really important, come to the office hour, then we encourage our designer to encourage those people go to talk to design managers. Maybe they can help to prioritise, go to talk to the product leaders, maybe they can help us to prioritise and then to focus on whatever as a team we decided is a priority. So there's that solution as well. We do want to be helpful. We don't want to be jerks.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, yeah. And it sounds like, and correct me if I'm wrong, that you never give a hard no,
Changying (Z) Zheng:
Never. Never say never, right? So I can't think of a time people are just outright says no, but in a way we are saying no. And they are actually, I wouldn't say, we never say no. There are certain situations we'll have to say, actually we really can't. We don't. It's too big. We can't and it's not prioritised. No, we can't. And so we will say no, but kindly you don't have to be a jerk to say no. There are different ways to say no, right. So yeah,
Brendan Jarvis:
Perhaps there's something deeper in there. What is it about the art of saying no kindly that you seem to value in the way in which you've approached this practise?
Changying (Z) Zheng:
Personally, I don't know that applies to everyone personally. I think a way to say no is that I hear you out and I hear you and I understand your challenge, but I really can't help either I don't have the bandwidth or I don't have the knowledge or it's not the priority. But definitely hear people out first. They are again perspectives. They're bringing their perspective, their need is real, whether it's their priority because that's a hundred percent thing they're doing that is their priority. Just on a bigger team I would say we don't have that many people. We only have limited people. And if it's not a priority, unfortunately we can't. So we are saying no, but I really hear you and let's work it together, see what we can do. I can give you some ideas so I can point them to resources as well.
And with all the new tooling coming up, there will be better way to support people. I'm hoping. I'm also big on automation, if anything can be automated, let's do that saves time. And that's also why for a lot of design system team actually roll up to ops in our situation, don't, the design system doesn't roll up to us, but a lot of team design system actually roll up to op, especially smaller team. The reason is because that's serves the foundation and give basically giving us a way to help people out without actually doing everything for them. So that's other ways to say no.
Brendan Jarvis:
Well let's talk about foundations or in another sense, let's talk about pillars. I understand that much of the work that you do at CloudFlare is shaped by the three pillars of people, process and platform. How did those three things become your foundational pillars and why have you kept them as those foundations?
Changying (Z) Zheng:
I certainly hope so, and for me people is always comes first. Everything we do and it's people, so internally or externally customers and we need to prioritise that first, right? And then for operation people, we are process people in a way. Process can be allergic word for a lot of companies because people think that was slow things down. But from an operations perspective, processes actually help us to scale and help us to have a rigour to scale and process for process sake is not helpful. That again goes back to the service design perspective. So when you intake and see what process makes sense, iterate and then implement that process to kind of scale that. And then once you have a process that goes to the platform side, so you can scale the team, build the foundations and think about how you can support the business from a platform perspective. Think about programme now we're not thinking about project, project, project, we start to think about bigger picture, the programme, but in return that help us to elevate design because we're starting to think more strategically enable the team to do more strategic work instead of project, project, project. So those pillars I think will always stay true and especially important for the designers to understand and why we do it this way.
Brendan Jarvis:
And what you've described there, it ties into the framing that you've used of connective tissue, the connective tissue that design ops represents within the design org. Have you found that this connective tissue can be successfully created either through direct experience that you've had in roles or in other people's stories that you've heard without a design ops practise? Or is this kind of connective tissue only able to be crafted if you can have some separation from the design org itself to make that happen?
Changying (Z) Zheng:
I don't think it's a one size fit all. So being connected tissue, you don't have to be separated from the design. You could be the connected tissue within the org. It's really about intake, learning what other people's perspectives are and build that report and then see the big picture. You start to see different parts of the org, you start to see the pattern, you start to see the strengths of different parts of the org, and then you can connect all different parts. So that could happen within design. And I also see really great success when it's outside the design. So I was adamant about design operations stay within design org for the longest time. So interestingly last year our operation got consolidated into a product operation, everything. So at the time it's like, well if you want to support design fully, we should stay with design.
