Design Team Planning & Organizational Structure

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Structure determines capability. The roles you define, how you allocate resources, how your team is organized—these shape what you can deliver long before the work even starts. We help you design an org that enables the work, without fighting it.

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Programs
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Approach
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Why Empirika
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Programs

Zero to One

Foundational team structure

Foundation / Structure / Capability

You're building capability from scratch and need to get the foundation right. We help you define the structure, scope decision-making authority, and map a first-year headcount and operating plan so you're building with intention from day one.

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Growth Mode

Scale through complexity

Scale / Resourcing / Sustainability

Your team is growing and you need a resourcing plan that holds up under scrutiny. We build the headcount rationale, role mix, and budget logic so you can deliver without burning out your people or losing credibility with leadership.

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Reframe + Refresh

Building for what's next

Evolution / Realignment / Readiness

The work is changing and your current structure isn't keeping pace. We help you realign team shape, capability coverage, and investment priorities so you stay effective through the shift instead of just reacting to it.

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Every engagement is built around where you are today and where you need to be tomorrow. The structure stays consistent—discovery, strategy, implementation, transfer—but how we move through it depends entirely on your context, constraints, and goals.

Approach

Discovery

Understanding where you are today, what's not working, and where you need to be. No assumptions, no borrowed solutions.

Strategy

Building the plan specific to your stage, constraints, and goals—roles, resourcing, timeline, and the rationale that makes it defensible.

Implementation Support

Guidance doesn't stop at the deck. Support continues through execution, with answers as questions come up and adjustments as reality unfolds.

Capability Transfer

By the end, you own the thinking. The why behind decisions becomes clear, so the next ones don't require outside help.

our Experience. Your Advantage.

Why Empirika

Planning a design organization requires more than good intentions—it requires pattern recognition that only comes from building teams, living through success and failure, and knowing what holds under pressure. We bring decades of experience planning design teams and design-led organizations at every scale, across the globe.

Decades of Planning

I've built design orgs from zero, restructured teams of fifty, and watched both brilliant plans and expensive mistakes play out in real time. The patterns are predictable—most planning failures come down to three things: unclear roles, reactive resourcing, and structures copied from the wrong context.

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Decades of Planning Experience

We've built orgs from zero, and scaled teams globally. Pattern recognition from seeing what holds and what breaks across dozens of organizations.

Startup to Enterprise and Back

From Adobe to bootstrapped startups. We know what works for teams of 2 to 200. We help you plan for where you are today, so you reach tomorrow sooner.

Experience-Led

The structures we help you build come from actually doing the job—design lead to manager to leading global teams. Real experience under pressure, not consulting theory.

Across Oceans or Across Town

Planning and building teams across Asia, the Americas, and Europe provides unique perspective. We understand what works across time zones and cultures, and what works locally—not just what looks good in a deck.