But then the benefit of being larger in the product org side, then you can see the bigger picture, you get to see how PM side work, how engineer, how infrastructure work. You get to see that picture. So there is that and there's definitely trade off. But anyway, we got moved to the product org and I started to do a lot of a cross board thing, the same thing still being the connective tissue, but now it's connecting more orgs, larger orgs and different parts of work in return. I always tell people, you know what, I'm biassed because I was a designer. I'm always in design way. But on the other hand, by connecting the org, it really benefit the design team tremendously because we actually see even bigger picture. And so I think it's helpful. So it could be within the design team if you have a really large design team. Definitely I think a dedicated design ops is really beneficial that if you have a mid-size or something, it's possible. Design ops is part of the larger operation, so where you sit is not the most important thing. How you see things connect that is actually more meaningful.
Brendan Jarvis:
Well let's talk about that aspect of it, the perspective aspect of it. In this product ops focus that you now find yourself in, do you have colleagues that have come from say product or engineering alongside you or are you still the tip of the spear so to speak, and leading that product ops organisation?
Changying (Z) Zheng:
Now we're side by side now actually I get to learn from people from a different perspective bringing in the operation perspective. Definitely product ops is a very defined discipline in a way. It's operation is different. So the focus is different as well. Design is design. Op has some very specific specifically, but what I learned a lot from people who, they're not designers. They came from either a PM side or TPM side or some of them come from psychology side, wherever that is. So that's not whoever they bring, again, they bring in their experience. I feel that I learned a lot from those perspectives, how they run roadmap. And it's very differently than the way that design operations designers think as a matter of fact. So I learn a lot, but then on the other hand I find interestingly design ops, we obviously talk about how we work together, how we get things down, how we elevate design. So I bring that framework into a product operation as well. So how we work together now is the larger team work together, how we work together, how we get things done. And same thing, how we elevate the org we support. If that's not designed per se, it's a larger org. So I think it goes both directions as well. But definitely we're not the tip of that. It's really side by side with other people and I feel I benefit a lot from that as well.
Brendan Jarvis:
So the triad or the three legged stall holds up well as a way of working within a product ops organisation as it does within I believe so. Okay. Yeah, that's interesting.
Changying (Z) Zheng:
Yeah, I believe so.
Brendan Jarvis:
Forgive me if I've got this wrong, but when you started at CloudFlare, you were a team of one. I was. And now you find yourself as one of the leaders within the broader product ops organisation. So you've come a long way.
Changying (Z) Zheng:
I still don't have a large team operation is always a small team because operation is supporting a lot of people. Now I find that in the product side and I still have a very small team, but on the other hand I supported a larger team now. And so it's a relative scale, I guess
Brendan Jarvis:
That larger team, the growth that you've helped to enable is a symptom at least partly attributable to the success that you've had in the role that you've been performing. And I noticed that you've been there now I think for four years or so at CloudFlare. So you've been
Changying (Z) Zheng:
Almost five.
Brendan Jarvis:
Almost five. So you've definitely been demonstrating value. That's what I wanted to get into is when you started and really the pressure comes on, right? You're new in the role, you've got to come up to speak with the company, you've got to earn your stripes so to speak. What did you decide to focus on first and why
Changying (Z) Zheng:
At the time? Again, I started doing at the beginning of the COVID, right? So it's again the service design perspective. What is the most important thing for this group of people I serve that needs address those first. And then you can think about the larger problem wherever you believe that should be the priority. The priority is address immediate needs. When I came in, the biggest need is actually designers. Burnout is COVID new way of doing things. We used to be an office first company. All of a sudden we are a hundred percent remote, no one knows how to deal with all these things. That's the biggest problem. And since we are not seeing everyone every day together and say project comes in, we don't see people get burned out, we don't hear people because if you are in the office, you see people frustrated, they're overwhelmed, irked, they stay long time wherever.
But when we became an entirely entire remote team, you don't see that unless someone say you wouldn't know. And so the biggest problem is the burnout. So we have to address that first. Once that's dealt with, then we can take next step to think about what's the next large issue. I think balance that strategy and also immediate needs will help you demonstrate success. So your team build that trust so you're not just bringing in whatever practise it works, but you are actually hearing me out what I need to help me out. And next thing when I reach out people say, Hey, hear me out now let's try this thing. Can we do that? Then I'll build up that report already so I can do the next big thing. If it's a big thing,
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, you're investing in building up those deposits of rapport that you can then call on later. That makes a lot of sense. You touched on a little earlier Z on this reticence that some people have towards process. Now clearly you were a practising designer. You have designer's mind and creative mind as well within you. And one of the challenges that can happen within organisations as they mature is sometimes people perceive that process stifles their ability to practise their craft, and those can be tricky things to balance. How have you, if at all, worked to be mindful of that trade-off between systemizing and enabling designers to do the problem solving in the way that they would most want to do
Changying (Z) Zheng:
Service design again, so if you implement a process and from top down, sometimes there's necessity, but it would be hard. People don't understand why is this process. So if it worked with people, then they feel they're part of it and they can actually participate, they have input and then they are more willing. And then you tell people, let's iterate. This is the experiment, let's iterate and see how this going to work out. And then they're part of it again, so they're more willing, so now it works for your team. Let's spend that two next team and let's scale that and then see how that works. So I think it's really again, service design approach, bring them in along the way and then work together and I think it will be helpful. They understand why the process is important.
Brendan Jarvis:
Suzie, you were talking there about the importance of getting alongside designers and I suppose helping them feel listened to and contribute to the change in particular process or tooling or whatever the change is that you're trying to implement. I wondered seeing as we were talking about what sounded like quite ruthless prioritisation earlier on, you just physically can't do everything and serve everyone's need and sometimes you have to say no kindly in order to focus on the things that you can have the most impact on. Is there also a parallel here between how you've chosen to work or selected certain teams within the organisation to roll out certain process or tooling changes first because you've identified them in some ways, perhaps being more receptive or being good candidates for that type of work?
Changying (Z) Zheng:
Yeah, absolutely. And it's the same thing as prioritisation for designers. Design ops also needs to prioritise our own work, everything. So find the right team to experiment with us is important. Different teams will work differently and you want to observe how they work and then for a particular process and you want to try with the team who is the right fit to experiment with you. So definitely prioritise. That example would be, so if you think about tickets and Jira is our tool, the thinking is good. The thinking is that our designers should be embedded in the team and then support all the teams. And then we shouldn't need a design ticket. We should be just engineering tickets or the ship tickets we all roll up. The thinking is not wrong, but our org doesn't work that way because we are at the time, it's more of a centralised org.
We shift the designers everywhere, so we can't see what designers are doing because they're all part of their projects. Everyone has a different labels, different type of tickets, different projects and everything. So we can't see our team is doing them. I cannot articulate. Our ratio is not ideal. I don't know. So because we can only count ahead count numbers, but then we don't know in terms of project, how can we support it? We don't see our work. So then my goal is, well, how can we visualise our design team's work? And then my idea was that, well, let's bring tickets all into a design ticket. So then if you just tell everyone, say, Hey, now from today, you all have to start to design tickets. You can do that, but habits are hard to change. And so I had to find the team that they're more willing to experiment that maybe the designers managers felt the pain.
We don't have a way to show our work also, let's try this. Let's try so let's capture our work separately and can we start to report on our work and then to figure it out and if that's the right way. So I found the team and then we started to do it and then we ran into the next one and the next one, it's a small org at the time, given that, so it wasn't too hard to roll it out, but still I found a small team. And the next one, next one, very soon. Okay, now we can say the process comes in. All the design team need to start design project. I think I did a talk dev talk way back talking about geo structure. People actually at the time asked me a question, oh, if designers is working with the agile team and wouldn't that be better? They work in their own team, have the ticket there. I said, yes, for some org I came from a org, agile org. That's how we did it. It totally makes sense, but if you think about our team's need to actually make more sense. We can visualise the design work separately. So we would design tickets, engineer tickets, and the PM shifts as the umbrella to help this. So but definitely prioritise the team, fund the team and then roll out the process. So prioritisation work for operation as well.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, I think after having had I think 170 odd of these conversations, there seems to be this desire within the broader community to come to the one right answer. And if there's anything that I've learned through these conversations with clever people such as yourself is that there is no one right answer. There might be some core themes that are useful across all organisations to employ, but really it's so highly dependent on the organisation itself, that team you've found. Yeah, it really depends, right? I mean that's such a typical consultant type response, but
It doesn't give certainty. But I think that there's enough clarity over behaviours or mindsets that are useful to bring to this type of work that you've even shared today about your approach at CloudFlare and some of your previous experiences that are of value to people that are in similar situations but not the same situation. Now I want to come back to that team that you were mentioning there that you used as a friendly way to adopt something that they were willing to embrace and therefore you're able to more easily roll that out across the wider org. I wondered if that had any role at all to play with what I understand is called Cloudflare's Growth Week, which is a mini conference that you've previously used to spotlight certain teamwork and that scene from what you were saying previously to be quite impactful for your objectives. What can you tell me about Growth Week and how you've used that to help grow and bring people alongside you as you've developed the design ops org?
Changying (Z) Zheng:
I'm so happy that you found that about Growth Week. It's one of my passion projects in a way. And that's the intention, exactly, is that to elevate the team's work, also giving the design team breathing room to learn. Designers are so busy doing work and all the time, so there's just endless work for designers. If we don't purposefully consciously carve out time for growing learning and we will not do it, designers won't have the time to do it. And so we start to do same thing as during the COVID time, people are burned out. So how do we address that, right? So where's the space we carve out for people to learn? So we start to do very small scale within the design team and then we grow that to inviting PMs in. Now we actually opened up to the entire company. We just actually had our growth a couple of weeks ago for this year is the fifth growth week we're doing now.
And I definitely see more discipline, other parts of the org people coming in, but it's really carving out a space for designers to grow, to learn. We used to call it design growth week, now it's just a growth week actually, because it's a broader sense. We try very hard to invite cross-functional partners coming to talk as well, so designers could learn other things as well. We work with our vendors coming in to do some training to help us as well. Every so often we'll invite industry speakers coming in to talk about whatever the passion thing they're working on. And we as a team, we're a SaaS company, software focused and everything. But there's the fun creative part. Like earlier you mentioned how do you balance the creativity? And then also the rigorous of could be a little bit boring doing a SaaS project. So we invite people coming in and one of my ex coworker working for Lucid Car Company.
So coming in to talk about interface for cars, we have nothing to do with our software development, but designers get excited about things. Oh, maybe this approach, we can actually think about our approach when we approach SaaS projects, assess the software project, everything just really broaden the way of exposure. And so I think the growth week has definitely been my passion project and continue pushing it, but that I could not do it alone. I need people come to speak about it. I need people to come to participate as well, to be able to have people participate, we need to have all the managers support. They need to tell all the cross-functional teams that, Hey, this is our growth week. You're welcome to join as well. But we are not going to be doing busy shipping work. Some of the meetings have to be moved and everything. So it takes a lot to make this happen. And then I still think it is a small scale, but I definitely hear a lot of positive feedbacks and people really enjoy these learning opportunities.
Brendan Jarvis:
You touched on out of category learning and the importance of that. I mean clearly having domain knowledge and category knowledge for designers is really valuable, particularly the more technical you get. But having that inspiration and those things that can come in from the outside and provoke different ways of thinking or approaches to problem solving, the sort of big borrow and steal type mentality can be quite useful when it comes to getting around the curlier issues. You also mentioned how it was difficult, I'm not sure if that was the exact word you used, but I got the sense that a lot had gone into making this happen. You've done it now for five years. It's required from what it sounded like, a coalition of people to come together around this to make it a reality. It also sounded like you literally block off the week to minimise the amount of work that you're shipping. So you can focus on this growth led endeavour of growth week. How have you managed to sustain that? Because one week, it's just one week, right? But it's one week out of 52, so it's actually quite a significant amount of time when it comes to SaaS businesses operations. So how have you managed to sustain the belief that this is a worthy and valuable way for the design org to spend their time?
Changying (Z) Zheng:
I'm still working on that a and so I do have a very tight needed team and the design org is extremely supportive. The design leader I work with and is extremely supportive, understand the value of it. So I have the executive buy-in from the design side. So now then the next challenge is getting the cross-functional side, the PM side or the engineer says, Hey, the designers are all gone for a week and I still have my deadline. What's going to happen? So then I need the design managers to support as well to go continuously articulate that with the cross-functional team. I try to prepare that ahead of time as well. Hey, give people the heads up. Hey, this week knowing down the road in months we're going to be out for this week. Remember we have our growth week. You are welcome to come as well and join us.
And so learn with us and have fun with us as well. So it takes some prep to articulate that, take a lot of collaboration with our supportive design managers to go out to reach out their day-to-day partners as well. And communication is really important to build up that momentum. We invite other cross-functional team members come to talk. So they bring their people, so I'm going to do this growth week, then you all can come to listen to my talk as well. That opens that and communications preparing people. We now actually send it to the company newsletters the week off, they will put company, have a newsletter. Every week goes out. So what's happening this week? It gets down the company calendar, it gets on the newsletter being promoted. We send an email out preparing people. No one wants be surprised to say, Hey, you are going to be gone, but we want to talk about why this actually benefit all of us. I'm still working on that, to be honest. It's never, if you think about business taking out, it's a week. Sometimes we do two actually. We try to do every six months, two gross week, two out of 50 weeks of working, it's a lot. And then our team, that's 60 people, so that is expensive week. So we better get something out of it.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, there better be some sort of ROI. How much of your role, subjectively, would you say in any given week you're spending on communication?
Changying (Z) Zheng:
I always think I'm always in the communication, whether that's email or it's a chat or it's a newsletter. I think that's part of the thing is the most important thing for design ops and because in a way I talk a lot about the ops is a thankfulness job and then no one knows what you're doing and nobody understand why things work. If everything works, why wouldn't it work? But when things doesn't work immediately it's the ops deal with it doesn't broken, this process doesn't work, this doesn't, right. So communication I think is extremely important in different level. So something you need to just ping people, keep telling people you think about connected tissue is keeping people informed and why I am doing this constantly. So the big communication may be newsletter doesn't go out all the time, but then everything else is always communication. Talking to people, pinning people, keeping people informed. Different parts of order, get the connective tissue is keeping people informed. And I felt like I'm always communication. That's the big thing and everything I do in these different level, different types of communication. But that is definitely, I think it's a strong, it's very necessary skill for the ops. I'm definitely not doing the best and I definitely keep pushing myself, learning how to communicate, finding the right level, and that is important skill for operation people. Keep people informed so you can connect
Brendan Jarvis:
Them. That sounds like it's been an area and a continuing area of growth, and it certainly is for me. Communication shouldn't surprise me at all, but it is so integral to the success of many, many other things. I think we completely are guilty at times of underestimating just its value. When it comes to thinking about in this current moment, how much of your role is taken up with that communication? Does it at all surprise you?
Changying (Z) Zheng:
I never thought it that way. It's just become part of your life. You do. And it's almost like a muscle memory now. I think at very beginning, I don't even think about this is communication. It's just, well, let's talk to people for ops, connecting people. Let's talk to people, let's ping people. And then you look back, oh, these are just different ways of communicating and it's communication. So I never really labelling, say if I ping people for five seconds, I don't label that as communication ever. But then if look at it, that is also a different level of communication, everything. So I never thought about it that way. So I would say maybe it didn't surprise me and it's just part of life. For ops.
Brendan Jarvis:
One of the aspects of communication that you've mentioned earlier on in our conversation was storytelling. And you've mentioned a couple of examples of how you've been doing that through things like newsletters and showcases. I was curious whether or not you'd had any experiences in rolling those kind of more storytelling driven initiatives out, any learnings that were hard at the time in terms of how effective those were and any course corrections that you've had to make as a result?
Changying (Z) Zheng:
I think yes, because I was thinking, remember earlier on we were talking about the answer is always depends. It depends, right? People hate that answer because there's no definitive guidelines or whatever. So one thing is that I came to CloudFlare, I came from prior to that VMware, but VMware actually, I was a part of a company called Pivotal Software, which is all agile practise and everything. So I came from a very strong pair programming. We actually pair designing, pair everything pairing environment. So I benefit tremendously from that practise. So I want to bring that practise to our team to try it out and everything. And so I think that actually was a mistake that surprised me because part of thing is the storytelling actually wasn't right in a way. And I'm thinking I'm coming in and say, Hey, I have this idea, let's do this.
And then it worked this way. It works really well and it didn't work. We don't have enough people, everyone. We have a very small team, remember people were burned out. Really we don't have that luxury because back in Pivotal software is more built into our DNA, everything is pairing and then that's a practise that we just took it for granted. But when we leave that environment, since it turns out pairing is not an easy thing, a lot of things had to set up to make that success. So I came in from a very, again, it's like an early stage, right? You hear, okay, you're burned out. But then there's other things you can benefit a lot from pairing because pairing take care of a lot of low hanging fruit and actually will ease the burnout. So my beliefs that will ease that burnout however, but then I said, let's try this out.
But they did try it, but then it really did not. So in hindsight what could have worked is that the storytelling part of it is really talking about the beautiful picture, the end of what pairing will provide designers. So they will be more willing to try it out instead of I don't have time. And it takes a lot of effort and then practise vulnerability to show your vulnerability to do it. And so I wish I had presented that grand beautiful and the result could possibly be. So it just totally didn't work. I tried pretty hard and didn't work
Brendan Jarvis:
Well. Never say never. I mean you could always try it again. But I wonder, given what you know now, which you didn't know then, is it something that you still feel would have benefit at CloudFlare now that the team's larger and perhaps not in those COVID years?
Changying (Z) Zheng:
I still do believe the pairing is really helpful, but it doesn't have to be in a process way can be a more organic way now I think now I don't explicitly say you're going to do design pairing or anything pairing, but I will always try to say, Hey, let's do this with this person. Let's do this with that person. I don't put a label on as pairing anymore and let's do it with this person. And so that I think is an organic way of pairing that worked here. And so certain times people will get together to work on things together, but it's not processing.
Brendan Jarvis:
So did you find it difficult moving out of design and into operations personally difficult in the sense that you weren't as closely connected to the work of a designer anymore?
Changying (Z) Zheng:
For me it's not. But I can see that for some other people might be. For me, I always drawn to the service design operation side of any kind of organisation, everything. I would like to think, I'm a pretty passionate designer as a design practitioner, but I think there people always do better, do faster than me. And I think where I can bring the most value to the business now is not just a shipping product anymore, it's really helping the organisation to grow in terms of culture, in terms of process, in terms anyway, because I can bring in all that entrepreneur perspective, all different life experience to help people. So that's what energised me. So for me, I didn't mind, I no longer live in Figma. I live in spreadsheet now and I don't mind, and that's why people are saying you try it out. If you think this is your world happy with this, great. But if you find this is not your world, you can always go back to be designer. So I still go to config, I still learn all the Figma tricks and everything. I can still pick up Figma and I actually still build templates for our team and everything, but then I don't do everyday shipping anymore. So I don't miss that part. I think I provide better value to support people who can do that faster, better than me. But I can see some other designers. I find my creative venues rather than doing product.
Brendan Jarvis:
Now that you are almost five years into this ops leadership role, do you still see it as a two-way door or is it become a one-way door for you now?
Changying (Z) Zheng:
For me, I still see it as a two-way door, but I do give people the warning when they want to get into the ops potentially. You have to be really passionate about ops. It's a thing if you always constantly need recognition, sometimes you don't get that at all. And also you could potentially put yourself out of jobs because if you think about work, if you think about now the environment for the past couple years, design industry went this up, down up the other roller coaster. We were in downhill for quite a bit. If I have money to hire a designer or ops person, who do I hire? I'll hire a designer. So the option you could really position yourself out of jobs and that's something you need to be conscious aware of. I am aware of that and I tell people who come into the industry, you can always go back to the designer for sure, but then there's that risk that you are running, keep yourself up to speed with your skill, everything. Then you broaden up your opportunities in case it comes to job security and everything. I still think it's two-way store. And
Brendan Jarvis:
I suppose if you did have to walk back through the door, part of the art of storytelling comes into it, right? If you had to walk into a design leadership role, there's obviously some great stories that you can tell about the work that you've done in operations and what benefit that might be to the organisation that you're interviewing at.
Changying (Z) Zheng:
Absolutely. I tend to think this could be my bias as well. I think ops leader can be design leader anytime, and then we choose to be the support of our leader because I think I work well to support our leaders and then they have their jobs to go out to actually our work facing and I'm more interested in taking care of the internal works. But if one day I have to switch, go out to lead the design team, I can't because I did everything behind the scene.
Brendan Jarvis:
Been talking a little bit here about career development and the type of that you've made personally. And I understand that there is actually a two by two framework that you've used previously to rank tasks or perhaps job activities by enjoyment and competence. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand you've used this as a form or a tool to help with career focused and that it's led you to some interesting insights when you have used it. What kinds of discoveries, if I've got that right, what kinds of discoveries have come about from doing that activity that have surprised you?
Changying (Z) Zheng:
It helped me tremendously developing people. So I didn't invent framework. I took a leadership, women leadership course as part of the framework that was introduced and you think about the two by two, so things you're really good at and the other side is things you really enjoy doing. So in this two dimension, a lot of time we think about developing people, you hear this, you're doing great, you're awesome, or room for improvement, you need to improve. It's very typical when we think about developing people, but I like to think of this as a two dimension instead of this one dimension way of you are good, you're bad at something. So I do this two by two. And so if you think about things you're really good at doing and the things you're not too good at doing so in one XC and there are things, things you really enjoy doing and things you really don't care about.
So I would do the vertical xcs, the things you really enjoy, things you don't enjoy as much and the things you are really good at and the things you are not really good at. So you divide it into two by two. So if you think about there are four types of strengths, and again, I didn't develop this framework, I use it a lot though. So there are things you really, really enjoy doing and you are just extraordinarily good at. That's your natural strengths. So that's the part that people just think, oh, they're really good at it. And part of the reason you're really good at is because you really love you really good at it because you love it. So you keep working on there, whatever. So that's the part I want everyone to focus on as them developing their career because that's where you find stretch opportunities.
You can be better, you can be the best of the category and no one can do better than you. And then so there's another side that you really want to get good at but you are not quite good at yet you think I want to learn. So that's your potential strengths. So that's the area that you keep learning, you take courses and then you learn from other people, you find opportunities to do it, try it out. So that's where you can actually grow if you think that's untapped potential basically. And then there's the bottom left corner you are actually really good at. It's because your job depends on it because if you are not good at it, then you're not going to get this job. But that part people don't know that's the part that really strangulate for the people. You need to focus it.
You need to put a lot of time, hard time in. So that's where I say if this is the type of work you're doing and you need to cover, time has downtime to keep working on it. So you need to get it down and so you don't lose your job in a way. And then sometimes we get really good at it because we do a lot of the spreadsheet wasn't my thing, that is my area, so I need to do right formulas, do spreadsheet, and I really need to get it out. I enjoy the strategy of what the spreadsheet will give me, but I have to do that part, but then I need to carve out heads down time to produce that. So then the last area, the bottom right is the area that you suck and then you hate doing it. So the thing is that that's where we talk about you can pair with people because I suck at it.
I guarantee you probably are good at it. That's your strengths, that's your natural strengths. Then let's pair, let's do it together. I can learn a little bit from you, but you will enjoy tremendously doing that work. That's also the work that I can delegate to other people on my team. That's also when you hire a team, you want to make sure you hire people who actually can compliment your skill as well. You can learn from them or give them the work that we can actually take what we're good at. So that's the part people say you need room for improvement. That's not the room for improvement. The room for improvement is top right, not the bottom, right, because you can never get good at and you can get a little bit better, but you will never be the best of that category just because you hate it.
Why would you be the best? Right? So that's the area. So if you think about two dimensional, then people can help people to understand where do I develop and understand there are things that I just absolutely shouldn't be doing. Let's talk to my manager. Think about can you find people to do it? It's not because the work I don't want to do when I delegate people, it's not work I don't want to do. It's actually I can find people who enjoy doing that part. Sometimes I might have to pick up that part, but ideally not me get someone who love it to do it. So that's the career two by two, I talk a lot, talk to people who report to me. I try to talk about it outside as well to talk about how to develop people instead of think about you'll get room for improvement, but think about different strengths.
Brendan Jarvis:
Sounds like it's a brilliant framework for bringing clarity and perhaps some level of objectivity to those conversations. And as a manager, I imagine it enables you to make quite well-informed decisions as to how to change things in the team so that the team's more effective.
Changying (Z) Zheng:
Absolutely. I think that's a really good perspective and to actually help you to be a better, not only better manager to the people who report to you, but also help you to think about how do you build your team for the longevity of the team as a strategy as well for building a team. So it's really helpful.
Brendan Jarvis:
Z I'm mindful of time. I have one final question for you and that is, in your role as a people manager, what's the thing that you find yourself needing to remind yourself of most often?
Changying (Z) Zheng:
I grew up in a generation that you hustle, you do your work, and I personally don't need a lot of praise. That's part of the thing. I go into office and it's okay, but I do remind myself other people have different perspectives that people have different personalities, people have different way of approaching things there. People need to constantly be recognise everything. So people are different. So finding people on your team, what's their style? It's important. I keep reminding myself not to neglect that part, but my tendency is like you're doing your job. But then I learn constantly learning that and I'm continuously working on that. I do know a lot of people on my team and a lot of people on the larger design org team, excellent, excellent at that. They will always immediately spot on and say, this is something deserve praise and everything. So I'm learning from people as well.
Brendan Jarvis:
Thank you for sharing that. Z, this has been a wonderful deep dive into all things, design, ops, leadership, and also the wonderful stories you've shared with me from your career. So thank you for so generously sharing those stories and your insights with me today.
Changying (Z) Zheng:
My pleasure. It's fun discussion.
Brendan Jarvis:
Yeah, I had a lot of fun too. And for people Z who are interested in hearing more about what you're up to or connecting with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Changying (Z) Zheng:
LinkedIn is the best way is changing Z and I have all my links there, including my passion projects and everything. So you can find me there and my website is listed there and then my blogs is listed there. So LinkedIn is the best way. Okay,
Brendan Jarvis:
Thanks Z, and to everyone who's tuned in, it's been great having you here with us as well. I'll make sure that I put links through to Z's, LinkedIn, her website, and her blog in the show notes so you can find them there. And case you also want to hop back to anything that you've heard in the conversation. There are detailed chapters that you can find in the show notes as well. If you've enjoyed the show and you want to hear more great shows like this, conversations with people like Z World-class leaders in UX research, product management and design, don't forget to leave a review, subscribe. So the podcast turns up every couple of weeks in your feed and also pass the podcast along perhaps just to one other person who you feel would get value from these conversations at depth. If you want to reach out to me, you can find me on LinkedIn as well. So just search for Brendan Jarvis or you can find link to my LinkedIn profile in the show notes. Lastly, you might want to check out my website, which is the space in between.co nz. That's the space between.co nz. And until next time, keep being brave.

Changying (Z) Zheng

Connecting Teams Through Ops

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Who is Changying (Z) Zheng?

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